Young children’s identities becoming: Exploring agency in the creation of multimodal literacies

Abstract

This cross-case qualitative study draws on poststructural notions of identity to explore the relationship between multimodal literacies of young children and their becoming identities. Although research focuses on the products or texts of multiliteracies, more research is needed to examine shifting identities in the process of students creating. This study uses mediated discourse analysis to analyse interactions across one school year in a kindergarten (five- and six-year-olds) and a second-grade (seven- and eight-year-olds) classroom. Four insights are discussed across cases: (1) understanding and recognition of shifting identities, (2) the children becoming and doing teacher, (3) being a multimodal visionary and (4) living as a mentor designer and teacher. Insights highlight a ‘multimodal as agency’ stance, suggesting that through the process of creating multimodal forms of literacy, positions were instantiated and identities were re/negotiated. We encourage early childhood educators to create multimodal curricular spaces to facilitate young children’s agency and becoming identities.

Keywords

Identity agency poststructural multiliteracies early childhood literacy

Miley, a second-grader, sits in front of the class with a whiteboard easel to her left. The teacher, Tara, gives the class a little background on Miley’s draft book, Advice for Snow. Tara tells Miley to lead the class and that she will be there to listen and help. Tara sits on the floor with the students.

With papers and marker in hand, Miley explains she wants them to help her make a mural. She pulls out several examples of collaging with torn construction paper. She states, “Here’s what I was thinking it could look like,” as she draws on the whiteboard. Tara asks Miley where she envisions this mural hanging. “In the hallway,” she replies, confidently. Miley sketches a vertical rectangle (the mural), writes wavy lines on the left side and a box on the right. She continues to make wavy lines (for words) and empty boxes all the way down. She picks up the example collage and shows how illustrations can go in the placeholder boxes. She goes back and puts a “1” in the top box for the page titled “step 1” in Advice for Snow, a “2” in the next box down, and so forth.

This vignette is illustrative of a student’s identities becoming through the process of creating multimodal artefacts. Miley departed from the expected ways of reading and writing in Room 203 and demonstrated agency through leading peers in the construction of multimodal productions. In Miley’s classroom, students had the option of using a range of materials as writers and to coauthor with peers. However, a student had not asked Tara for large, wall-sized paper or class time to engage the whole group in a coauthoring experience. Literacy practices and events, such as the Advice for Snow mural, captivated our attention and thus we wanted to look more closely at what was happening with students’ identities in these agentic moments.

Over the past two decades, research describes Writing Workshop approaches to literacy instruction (Calkins, 1994; Hindley, 1996; Routman, 2005). For writing, this type of instruction permitted children to author their ideas through a process approach (draft, revise, edit and publish) while having teacher conferences to individualize instruction. Often, children used markers and crayons, but writing did not move beyond the 2D page (i.e. prelined paper with a box for the drawing). New literacy studies scholars (New London Group, 1996; Street, 1984) broadened the definition of literacy and aimed to explore the ways in which students read their world through traditional means such as books, but also images, digital encounters, gestures and art. Kress (1997) argues that children draw in a variety of modes (writing, drawing, movement and gestures) as meaning-makers.

Studies of multimodality are helping educators to reimagine literacy instruction in schools (Siegel and Panofsky, 2009; Wohlwend, 2011, 2013). For example, Husbye et al. (2012) invite readers into classrooms where children created stories through films. The authors posit the term ‘storying workshop’ to better encapsulate the literacy practices of children, going beyond writing, and argue for a play-based media curriculum. Wohlwend (2013) goes further and describes literacy playshops that include popular media, play and multimodal literacies.

While there is scholarship on multimodality, specifically a focus on the product or text created (New London Group, 1996; Pahl and Rowsell, 2012), more research is needed to examine what multimodal creating looks like in practice and the ways in which students’ identities become in the process. Leander and Boldt (2013) articulate a critique of ‘A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’ stating that the focus of the New London Group is on text and tracing-back practices – the research is text-central. We agree with Leander and Boldt’s (2013) concern that ‘the interest of the New London Group was not the difference between bodies and signs but instead expanding and smoothing out grammars in the service of comprehending “the plurality of texts that circulate” in ‘increasingly globalized societies’ (emphasis in original, p. 24).

We struggled with what to call the processes of creating multimodal artefacts, as they were made during Writing Workshop. We initially thought of the word designing, but it has been critiqued as being too text-centric, focused on deliberate moves and for leaving out movement and surprise (Leander and Boldt, 2013). We use the term literacy desiring (Kuby et al., in press; Kuby and Gutshall, in press) in the hope of capturing the unfolding, unexpected, agentic and in-the-moment aspects of creating multimodal artefacts.

This cross-case study aims to explore from a poststructural perspective the ways in which students’ identities become (a fluid process, not a fixed end point) as they live out literacy desiring and create multimodal artefacts. Two students, Miley and Anna (all student names pseudonyms), were selected as illustrative cases. Miley, a second-grader, led her class in constructing a snow mural, coauthored with peers a book series entitled Monkey Vacation, and created and directed a puppet play based on research about wolves. Anna, who was initially hesitant when asked to write in her kindergarten class, moved from being a reluctant writer to one who authored chapter books (e.g. Midnight and Spirit and Chester) and taught literacy skills to her classmates through multimodal productions. We examined these two students’ identities becoming over the course of one school year through multimodal literacies, specifically focusing on moments of agency or departures from expected ways of being literate in early childhood classrooms.

Identities and agency in early literacy scholarship

A contemporary view of the identities of young children suggests the shifting and mobile nature of identities. That is, children experience many different childhoods and construct ‘mobile and shifting’ identities according to race, gender, class, ability and the ways in which they are positioned and position themselves (Walkerdine, 1997, 1998). These identities occur within early childhood settings as children interact with peers, teachers and larger discourses of how to do school – they are not fixed ways of being but shift in relationships and experiences (Genishi and Goodwin, 2008).

Uprichard (2008) problematizes the notions of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, stating that the ‘being child is seen as a social actor actively constructing childhood, the becoming child is seen as an adult in the making, lacking the competencies of the adult that he or she will become’ (p. 303). These discourses focus on the future or what a child will become and imply a lack of competency. These notions do not value the ways children already are, do, know, construct and interact with their realities. Uprichard (2008) theorizes children as both being and becoming in order to address the temporality of these ideas and in the hope of increasing the agency of the child.

