Education Commons^™

What Does Motivated Mean? Re-Presenting Learning, Technology, And Motivation In Middle Schools Via New Ethnographic Writing, Justin Olmanson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article offers a critique of the way middle schoolers are often positioned as generalizable objects that can be acted upon to produce measurable increases in motivation and learning. The critique invites a reconsideration and cultural analysis of some of the dominant discourses and perceptions of technology, young adolescence, and the study of motivation. The use of New Ethnographic Writing—a method that performs a cultural critique via extended scenes—connects to the roles and status of motivation, technology, and educational research methods deployed within public schools. Coupled with weak theory, this approach offers a way to understand young adolescents as navigating …

Visualizing Revision: Leveraging Student-Generated Between-Draft Diagramming Data In Support Of Academic Writing Development, Justin Olmanson, Katrina Kennett, Alecia Magnifico, Sarah Mccarthey, Bill Cope, Duane Searsmith, Mary Kalantzis

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Once writers complete a first draft, they are often encouraged to evaluate their writing and prioritize what to revise. Yet, this process can be both daunting and difficult. This study looks at how students used a semantic concept mapping tool to re-present the content and organization of their initial draft of an informational text. We examine the processes of students at two different schools as they remediated their own texts and how those processes impacted the development of their rhetorical, conceptual, and communicative capacities. Our analysis suggests that students creating visualizations of their completed first drafts scaffolded self-evaluation. The mapping …

New Media Literacies, Justin Olmanson, Zoe Falls

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

From Pleistocene-epoch cave drawings to texts produced via movable type, to on-demand video content accessed via personal mobile devices, the means of message production and distribution has expanded from exclusive and local to inclusive and international. During the same period, media have evolved from one-way mono-modal communication to interactive, multimodal, social experiences.

New media platforms provide educators with the means to connect academic literacy with learner literacies. A growing body of new media literacies research highlights some of the ways educators have integrated new media literacies into learning spaces without colonizing learner practices to align solely with conventional literacy goals …

The Case Of Three Karen Refugee Women And Their Children: Literacy Practices In A Family Literacy Context, Sabrina Dm Quadros, Loukia K. Sarroub

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The lack of research about the Karen—one of 135 ethnic groups from Myanmar—limits literacy educators charged with educating this refugee population in public schools. In this case study the authors explore the literacy practices of Karen families when at school and in their homes and within an ESL family literacy program. The case of these refugee families and their experiences are analyzed within a sociocultural theoretical framework along with a focus on literacy adaptation through the lenses of crosscultural studies, adult and language teachers involved in literacy practices, and literacy studies. Four core themes emerged from participant observation, including adult/ …