Transforming Language and Literacy Education

New Materialism, Posthumanism, and Ontoethics

Kelleen Toohey, Suzanne Smythe, Diane Dagenais, Magali Forte

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429958694
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The field of languages and literacies education is undergoing rapid transformation. Scholarship that draws upon feminist, post-colonial, new material and posthuman ontologies is transcending disciplinary boundaries and disrupting traditional binaries between human and nonhuman, the natural and the cultural, the material and the discursive.

In Transforming Language and Literacy Education, editors Kelleen Toohey, Suzanne Smythe, Diane Dagenais and Magali Forte bring together accessible, conceptually rich stories from internationally diverse authors to guide new practices, new conversations and new thinking among scholars and educators at the forefront of languages and literacies learning. The book addresses these concepts for diverse groups of learners including young children, youth and adults in formal educational and community-based settings. Challenging and disruptive, this is a unique and important contribution to language and literacy education.

1

Making and Unmaking Literacy Desirings

Pedagogical Matters of Concern from Writers’ Studio

Tara Gutshall Rucker and Candace R. Kuby

In this chapter, we return to the concept of “literacy desiring” which we conceptualized based on poststructural and posthumanist scholarship as a way to think about literacies (and literacy processes) as fluid, sometimes unintentional, unbounded, and rhizomatic through relationships with humans, nonhumans, and more-than-humans¹ (Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2016). As we wrote in our earlier publications, literacy desiring is oriented toward the present (ever-changing) needs, wishes, and demands of students-with-nonhumans, but also with possible users of literacy artifacts in mind. We began collaborations together in 2010 as co-researchers and co-pedagogues; Tara as an elementary school teacher and Candace as a university researcher. During this time, Tara taught first (6–7 year-olds), second (7–8 year-olds), and fifth grades (10–11 year-olds). When we began, Tara used a Writing Workshop approach to teach (e.g. Wood Ray & Cleaveland, 2004) and shifted to what she called Writers’ Studio several years into our partnership to signal a more expansive notion of literacies with artistic and digital tools.

In our previous writings on literacy desirings, we explored the identities of children over the course of a single school year (Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2015); the relationships between time, space, materials, and trust in the coming to be of literacy desirings (Kuby, Gutshall Rucker, & Kirchhofer, 2015); various genres of writing such as fiction, nonfiction, personal narratives and literacies that perhaps do not look like writing such as paper airplanes, plastic cube narratives, and paper skateboard parks (Kuby & Gutshall Rucker, 2016); how the first few days of a school year and the invitation to “go be a writer” shape the possibilities of literacies (Kuby & Fontanella-Nothom, 2018); agency from a posthumanist perspective in the coming to be of literacy desirings (Kuby, Gutshall Rucker, & Darolia, 2017); rethinking of the social in the coming to be of literacy desirings (Kuby & Crawford, 2018); and we considered what counts as writing or how literacies are conceptualized as ethical matters of concern (Zapata et al., 2018).

Since conceptualizing the term literacy desiring, we find it on the move as we continue to read post-theories and think about literacy(ies). As writers, we struggle to label (the coming to be of) literacies as “a” literacy desiring. “A” makes literacy desiring sound like an object or noun or a bounded event. We were intentional in using the phrase “literacy desiring” because it is an active verb and resists the notion of being finished. We also find literacy desiring on the move when we read how other educators are thinking-with the term in their own research and teaching. Over time, the more we read, teach, and think together the more we find our understandings of literacy desirings expanding and morphing. Thus, we aren’t sure if literacy desiring is really definable. Rather than a linear progression of what it was to us before and what it is now, we see literacy desirings as always being made and unmade in lively relations.

Therefore, we use this chapter as a space to (re)visit this concept several years after we began thinking about/with it. As we “defined” it once, we are now (re)thinking it as we have read more theories and experienced more pedagogical moments in Tara’s classrooms. Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari, we see theory and practice as mutually constitutive of each other or theory-practice (Kuby, 2020). Deleuze (2004) writes, “A theory is exactly like a tool box … a theory has to be used, it has to work” (p. 208). Deleuze and Guattari write that theoretical concepts are always on the move or are intellectually mobile. Concepts are always new, becoming something more to help us think beyond what we already know. Theories are concepts and ideas about the world that are malleable and that change as we think-with them (hence, theory-practice). However, we need to read theories so that, when we think-with them, we have deep understandings of how other authors conceptualize these concepts, but also how they are becoming anew as we plug them into our own thinking/teaching/writing/researching.