Walkerdine (1993) provides insight into the tensions between young girls’ identities across time and suggests a complex view of identity formation that acknowledges ‘historical circumstances in which knowledge was generated’ (p. 451). Dyson (1997) contextualizes identity formation in young children to highlight the communicative practices through which children participate and the relationships constructed through interactions. Contextualizing identity formation within today’s standardization movement, Genishi and Goodwin (2008) state how classrooms need to provide spaces for fluid identities of young children and ‘push back curtains that reveal who they [children] are in terms of such aspects of identity as social class, religion, ethnicity, race, gender' (p. 278). Grieshaber and Cannella (2001) contend that a postmodernist view of identity construction acknowledges the ‘complexity that is our lives and the diversity that constitutes our identities’ (p. 180). As such, the view of identities becoming within a postmodernist stance provides openings within early childhood literacy education to examine identities as shifting and flexible (Butler, 1990, 2004). We situate our research within a field that values children’s epistemological and ontological ways of being and knowing (Lenz Taguchi, 2010) and uses the term becoming not to imply a future goal or end result, but to illuminate the fluid, sophisticate being of young children.

Comber (2003) suggests that ‘fruitful’ work can occur when the literacy curriculum provides open spaces in which children can work and play, renegotiating and shaping literacy practices through narratives and dramatic performances. She further argues that such spaces provide rich sites where ‘their identity work and their literacy work fuse’ (p. 362). Dyson’s (1997) pivotal work with the identity construction of children highlights the ways in which identities shift and develop as students engage and ‘play around’ with language, images, drawings and cultural objects significant to their world. Sipe (2002) argues that during picture-book read-alouds, through expressive engagement (dramatization, talking back, critiquing, inserting and taking over), children instantiate the work of a reader and writer (i.e. their identities) as they engage actively in (re)making stories. He suggests that as children participate in these read-alouds, they remake, improvise and rework the text, treating it as a ‘playground’ (Sipe, 2002: 479). Bartlett (2007) contends that literacy practices and identity construction are uniquely intertwined and that ‘doing literacy involves an ongoing, improvisational process of identity work’ (p. 55).

Through improvising, students (re)make their positions and identities as readers, writers and multimodal creators. Imbued within these practices are notions of agency (Christian and Bloome, 2004; Lewis et al., 2007). We concur with Fisher’s (2010) notion that agency is situated, relational and represented by the possibilities for acting within a setting. ‘Agency is mediated through the way people act to use the tools available to them in the historical and social setting’ (Fisher, 2010: 412). We explore student agency, moments of departure, within ‘ … the social context, the institutional location, the social relations of texts, and the social practices within which they are embedded’ (New London Group, 1996: 76), and acknowledge that agency is a choice as decisions are made within a tangled web of power relations and histories.

While there are some studies that focus on fluid or shifting identities and agency, we see a need to use poststructural notions of identity work in order to expand our understandings of children’s agency while creating multimodal texts.

Poststructural ideas informing analysis

We acknowledge that semiotic and discourse perspectives are traditionally used to frame the analysis of multimodal literacies. While such approaches are foundational, we see poststructural perspectives as a fresh way to explore students’ literacy desirings. Poststructural thinking provides a theoretical approach to challenge theories and practices that are based on the assumption that a knowable world exists that contains absolute, universal truths. We resonate with recent scholarship from early childhood educators in the United Kingdom, Canada and Sweden that focuses on applying the scholarship of Deleuze and Guattari (Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Olsson, 2009; Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2010). The field of poststructural theory offers an invigorating way to explore literacy practices. As Alvermann (2000: 126) states in her use of poststructural theory, ‘ … it [was] possible for me to “see” in the data something other than what I went looking for in the first place’. More recently, Leander and Boldt (2013) share concerns over the ways in which children’s ‘identities and literacy research and practices are framed through a dominant conceptual paradigm in new literacy studies’ (p. 22). They encourage scholars to consider the affordances of poststructural scholars such as Deleuze and Guattari to analyse literacy practices as emergences of bodies and texts.

Drawing on the scholarship of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), we focused not only on the expected ways of being and learning (in this case, the norms of writing in an early childhood classroom) but also on unexpected occurrences (departures from what is typical or developmental) when students created multimodal artefacts. While poststructural theory is typically used to analyse power relationships in schools, we focused on two other distinctive ideas from poststructural theory: departures from the expected and notions of becoming.

First, a poststructural perspective allows educators to embrace unexpected moments in teaching and students’ interactions. This diverges from dominant discourses that invoke predetermined developmental norms and expectations. For example, Writing Workshop has become a rigid structure for writing instruction (Boldt, 2009; Kontovourki and Siegel, 2009). A poststructural perspective allowed us to examine unexpected decisions and processes of creating within the structure of literacy workshops.

Second, a poststructural perspective honours the idea of becoming. Identities and ways of being shift over time and space. Using this idea of becoming allowed us to observe how children became creators with materials and the ways in which their identities shifted. For example, at the beginning of the year, children glued pipe cleaners on paper to give texture to a drawn image. Over time, children began to use pipe cleaners as scaffolds to create 3D objects. Students’ identities with pipe cleaners changed; they became different users of the materials (Kuby et al., in press). In a poststructural sense, research puts in motion the process of learning and new becoming (shifts in the identities and agency of students). With a poststructural perspective in mind, we focused on the following questions:

Research Question 1: In what ways do the identities of young children become in the process of creating multimodal artefacts?

Research Question 2: In what ways do moments of departures or unexpected literacy practices demonstrate agency?

Our analysis took into consideration how students participated within their community of authors that informed their shifting identities. We also considered the ways that materials, time, space, discourses and teacher expectations influenced students’ artefacts and identities.

Contextualizing two classrooms and collaborative research relationships

To examine identities becoming and departures from typical writing practices in these two classrooms, we had first to understand the sociocultural life of these classrooms and how identity work was lived out. Children, over time, learn how to ‘do school’ and they are aware of required ways of being and doing schoolwork. For example, the second-grade students articulated to Candace ways that learning in Room 203 was different from their first-grade learning experiences. So while a school as a whole has expected ways of reading and writing, there are also situated ways of doing literacy within the life and culture of a classroom.

Tara’s classroom

This classroom was situated in a midwestern university town in the United States. The second-graders represented a range of racial, ethnic and economic groups. Candace shared a collaborative researching and teaching relationship with Tara since 2010. Candace and Tara conducted similar teacher researcher enquiries, read professionally, planned instruction together and co-wrote articles and presentations. The focuses of their enquiries was literacy workshops and opening up curricular spaces for student-led enquiries. While Tara did not author this manuscript, she contributed to the processes of data production and analysis. Miley, a focal student of this article, was in the class during the 2011–2012 school year (for other studies from this research site, see Gutshall and Kuby, 2013; Kuby et al., in press, Kuby and Gutshall, in press).

