Developing a Transliteracies Framework for a Connected World

Abstract

This article introduces a transliteracies framework to conceptually account for the contingency and instability of literacy practices on the move and to offer a set of methodological tools for investigating these mobilities. Taking the paradox of mobility-the simultaneous restricting or regulation of movement that accompanies mobility-as its central dialectic, a transliteracies framework functions as a flexible heuristic for attending to how meaning making and power are intertwined in and distributed across social and material relationships. We argue that a transliteracies framework encompasses two primary dimensions of mobile literacy practices: (a) the everyday activity of creating, maintaining, and disassembling associations across movements of people and things (indicated by the prefix trans-) and (b) the dynamic and material nature of meaning making in activity (indicated by the plural root word literacies). To trace the emergent and consequential ways mobilities are managed within and across systems, we introduce four analytical tools for inquiry: emergence, uptake, resonance, and scale. These inquiry tools address the paradox of mobility by highlighting the systemic dimensions of practice that create and perpetuate inequities. We argue that these transliteracies tools facilitate an inquiry stance that positions researchers to attend to people's emic meaning-making processes, work to balance multiple perspectives, account for privilege and position, question normative assumptions and beliefs, and engage in and value multiple ways of knowing.

Learning from Ninjas: young people’s films as a lens for an expanded view of literacy and language

“…This perspective offered a challenge to ideas of the object as 'background' within a communicative setting, but brought alive possibilities for complex interactions between objects and human (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010). We also recognised the resonance of the cultural symbol, 'Ninja' that was brought in, object-like, to this communicative ensemble (Stornaiuolo, Smith, & Phillips, 2017;Willis, 2000). Sounds also became part of the sword-like activity in this mix.…”

Going Global With Project‐Based Inquiry: Cosmopolitan Literacies in Practice

“…PBI Global is based on the theories of cosmopolitan literacies. Specifically, we draw from educational cosmopolitanism (Hansen, ; Wahlström, ) and transliteracies (Stornaiuolo, Smith, & Phillips, ; Thomas et al., ). Educational cosmopolitanism offers a worldview that helps reconcile the tensions in contemporary classrooms regarding local versus global and old versus new.…”

Remix as Professional Learning: Educators’ Iterative Literacy Practice in CLMOOC

“…Writing studies scholarship has largely taken up "remix" in one of two ways: first, through a discursive lens that focuses on either intertextuality-the relationships between iterative texts [32,33]-and second, through the social constructionist view that seeks to understand the temporal, context-specific relationships among the composers and the social context in which consumption, production, and distribution occurs [34,35]. Little scholarship, however, has considered the interplay between texts, material, tools, objects, and the histories and power dynamics that condition the processes individuals and communities use to make meaning together [36]. It is this third approach that we find best fits the experiences of CLMOOC participants.…”

“…In collecting and analyzing the visual map and coded posts, we were guided by the framework and analytics proposed by Stornaiuolo, Smith, and Phillips [11] for analyzing transliteracies phenomena (i.e., mobile, transcontextual, polychronic literacy activity). Methodologically, this framework suggests researchers take a reflexive inquiry stance [43], employing analytical methods in response to the emergence of meaning in situ, rather than pre-determining the relationships and associations that will be accounted for.…”

“…To better understand educators' professional learning through writing and making with others across open networks, this piece examines adult learners' self-sponsored, collaborative learning pathways via a transliteracies framework [11]-a theoretical methodology sensitive to the social dynamics of producing meaning across texts, contexts, modes, media, etc., which calls for researchers to attend to and trace unfolding mobilities of semiotic activity in context. With this orientation toward activity in CLMOOC, we considered how educators composed multimodal and multimediated artifacts, collaborated in liminal and distal configurations, and distributed their writing across differing digital platforms.…”