In this spirit, we ask: What other or different pedagogies and worlds are possible (even if current realities do not permit them)? We think-with several literacy desirings from Tara’s fifth-grade classroom to explore the following matters of concern: Is it okay for students to not finish a piece of writing? Does one ever write alone? What if we saw writing (and literacies more broadly) as unfinished becoming(s)? Each of these matters of concern have implications for how we think about pedagogical practices, especially how to imagine literacies as otherwise, and thus to produce new possible relationalities. In each section below, we share a literacy desiring, discuss the pedagogical matters of concern, and then discuss how thinking about these desirings and (re)reading theories have forced us to unmake and make literacy desirings, or (re)think what literacy desiring(s) is (as if we could clearly define it). Thus, we (re)think new literacy possibilities or theory-practice.

Piggy Scaling the Bookshelf: A Stop Motion Animation

An Extract from Tara’s Teaching Notes

Alex and Miguel² found Piggy (a stuffed animal) that my daughter had left on a rocking chair in our classroom library. By the end of the week, Piggy had crawled off the chair, climbed up a tall bookshelf, found Where’s Waldo, climbed back down the shelf, and with the help of Tiger, another stuffed animal, found Waldo! The boys captured all of this on the class iPad which has the Stop Motion app.

When the authors shared the Stop Motion video with the class, the students solicited feedback through a discussion on Schoology,³ a learning management system. The students loved watching Piggy move up the bookshelf. There were places where he had to hold on tight or belly his way to the next shelf. They also noticed that, towards the end of the video, the photos taken to create the Stop Motion video were rushed, and the story was less clear.

As I reflected further with the authors of the story, they openly shared that they had rushed the end of the story. They wanted to be finished. Isn’t that often the case? Recently, I found myself listening to an audio book and for the last thirty minutes I sped it up until it was running at three times the actual speed. I wanted to be finished. This causes me to pose the question, do students have to finish a piece of writing?

The next day, the creators of the Piggy movie continued to use Stop Motion animation, but they also got out the Play-doh. It was clear they did not have a plan. They sat in the middle of the room at the rectangular table, which included a backdrop of yellow poster board folded in thirds. It became a place of play and experimentation.

Over the course of the next two weeks, the boys worked with the Play-doh, capturing its movement in three short animations. They showed the Play-doh moving, flattening, rising (with invisible string), falling, and climbing out of its container. After almost a week of working with the materials, I conferenced with them. They explained that they were learning how Play-doh moves and how to perfect their use of Stop Motion animation. More specifically, they said that when using a piece of string to raise and lower the Play-doh, they tried to take a lot of photos, one of the repeated suggestions from the Schoology discussion, in order to show more precise movements.

During our second conference, I asked the boys what their plan was going forward. In hindsight, I wish I had reworded the question. My question was an honest inquiry, but it was also product oriented or about creating a plan to finish a piece of writing. I suspect the boys didn’t have a plan for what was next. They mentioned that they were going to make a story with what they had done so far, but their response seemed more out of compliance, as if they knew what I wanted to hear. The next day, the group dismantled. The Play-doh was put away and the Stop Motion app rested.

In my experience as a writer, it is rare for my initial plan to come to fruition. It changes over and over again. Two weeks ago, when students were synthesizing their learning about our study of America’s history, I sat among them to show my learning. A day and a half into our time, I abandoned my work. I wasn’t ready to put my thinking/learning to work with the materials or even with pencil and paper. Do I allow students to abandon work or to not know where it is going? Or, if they do, do I trust that their time spent on the piece of (unfinished) writing is just as valuable as the finished product?

In my conference with the boys, what if I had posed different questions, when they were clearly answering my questions, seemingly out of compliance. “What if you didn’t write a story, what would you do?” “What other possibilities are there for these materials (Play-doh, string, box) or other materials?” “What could this become?” “Do you need this to become something in order to ‘be a writer’?” “If you had to tell your parents/principal why you keep coming back to this, what would you say?”

I’m not sure that the students would have the answers to any of these questions. Unfortunately, at this point, I will never know. However, I do know that when I am writing and am at a standstill, I let it rest and come back to it when I’m ready. And there are some ideas that are still resting. Can I start to trust students to do the same thing?

Pedagogical Matters of Concern: Is It Okay for Students to Not Finish a Piece of Writing?

This literacy desiring prompted us to ask: Is it okay for students to not finish a piece of writing? The Stop Motion video, like many other pieces of writing,⁴ reminds us that children, or even writers in general, do not always (need to) know what they are going to write. The relationships among the students, the stuffed animals (Piggy and Tiger), the bookshelf, and a familiar book (Where’s Waldo?) developed over several days. The boys did not know ahead of time how the story was going to develop. It’s possible that had Piggy not been on the rocking chair the story would not exist at all. How might we value and give time for in-the-moment happenings to inform students’ work as writers? Literacy desirings, as conceptualized by poststructural and posthumanist concepts, are about the relationships coming to be with all materials.