To begin the school year, Tara set out a range of materials for children to explore. She gave students several days to play with materials as writers. While it was hard at times for her not to know where creations might go, she trusted students as learners. For example, when a boy created snowflakes without any ‘writing’, she described the tensions she felt in how to respond. Should she force him to write with it or allow him to create his snowflakes (for a discussion of the snowflake project, see Gutshall and Kuby, 2013)? Several weeks later, he approached Tara with, in her opinion, a sophisticated and clever book about snow with snowflakes glued to the cover. This example speaks to the sociocultural context of Tara’s classroom. While she gave children permission to use a range of materials, she still experienced tensions concerning meeting district expectations for more traditional forms of writing. Tara did not teach mini-lessons on co-creating and did not require students to partner up for writing. However, children organically sought peers to help them with project ideas and Tara did not stop them. Many children had multiple projects going on at the same time with a variety of partnerships. Tara trusted children’s literacy desirings and over time the children realized that Room 203 was a space for them to be multimodal learners with a range of materials and in a variety of partnerships. The environment described also speaks to how power circulated in the class. Children interacted with Tara in respectful ways and she shared power with them over time to take control of some aspects of the curriculum.

Jamey’s classroom

The second classroom was located in a public charter school located in a rural community in the Pacific Northwest. This charter school operated independently but received funding allocated for public schools. The kindergarteners comprised mainly European Americans with a range of economic statuses. This was the first year Margaret conducted research with Jamey (pseudonym). Margaret and Jamey shared similar instructional visions and personal convictions for teaching and enquiry-based learning. Jamey emphasized, through language and team-building activities, a classroom culture of trust, courage and respect. For example, Jamey asked students to ‘spotlight’ one another or notice times when classmates supported each other. Jamey asked students to lead discussions during class meetings. These meetings were centred not only on learning tasks and activities but also on students’ understandings of one another, friendships and any issues that arose during the school day. As a result, the culture of the classroom supported a space where students could feel empowered.

Illustrative cases

The examples discussed come from what both teachers labelled ‘Choice Time’ and ‘Writing Workshop’. Writing Workshop was the time within the curriculum framework for the teachers to focus on genres, craft, the writing process and other expected topics related to writing. Writing Workshop shifted from more traditional notions of paper, crayon and pencil books with prelined paper to creating with materials (i.e. poster paper, butcher-block paper, pipe cleaners, tissue paper, paint and so forth). In both locations, children were given multiple days at the beginning of the school year (and after winter break) to play with various materials alongside more traditional tools such as crayons, markers and construction paper. Choice Time was a space, in addition to Reading and Writing Workshops, for students to research topics of their choosing and partner up with peers to explore. Both teachers felt that a traditional Writing Workshop was limiting, but still necessary to meet district expectations. Choice Time was a space for the teachers to give children more open-ended, enquiry-focused projects for learning with a range of materials. In conversations with both of the teachers, they described how, over time, there were overlaps from Choice Time to the more traditional Writing Workshop. Essentially, the differences in the two learning times lessened. Because of this fluidity, we began to see both Choice Time and Writing Workshop as multimodal literacy workshops.

For this article, we each selected one illustrative case student to demonstrate the becoming and agentic identities of primary-age children. We chronicle their literacy desiring throughout the school year, elaborating on several pivotal projects. Miley, a second-grader, was the first student to ask Tara to have time to lead peers in constructing a wall mural instead of sole authoring of a book. This departure from the normal way of authoring and illustrating demonstrated agency on her part, not only in creating the mural but also in being the teacher. Over the course of the year, Candace did notice other students enact similar projects, but Miley was the first. Miley was a student whom peers referred back to when describing their decision-making and what influenced them as writers. It became expected or normal for children to ask for class time and for materials not already in the classroom. So, what were normal ways of authoring in Room 203 shifted in nature over time as more children departed from expected ways of authoring. As Tara validated their ideas and choices, other children imagined and lived out additional new ways of authoring. Beyond the data of Miley creating and leading peers, numerous interviews with Miley indicated that she spoke of her identity as a multimodal writer, which gives a window into a child’s perspective of her becoming identities.

Anna, a kindergartner, was selected, given her willingness to share her chapter books and her apparent transformation from a reluctant writer into a leader among students. For example, in the beginning, Anna was a shy reader who appeared to be overshadowed by her sibling in class. It was during this choice time that she appeared to transform, using space, materials, writing and performances as a way to negotiate personal conflicts and ideas.

Issues in (re)presenting identities

Even though we both spent prolonged periods in the life of these classrooms, in order to best understand the curricula, students and teachers, and to provide thick descriptions of what we observed, it still was not easy to discuss and analyse identities (Butler, 1990). While we both had access to the classroom culture, there are also limits to the (re)presentation of children’s multiple identities. Any identity that a child enacts is always partial (Andrews et al., 2008); we can only try to know a piece of that identity. The narratives or stories students perform in interactions with others give insights into their identities. As Cixous (1997) wrote, ‘all narratives tell one story in place of another story’ (p. 178), meaning that we perform particular aspects of our identities but other aspects might not be revealed. Jackson and Mazzei (2009) raise the idea of voice in qualitative enquiry and state that even with innovative methodologies in an attempt to provide voice in data that is more authentic and complete, little has been done to explore the methodological and epistemology limits of voice. We too acknowledge that even with prolonged engagement and a large amount of data produced, we still only have a partial understanding of these children’s identities and voices.

In responding to the data, we relied on contemporary researchers who view literacy learning and teaching as situated and imbued with power relations (Lewis et al., 2007), often borrowing from Holland and her colleagues (1998) to explore the ways in which culture intersects with practice. This perspective suggests that schools embody institutionally held definitions of what it means to be engaged, smart or successful within the activities and relationships available at school (Hatt, 2007; Rubin, 2007; Wortham, 2006). Within that framework of meanings or values, students use a variety of tools and improvisations to perform identities that help shape their literacy practices (McCarthey and Moje, 2002).

Method of enquiry: Mediated discourse analysis

Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notion of poststructural theory, specifically rhizomes, focuses on entries and exits (fissures). We used this idea to locate interactions that departed from typical ways of being in these two classrooms. In order to better understand the becoming identities of students in these identified moments, we enacted a mediated discourse analysis (MDA) (Scollon, 2001; Wohlwend, 2011). While poststructural theory embraces shifting practices and identities, we wanted a tool to analyse data in this way. We resonate with Leander and Boldt’s (2013) concern that New Literacy Studies can be read as text-centric, focusing mainly on a product. We, however, wanted to focus on the process of creating in relationships with others, not just the artefact. MDA as defined by Scollon (2001) is ‘not only interested in the linguistic-conversational-discursive action … nor it is just interested in the purchasing or handing action’ (p. 160). The interest is in understanding how the discursive and mediated actions (while creating) are integrally connected. MDA allowed us to explore (1) the ways identities of young children became while creating multimodal artefacts and (2) the ways moments of departures or unexpected literacy practices demonstrated agency.

Nexus of practice and identities

In choosing illustrative examples, we used the idea of nexus of practice (Scollon and Scollon, 2004). A nexus is a network of linked practices or mediated actions.

Nexus analysis uses an action-oriented lens to look at the mergers of bodies, social groupings and material meanings within discourses in place, looking among a nexus of typical practices to locate transformative moments (where things change to further participants’ interests) (Wohlwend et al., 2011: 145).

We see a nexus as a dense knot of actions that serve as a tacit marker of membership, identities and expertise as authors in these classroom cultures. Many times the nexuses we focused on were moments of departure from expected ways of doing literacy.

Wohlwend (2011), drawing on the Scollons’ scholarship, posits three points of nexus of practice analysis:

Discourses of place (expectations of place): In our cases we saw this as what were typical literacy workshops in these classrooms and larger cultural expectations of writing in early childhood education.

Interaction order (turn-taking): We saw this as the social aspects and progressions of actions and talk observed in student–teacher and students-students interactions.

Historical body (individual life stories of individual actors): We saw this as becoming identities and moments of agency of students.

MDA is a useful tool to examine becoming identities from a poststructural perspective. As Scollon (2001) wrote, ‘the nexus of practice are central sources of personal identity’ (p. 161). Adopting Scollon’s notion of nexus of practice supports our research interests in examining the ‘dense knot’ of materials, identities and discourses interacting.

Adapting MDA for our contexts: Process of analysis

Pedagogical documentation (Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Olsson, 2009) was used to produce data for this cross-case study including: field notes and reflections of the university researcher, teacher reflective notes, video and audio recordings of teaching–learning, recorded interviews between researchers–students and researchers–teachers and student-made artefacts. Pedagogical documentation, drawing on aspects of the Reggio Emilia approach to documenting, is not merely about documenting the obvious but about an ongoing process with children (and teachers) in collaborative knowledge production (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). As we had a collaborative relationship with the teachers, observation notes were shared with them. Discussions before and after each lesson took place to clarify field notes and gain a deeper understanding of classroom practices.

We borrowed the funnel-design process of MDA from Wohlwend (2011) as our method of analysis. ‘A funnel design sifts through ethnographic data to identify the social practices significant to the issues that are central within the community’ (Wohlwend, 2011: 132). In our case, we agreed on a progression of filters, discussed below, to analyse our respective data.

In the first filter, we sought the best locations (fissures or departures) for studying how each focal student used mediating tools to engage in an issue or concern. We sought to locate dense nexus of practices related to literacy desirings and identities becoming. Next, we observed key scenes to discover the specific practices and materials that were most often used. For example, we looked closely for related social practices of creating artefacts. Nexus were further screened by the third filter to locate transformative and unexpected events that altered meanings and identities. We were especially interested in moments where students demonstrated agency. We defined these unexpected moments as departures from the cultures and traditional ways of writing in these classrooms.

Finally, fine-grained microethnographic analyses of these transformative events revealed shifts of identities (or becomings) by following children’s (and teachers’) language, gestures and aspects of the context, such as shared classroom histories, arrangement of the physical environment, actors’ body movements and handling of materials. We used a multicolumn transcript to help analyse not only discourses but also nonverbal actions and the process of creating artefacts (see Appendices A and B for examples).

Separately we watched video clips, listened to audio files of interviews with children and the teachers, examined student-made artefacts and reviewed descriptive field notes. Together we shared insights gained from MDA of our specific data sets to better understand the nuanced and overlapping ways identities became for these two children. To (re)present these filters and our understandings of the research questions, we created separate analysis tables of each case and discussed insights (see Appendices A and B).

Emergence of identities

As we looked across the analyses for both Miley and Anna, we noticed four insights: (1) understanding and recognition of identities shifting, (2) children becoming and doing teacher, (3) being a multimodal visionary and (4) living as a mentor designer and teacher. These insights are situated within the classroom cultures and interactions, with their teachers and peers as described previously. We don’t view these categories as fixed or complete descriptions of their identities, but a snapshot of the literacy practices and relationships we documented over the course of a year.

Miley’s process of becoming

Over the year, Miley’s identities shifted (see Appendix C for a time line). She began the year sole-authoring books with pencils and crayons, as all the children did, then shifted to leading the class in co-creating the Advice for Snow mural out of torn construction paper and cut snowflakes. Leading the class was a departure from the typical way of sole-authoring books. As the year progressed, Miley’s mural was referenced numerous times by peers as they envisioned their own mural. As the year ended, Miley purposefully chose to co-author books and created a puppet play for her peers to act out her research about wolves.

Understanding and recognition of identities shifting

The ways Miley articulated whom she was as a multimodal creator shifted over time. At the beginning of December, in a conference with Candace, Miley was hesitant to respond when asked about what she thought of herself as a writer. In fact, when Candace asked Miley to read some of her writing, Miley said she did not want to, but allowed Candace to read the books out loud.

While the snow mural was under construction, Miley sat with Lexie and Claire at a table, as students were packing to go home. Tara approached the group as they were discussing what it was like for Miley to lead the class in constructing the snow mural, as the teacher (see Appendix D for transcription markings).

Miley: (giggly with excitement) I can’t believe I’m in charge of something. (more serious facial expression and tone) I’m not really in charge of something usually.

Tara: What do you mean by that?

Miley: This the first time, I’m like, in charge (waves the marker in her hand in air to show emphasis) like literally.

Tara: How do you feel? What was it like today when you were in charge and you didn’t have a specific job [assigned to work on one mural collage]?

Miley: (with a big smile) Good. Excited. (Miley goes back to writing on the whiteboard on the desk).

Lexie: (quietly, without looking up from what she is writing) I’d like to be in charge of something.

Claire: I’d like to be in charge of something.

Tara: You’d like to be in charge?

Claire: I wish. But I’d feel embarrassed. (Miley looks over at Claire)

Tara: What do you mean too embarrassed?

Claire: I’m too nervous.

Tara: How do you take care, have you been nervous at all, Miley? (Claire watches Miley talk, Lexie still looking down and working on collage).

Miley: Um, whenever I kind of think about something and say something like “give me 5” [technique at the school to get others’ attention] or something like that but whenever I walk around and talk about it I’m not so embarrassed because I’m talking to my own classmates. But when I say “give me 5” I feel embarrassed (Lexie looks up at Miley and follows the conversation flow).

Claire: Me too. That’s why.

Tara: Why? What’s the difference?

Miley: Because I feel like I'm the teacher.

Tara: Uh, hum (yes). But do you believe you can teach people new things?

Miley: Yes.

Tara: Do you all believe that?

All three girls: Yes.

In this exchange, Miley described the tensions of leading the class, yet at the same time her actions over the next week did not indicate that she shied away from being teacher. Miley’s identity shifted from being unwilling to read her writing to Candace to leading her peers in a co-construction of a wall mural.