Tara learned that she was comfortable allowing primary school students opportunities to play and the time for their writing to develop over the course of several days or weeks, if not months. We were inspired by scholarship on multimodality, play, and literacies during the early years of collaborating together (e.g. Wohlwend, 2011). However, when she transitioned to fifth grade, Tara (unconsciously) expected fifth graders’ literacy desirings to become finished in a timelier manner. After spending time in fifth grade, she realized that her initial thoughts could not be further from what she experienced. Fifth graders need just as much time, if not more, to play in the same rhizomatic way that primary school students do. In some regards, fifth graders have been schooled to do writing in a predetermined way. However, it’s not that they don’t know how to write. Alex put it this way: “Outside of school there are lots of ways to write, most of the time you don’t even know you are writing, you are just doing something you enjoy.” How can we trust children of all ages and give them time to be writers (playful writers), knowing and expecting that they will leave some of their writing unfinished?

As noted in the vignette, this prompted Tara to wonder what might have happened had she asked the boys different questions during the conference. She was focused on how their work would come together as a finished piece of writing (and even that wondering is rooted in an assumption that the Play-doh and the Stop Motion app should work together in order to be validated in school). This reminds us of other writers we’ve encountered. For example, after watching Edward cut out several snowflakes, Tara almost asked him to map out a writing plan. Instead, she stood back, trusting him to be a writer. Over a period of time, he wrote a collection of memories about different emotions he had experienced in the snow (see Gutshall & Kuby, 2013). Another example is when a group of second graders started to create a play based on Robin Hood several weeks before the school year ended. We knew there wasn’t time for the group to complete their work at school, but we didn’t hold back when they brought in trash bags of costumes and props days before school was dismissed for summer (see Kuby, 2017). From these literacy desirings, we ponder if one must know where writing is going before beginning, and we have come to believe that unfinished writing is valuable in and of itself.

Unmaking and Making Literacy Desiring(s): Literacies as Relational Desirings

The example of Piggy (and Tiger and the boys and the iPad and … and … and …) influenced pedagogical thinking for us. And as theory-practice are mutually constitutive of each other, it also forced us to (re)visit our conceptualization of literacy desiring(s). We set out to (re)read writings by Deleuze and Guattari on desire, as a DeleuzoGuattarian notion of desire was central to our thinking on literacies originally in our collaboration.

A DeleuzoGuattarian notion of desire is described as affirmative and productive. For example, Deleuzian scholar Smith (2012) writes that desire is affirmative and is “something that we perhaps do not know or see as yet” (p. 180). Therefore, “desire is no longer defined in terms of lack (I desire something because I do not have it), but rather in terms of production (I produce the object because I desire it)” (Smith, 2012, p. 318, emphasis in the original). However, we do note that while DeleuzoGuattarian notions of desire are affirmative and productive, they can also be destructive and result in the undoing of bodies and relationships and/or diminish their capacity to act. In other words, DeleuzoGuattarian notions of desire aren’t about producing binaries such as good and bad, or positive and negative, but rather a “both/and,” producing positive and negative a/effects.

These producing notions of desire help us to think about literacies such as Piggy and the Stop Motion animation. The realness of literacies. Or said another way, the ontological aspects of literacies. Literacies, the relationships of literacies coming to be, are ontological (focus on reality[ies]), not simply epistemological (focus on knowledge). As Piggy, an unexpected material left by Tara’s daughter, became part of a literacy desiring, realities and relationships were produced. And new literacies were produced. As Smith (2012) writes, desire is about something that we perhaps don’t know or see yet. This radically shifts how we think about literacies because often we find ourselves asking children “what are you making?” or “what are you writing?” If we believe that desiring isn’t (always) a pre-planned, intentional ...

Table of contents

• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Making and Unmaking Literacy Desirings: Pedagogical Matters of Concern from Writers’ Studio
• 2. Practising Place-Thought and Engaging in Critical Place Inquiry in a Public Park: Listening, Letting Go, and Unsettling Our Writing Pedagogies
• 3. Becoming Posthuman: Bodies, Affect, and Earth in the School Garden
• 4. Lekta and Literacy in Early Childhood Education: Entwinements of Idealism and Materialism
• 5. Rethinking Causality Through Children’s Literacies
• 6. A Rhizomatic Case Analysis of Instructional Coaching as Becoming
• 7. “This Documentary Actually Makes Welland Look Good”: Exploring Posthumanism in a High School Documentary Film Project
• 8. Affect Theory as a Lens on Teacher Thinking in Adult Language Classrooms
• 9. The Problem and Potential of Representation: Being and Becoming
• 10. Exploring Affect in Stop Frame Animation
• Index