In an authors’ share during April, Miley and Lexie presented a coauthored book, The Hatchling, to the class. They took turns reading pages, each holding the book and showing illustrations. The book begins, ‘Then the egg made a noise.’ Miley read with expression and voice inflection. There was laughter, and questions and suggestions from peers. They watched with delight and joined in the laughter. Miley’s identity shifted to a creator who was confident in co-authoring, sharing writing with peers and embracing feedback and questions.

In an interview with Candace in May, Miley articulated that co-authoring is beneficial, a shift from her thoughts during the first semester.

Candace: What was it like to be a writer in [room] 203 this year?

Miley: Kind of fun. Because I think … one of my favorite stories I wrote was The Hatchling with Lexie.

Candace: A recent story, right? Why was it your favorite?

Miley: I really liked writing it … I liked doing the illustrations. I kept thinking of what the chick, what he was saying, and they were so cute. (laughing)

Candace: You mean the real chicks [incubating in the classroom]?

Miley: Yea.

For Miley to articulate that co-authoring this book with Lexie was her favourite writing experience of the year speaks of her identity shifting. She saw benefits in co-authoring and sharing her vision with another person, unlike in the autumn semester.

Candace: Tell me, do you feel you changed as a writer this year when it comes to writing with other people? What are you thoughts on that now that it is the end of the year?

Miley: Well I still enjoy writing by myself but I think I changed a little because now I am writing with partners more than I often, than I used to.

Candace: Why do you think that change happened?

Miley: Um, maybe because I met more friends and we both had great ideas and we just wanted to write them down.

Candace: … Do you find anything helpful in having a partner for writing?

Miley: Like I told you, I wasn’t very good at illustrations in 2011 [previous school year] so they really help me … it really helps me become a better illustrator too.

Candace: To have someone else with you? Tell me how. How does that make you better?

Miley: Because they would do something in writing and then I’d have to do the illustrations. So it also helps me with that.

Miley was aware of her identities shifting as a learner, writer and illustrator.

Becoming and doing teacher

Miley (and other students) had opportunities to become (or be) the teacher in Room 203. The process of constructing the snow mural was not a pretend or play opportunity, but actually living out the teacher, as Miley facilitated discussions, made curricular decisions and grouped students to work on the mural. Tara supported Miley as needed, but directed children to Miley to make decisions as illustrated in the remaining actions from the opening vignette:

Tara asks Miley to read the entire draft book of Advice for Snow and give an example of what advice #1 might look like. “Step 1, go slow. If you go fast you will slip, especially on the highway.” After reading, Miley describes to her peers what the corresponding image might look like, “You could put a car on all ice.” Students brainstorm colours and shapes to create this image. The students are loud and excited, thinking of ideas. Miley looks to Tara, as if for help. Tara whispers to Miley from the back of the room “Say, if this is your number, you can talk about it in your small group.” Miley restates Tara’s words to quieten the class. She then proceeds to read the remaining pages and shares her ideas for the pictures using the motion of her arms to demonstrate.

Ava gives an idea for illustrating step 3. Miley approves by stating, “That would be a good idea.” Students co-construct ideas for every image, after Miley reads each page. Miley finishes reading the book draft and erases the whiteboard. A few students have questions for Miley. Tara asks for Miley to wait until everyone’s eyes are on her before responding.

After 30 seconds of wait time by Miley, she begins to call on peers and facilitates a discussion. When students give ideas, Miley draws their ideas on the board. After a few minutes of brainstorming, Miley proceeds to divide her peers into groups. Miley does not put herself in a group and instead decides to oversee all the groups. Each group will create a collage for their step for the Advice for Snow mural (Figure 1). Tara tells Miley the time is up for today and asks her to decide how they will use their time tomorrow. Miley explains that maybe tomorrow they can talk about how to create the mural and begin work. The students spend at least two days creating the snow mural and it hung in the hallway for about two months.

Figure 1.

Advice for Snow Wall Mural.

In an interview with Candace in January, Miley articulated how she led the class by putting her peers into groups.

Candace: How did you do that?

Miley: The first day is when I got them in groups and gave them their background paper but then the next day is when they were spending the time making it [the mural].

Candace: What did you do while they were making the pictures? Did you make one too?

Miley: No, I helped the group, this group (pointing to the black paper collage – step 5 in Advice for Snow) …

Candace: … What did you do while everyone else was working? …

Miley: I walked around and look at them.

Candace: You looked at them? Did you offer a suggestion or advice?

Miley: Yes … I wrote down their ideas [on a whiteboard].

Miley spent one day explaining her vision and leading a mini-lesson about what her expectations were to the class. She rotated among the groups with a whiteboard in hand, taking notes and facilitating conferences. In these conferences, she checked on student progress, offered ideas about what she envisioned the collage could look like and answered questions. When students approached Tara with a question, she would look to Miley for the answer and directed children to ask Miley instead of herself. This positioned Miley as the teacher, responsible for making curricular decisions. As the year progressed, Tara noticed the strengths of Miley, particularly when writing scripts for plays, and sent other students to her to solicit her expertise.

While we view experiences of being the teacher in a positive way, we also understand its ideological, social and pedagogical implications. Being the teacher shifts power into the hands of children, even though Tara was there to support them as indicated in the vignette above. This way of being literate, as a teacher, can conflict with the ways children are expected to be at school or home (e.g. Brooker, 2002; Christ and Wang, 2008; Pahl, 2003). Tara did not explicitly ask or teach the children to be the teacher. As Miley approached Tara with a request to have her peers help her construct a mural, Tara gave her the curricular and physical space, as well as time, to lead her peers, not purposefully thinking that Miley was the teacher. It was in the moment of leading that we noticed the ways Miley became a teacher – how she adopted teacher-like language, organized students into groups and modelled ideas for the collages. Perhaps it was necessary for Miley to assume this way of being (a teacher) in order to move herself into a position of power and authority. While we saw benefits for Miley in being teacher, other students did not always express positive sentiments. Tara saw a student, after school, at a local yoghourt shop. Katherine said, ‘You let them be teachers all day’. No students had literally been the teacher for the entirety of a day. Instead, Katherine was referring to the times when students led the class. Katherine was unsure how she felt about her peers teaching her (Gutshall and Kuby, 2013).

Being a multimodal visionary

In the first months of school, Miley began a book series, Monkey Vacation. She authored the first book and then delegated to her peers to create the others. This vision, of sharing ideas but having others create the books, demonstrated to students that texts could be jointly constructed. Katherine articulated her role in this series during an interview with Candace. She shared that Miley started the series and asked her to ‘buddy write’. Miley wrote books one and two, Ava book three and Katherine book four. Miley told them what to write (the plot), but allowed them to change it and/or craft their own ideas. Katherine also demonstrated agency in this partnership. She decided to create three-dimensional puppets of the characters instead of simply drawing pictures. Katherine had a vision to perform the book.

As Miley participated in conferences with peers about the snow mural, she shared her vision for the mural. Tara talked to a group about how they were choosing colours and creating images for their collage. Miley sat with them, writing on a whiteboard with a red marker, sketching a tall building and snow. Miley stated, ‘This is what I visualize but with more detail,’ and turned the board around to the group. As Tara left the table, Miley stayed, offered help and asked Lexie, ‘So you know what your plan is, right’? A few minutes later, Miley offered an idea of where to place the two cars to make it ‘look like a real scene’. Again she stated, ‘This is what I visualize,’ as she drew on the whiteboard. Miley said, ‘I know snow isn’t red, but this is what I have … OK, Lexie, this is what I visualize but with more colour and details,’ holding up the board. She moved two pieces of colored paper to demonstrate. As Miley got up to leave she asked again, ‘So you know what your plan is?’ These interactions highlight how Miley had visions, yet shared them with others and enlisted peers to help coproduce multimodal creations (see Figure 2 for the final collage of step 5).

Figure 2.

Collage of Step 5 on the Advice for Snow mural.

Living as a mentor, designer and teacher

As described earlier, the Monkey Vacation series of books were exemplars for peers in how to coauthor. Miley mentored her peers in negotiating partnership roles. In the book, A Giraffe and his Girl, Miley taught the class about prologues, page-layout choices (e.g. writing the words in a circle or as a wavy line in relation to the illustrations) and how to borrow ideas from a mentor text (the book, A Bear and His Boy by Bryan, 2011) to spark an original idea (see Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Page from Miley’s book, A Giraffe and his Girl.

As the year progressed, Miley taught her peers that Tara was willing to allow students to become the teacher and lead peers in large projects. Shortly after the snow mural was completed, a group of students who had researched solar system asked Tara if they could lead the class in creating a mural of the planets. This exploration led to students constructing all of the planets (to scale), having their peers paint and write factual captions. Miley served as a mentor, designer and teacher, as this group of students referred to Miley’s snow mural several times in interviews.

Anna’s process of becoming

As the year progressed, much like Miley, Anna’s identities shifted (see Appendix E for a time line). Initially, she began the year hesitant to share with others, often going along with Jamey’s teacher-directed writing lessons and avoiding eye contact with Margaret. However, she began to insert herself within these teacher-directed writing lessons to give voice to her work and to others as well as to seek out Margaret to share her productions. As the year progressed, Anna’s peers consulted her for advice and she began to initiate a series of projects (e.g. chapter book sequels).

Understanding and recognition of identities shifting

Students had access to a variety of store-bought art materials and found objects (e.g. rocks, pinecones and other natural objects). The classroom had a mural of a tree with natural branches and a bird’s nest. There were beanbag chairs and quiet spaces with books and art materials for students to access during Choice Time. At the beginning of the study, Anna was initially hesitant to participate during whole group literacy activities, and unlike the other students in her class, she did not want to talk with Margaret about her work.

In the following exchange, Anna created her first chapter book (Midnight and Spirit) and engaged in a discussion with her peer, Sammi, about how and why writing about movies is a good source for ideas. Anna asked Margaret to interview her about her new chapter book.

Anna takes sheets of paper and talks about her plan for her story. She and Sammi are working on creating a book together. However, during the exchange, Anna does not agree with the direction of the story.

Anna: I’m drawing about the horses and it is going to have the momma horse, sister, and baby horse. I want to write it about myself. Those horses are brown – I’m drawing it – as I remember it.

Sammi: – It’s [the book they are creating] is not supposed to be [about] movies. It’s supposed to be for reading … it’s supposed to be a book.

Anna: Well, I am going to make it up in a book.

Sammi appears to disagree, leaves the table, and works on another paper with a group of students. Anna then walks to Margaret and asks to be interviewed. She says, “This is a chapter book.”

Anna: Come look at this book (pointing to the cover of her book).

Margaret: Anna, can you tell me about your work?

Anna: This story is what happened to my horse, Midnight. It’s about this story and it’s about a horse and the cowboys were trying to catch it until one day it got free and her name was Rain and then they got down on a waterfall – and then the cowboys. It’s got the momma and the sister horse – see they are sad because the cowboys took the baby horse and sold it.

Margaret: Why did you make it into a book?

Anna: I meant to draw that.

Margaret: What did you mean to draw?

Anna: I drew that girl horse with her friend by her – and I wanted to tell [Sammi] about the picture with it (referring to the drawing).

Margaret: Are you going to tell her about it?

Anna: Yea.

During this exchange, Anna asserted herself as the official writer. By rewriting the movie and declaring that she was writing her version, she enacted the identities of writer and producer. Although Sammi did not agree that writing about a movie was writing, Anna declared that she would continue making her individual book and appeared confident.

During another observation in December, Anna worked on another chapter book in the series. Anna invited Sammi to co-author the book. Each took turns drawing on the pages, but Anna appeared to be the writer. During an interview with Margaret that Anna initiated, she described her thoughts about why she chose this new topic and how she included Sammi in the production.

Anna: Want to come see my new chapter book?

Margaret: Yes, can you tell me about it?

Anna: This book is about Chester. I wrote words and I sometimes wanted to draw that with pictures and then I got to draw it, I let Sammi draw the heart in there. (Anna turns to the next page) See on this page Chester is eating. Chester is part of Midnight’s family. And each day I fed Chester some apples because Midnight wasn’t listening – and then she was sold and then it’s a story about my horse. I was worried that he was sad because he missed her a lot. I think he’s okay in the rain but he hates thunder. See I drew the thunder here and then I put that his face was scared.

Anna’s hesitancy toward sharing her work transformed. Anna’s identity shifted from a hesitant writer to one whereby she encouraged other girls like Sammi to co-write. For this book, Chester (Figure 4), Anna included Sammi, who was once disinterested in writing about a movie. When asked about why she included Sammi in the production of the sequel, Anna said, ‘Because we can draw together.’ Such a response, suggests that Anna was beginning to see that productions can be co-constructed with peers. Her identity as a writer was shifting.

Figure 4.

Page from Anna’s book, Chester.

Becoming and doing teacher

Like other students in this classroom, Anna found opportunities to do work as a teacher. For example, Jamey suggested that students look at their writing and share. Anna raised her hand and walked to sit in the teacher’s chair. Anna shared her inspiration for her stories and discussed how having courage helps when writing. Anna referenced her text, pointing to the horse in the picture. She placed herself in the story and said that when she drew this she thought about how scared she was when she went out to see her horse. She asked the class, ‘You know a time when you were scared but did something anyway? It’s like that when you are working on your work.’ Anna shared her insight and led the students to draw from their feelings when working on their stories. At other times, Anna asked questions about the students’ work to help develop their ideas and understandings (see Appendix E). Such efforts suggest that Anna was working as a teacher. Much like Tara, Jamey did not intentionally encourage Anna to be the teacher. It was in the moment of sharing her book that Anna became a teacher through her language and actions.

Being a multimodal visionary

Hesitant to participate in whole-group activities during the first months of school, Anna not only spoke freely during group work with peers in November but also became a visionary. After a read-aloud of Denise Fleming’s Alphabet Under Construction (2002), the students were given a letter and told to find corresponding objects in magazines. The class prepared to create a classroom banner where each letter was sewn onto fabric. Anna, unlike other students, walked over to the paint and poster paper rather than use the materials at her table to make letters. She cut out the shape of a kite and then painted it using reds and blues. Her work was noticeably different from others (i.e. in scale and materials). Other students stuck to cutting out small objects from magazines. Anna completed her letter K with a painting of a kite, and then cut out shapes (e.g. dough nut, lollipop and apple) and created other pictures using the paint and found materials. Anna gave these to her peers for their corresponding initial letters. As other students continued to cut pictures from magazines, Anna used materials to craft her own ideas. In this way, Anna was visionary in her approach, as she was the first to veer away from the expected approach to the activity to one that was multimodal in nature. Anna also adopted the identity of a visionary through the production of her chapter books. As peers saw her books about Midnight, Spirit and Chester, they started to create their own chapter books.

Living as a mentor designer and teacher

Jamey recommended Anna’s chapter books to the class. During one observation in April, Jamey conducted a read-aloud after Choice Time to share one of Anna’s productions. She said, ‘Ooh, this is a great way, Anna, to use speech bubbles. I like how you used this. We can do this in our next Writing Workshop lesson – we can use this to focus on talking bubbles, right? Anna was talking about [to Jamey], how it [speech bubbles] helps tell the story better and that you could see what that person was saying in the story.’ This exchange indicates the ways in which Anna became a mentor designer and teacher for her peers.

Within this classroom, and for Anna, there were subtle departures by students during instructional spaces. Departures included those events when Anna spoke up for others or responded to her teacher with a different perspective. Consider the following two examples: Amy, another student shared out loud during story time about her upcoming camping trip (this was in response to the teacher asking for a word that started with the letter C). Anna asked her to share details about the trip. She said to Amy, ‘Wow, so you are going out to the woods? Why are you going, when will you be out in the woods – in Mountainview area or somewhere else?’ Anna asked probing questions as the facilitator or as a teacher would.

Amy sat in the teacher’s chair and was pointing to students so they could ask questions during authors’ share time. Anna asked Amy questions about her story, but Amy froze and did not respond. Anna left her seat in the circle, approached Amy, and asked her to whisper in her ear the meaning of the story. Amy did as instructed and then Anna shared her response with the class, ‘This elephant got caught in the elevator and then it wasn’t there anymore.’ Anna not only spoke up for Amy but also recognized the discomfort Amy had in sharing in the way a teacher would. Over time, other students referred to Anna’s work, either in their words or actions to describe their own processes. Such actions demonstrate the ways in which Anna acted as a mentor for her peers.

Discussion across cases

As the multimodal literacy workshops became a part of the traditional schedules and ways of ‘writing’, curriculum spaces were open across the classroom sites. Within these spaces, students could in fact play around with literacy using materials to include in productions, and create multimodal artefacts about their enquiries and interests. Through these multimodal encounters, students enacted agency and became teachers, producers and visionaries. These ‘opened’ spaces served as opportunities whereby students could harness a sense of agency – acting on their thoughts, talk, multiple modes, materials and ideas to produce literacy artefacts. We noticed moments of agency not only in what they produced but also in the process of creating – choices about materials, topics, genres and which peers to collaborate with on projects. In a poststructural sense, our research shifted from focusing on what texts were doing to how students used them, to move with and through them.

Additionally, students challenged traditional and expected ways of doing literacy in these classrooms. For example, the products (e.g. Snow Mural, Midnight and Spirit and Chester) became artefacts representing these departures (moments of agency) from traditional ways of writing. Departures were seen when Miley used the whiteboard to teach others about her ideas and as Anna spoke out for others during classroom interactions. While these departures could be seen as off-task, Tara and Jamey embraced the explorations of students, even if they were not sure the direction students were going in. As Leander and Boldt (2013) wrote, drawing on Massumi (2002), ‘it is sameness that requires explanation, rather than change’ (p. 30). As researchers and teachers, let us embrace changes or departures and question why sameness is valued in schools.

Many of the agentic opportunities were co-constructed with others – both with teachers and students. We note the amount of trust from teachers (and among students) that was prevalent across each of these sites and suggest that in order for such agentic opportunities to flourish, there must be a culture of trust. Because these classrooms afforded open spaces, young students’ identities had the flexibility to change and become over time. Trust was evidenced in the ways in which these students chose materials, voiced their interests and ideas and guided the direction of their projects. Access to a variety of materials is indeed important, but as seen across these sites access to materials is not enough. Trust is an essential cornerstone of each workshop. Teachers must trust children with materials, give them both physical and curricular space to explore and time to live out their literacy desiring (Gutshall and Kuby, 2013; Kuby et al., in press).

As recent literature suggests, the identities of children are situated and re/negotiated in response to the literacy practices in which students participate (Lewis et al., 2007). Moreover, scholars suggest dynamic spaces form through the use of multimodal representations (Pahl and Roswell, 2012). As seen in the collaborative and open spaces developed in the workshops of Tara and Jamey’s classrooms, children’s identities became in the acts of creating artefacts. The collaborative nature of multimodal literacy learning affords opportunities within the literacy curriculum whereby students can become teacher, leader, producer, mentor and visionary.

When children in these two classrooms were given flexibility, freedom and access to materials, curricular spaces offered a place where sophisticated ideas and literacy skills were demonstrated. Unfortunately, early childhood teachers have come under increasing pressure to teach a narrow scope and sequence of literacy skills (Boldt, 2009; Kontovourki and Siegel, 2009; Vaughn and Faircloth, 2013), given the increased mandates for children to perform well in standardized assessments. Such insights from the artefacts and examples presented cause us to pause as we reflect on what might happen when early childhood classrooms do not allow for such open and ‘free’ spaces. Our analysis demonstrates specific pedagogical practices, adopted by the teachers, that open transformative spaces for children to play around with literacies as their identities evolve. Leander and Boldt (2013) assert that

… literacy is unbounded. Unless as researchers we being traveling in the unbounded circles that literacy travels in, we will miss literacy’s ability to participate in unruly ways because we only see its properties … we interpret backward from texts to practices. We subtract those things that are not so clearly about texts, making texts central to any instance of practice, perhaps because they are central to us. In doing so, we risk developing contorted views of what people are up to. (emphasis in original, p. 41)

By intentionally creating spaces for early childhood children to live out desires through multimodal literacies, educators can embrace the unboundedness of literacy and the play-like ways of knowing and being.

Footnotes

References

Alvermann

(2000) Researching libraries, literacies, and lives: A rhizoanalysis. In: Pierre St. (eds) Working the Ruins: Feminist Poststructural Theory and Methods in Education, New York: Routledge, pp. 114–129.

Andrews M, Squire C and Tamboukou M (eds) (2008) Doing Narrative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Bartlett

(2007) To seem and to feel: Situated identities and literacy practices. Teachers College Record 109(1): 51–69.

Boldt

(2009) Kyle and the Basilisk: Understanding children’s writing as play. Language Arts 87(1): 9–17.

Brooker

(2002) ‘Five on the first of December!’: What can we learn from case studies of early childhood literacy? Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 2(3): 291–313.

Bryan

(2011) A Bear and His Boy, New York: Arcade. Illustrated by Murphy, T.

Butler

(1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge.

Butler

(2004) Undoing Gender, New York: Routledge.

Calkins

(1994) The Art of Teaching Writing, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

10.

Christ

Wang

(2008) Negotiation of “How To” at the cross-section of cultural capital and habitus: Young children’s procedural practices in a student-led literacy group. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 8(2): 177–211.

11.

Christian

Bloome

(2004) Learning to read is who you are. Reading & Writing Quarterly 20: 365–384.

12.

Cixous

(1997) Albums and legends. In: Cixous

Calle-Gruber

(eds) Hélène Cixous Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing, London: Routledge, pp. 177–206.

13.

Comber

(2003) Critical literacy in the early years: What does it look like? In: Hall

Larson

Marsh

(eds) Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy, London: Sage, pp. 355–368.

14.

Deleuze G and Guattari F (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

15.

Dyson

(1997) Writing Superheroes, New York: Teachers College Press.

16.

Fisher

(2010) Young writers’ construction of agency. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 10(4): 410–429.

17.

Fleming

(2002) Alphabet Under Construction, New York: Henry Holt and Company.

18.

Genishi

Goodwin

(2008) Diversities in Early Childhood Education: Rethinking and Doing, New York: Routledge.

19.

Grieshaber

Cannella

(2001) Embracing Identities in Early Childhood Education: Diversity and Possibilities, New York: Teachers College Press.

20.

Gutshall

Kuby

(2013) Students as integral contributors to teacher research. Talking Points 25(1): 2–8.

21.

Hatt

(2007) Street smarts vs. book smarts: The figured world of smartness in the lives of marginalized urban youth. Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education 39(2): 146–166.

22.

Hindley

(1996) In the Company of Children, York, ME: Stenhouse.

23.

Holland

Lachiotte

Skinner

(1998) Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

24.

Husbye

Buchholz

Coggin

(2012) Critical lessons and playful literacies: Digital media in PK-2 classrooms. Language Arts 90(2): 82–92.

25.

Jackson

Mazzei

(2009) Voice in Qualitative Inquiry: Challenging Conventional, Interpretive, and Critical Conceptions in Qualitative Research, New York: Routledge.

26.

Kontovourki

Siegel

(2009) Discipline and play with/in a mandated literacy curriculum. Language Arts 87(1): 30–38.

27.

Kress

(1997) Before Writing: Rethinking the Paths to Literacy, New York: Routledge.

28.

Kuby CR and Gutshall TL (in press) Everyone has a Neil: The Possibilities of Literacy Desiring in a Multimodal Writer’s Studio. Language Arts.

29.

Kuby

Gutshall

Kirchhofer

(in press) “Go Be a Writer”: Intra-activity with materials, time, and space in literacy learning. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.

30.

Leander

Boldt

(2013) Rereading “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies”: Bodies, texts, and emergence. Journal of Literacy Research 45(1): 22–46.

31.

Lenz Taguchi

(2010) Going Beyond the Theory/Practice Divide in Early Childhood Education: Introducing an Intra-active Pedagogy, New York: Routledge.

32.

Lewis C, Enciso P and Moje EB (ed.) (2007) Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

33.

Massumi

(2002) Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

34.

McCarthey

Moje

(2002) Identity matters. Reading Research Quarterly 37(2): 228–238.

35.

New London Group (1996) A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1): 60–92.

36.

Olsson

(2009) Movement and Experimentation in Young Children’s Learning: Deleuze and Guattari in Early Childhood Education, New York: Routledge.

37.

Pacini-Ketchabaw V (ed.) (2010) Flow, Rhythms, & Intensities of Early Childhood Education Curriculum. New York: Peter Lang.

38.

Pahl

(2003) Children’s text making at home: Transforming meaning across modes. In: Jewitt

Kress

(eds) Multimodal Literacy, New York: Peter Lang Publishers, pp. 139–154.

39.

Pahl

Rowsell

(2012) Literacy and Education, 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Sage.

40.

Routman

(2005) Writing Essentials: Raising Expectations and Results While Simplifying Teaching, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

41.

Rubin

(2007) Learner identity amid figured worlds: Constructing (in)competence at an urban high school. The Urban Review 39(2): 217–249.

42.

Scollon

(2001) Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice, New York: Routledge.

43.

Scollon

(2004) Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet, New York: Routledge.

44.

Siegel

Panofsky

(2009) Designs for multimodality in literacy studies: Explorations in analysis. NRC Yearbook 58: 99–111.

45.

Sipe

(2002) Talking back and taking over: Young children’s expressive engagement during storybook read-alouds. Reading Teacher 55(5): 476–483.

46.

Street

(1984) Literacy in Theory and Practice, New York: Cambridge University Press.

47.

Uprichard

(2008) Children as ‘being and becomings”: Children, childhood and temporality. Children and Society 22(4): 303–313.

48.

Vaughn

Faircloth

(2013) Teaching with a purpose in mind: Cultivating a vision for teaching. The Professional Educator 37(2): 1–12.

49.

Walkerdine V (1993) Girlhood through the looking glass. In: de Ras M and Lunenberg M (eds) Girls, Girlhood and Girls’ Studies in Transition. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, pp. 9--25.

50.

Walkerdine

(1997) Daddy’s girl: Young girls and popular culture, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

51.

Walkerdine

(1998) Counting Girls Out: Girls and Mathematics, London: Falmer Press.

52.

Wohlwend

(2011) Playing their Way into Literacies: Reading, Writing, and Belonging in the Early Childhood Classroom, New York: Teachers College Press.

53.

Wohlwend

(2013) Literacy playshops: New literacies, popular media, and play in the early childhood classroom, New York: Teachers College Press.

54.

Wohlwend

Vander Zanden

Husbye

(2011) Navigating discourses in place in the world of Webkinz. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 11(2): 141–163.

55.

Wortham

(2006) Learning Identity: The Joint Emergence of Social Identification and Academic Learning, New York: Cambridge University Press.