Literacy Artifacts and the Semiotic Landscape of a Spanish Secondary School

Abstract

Esta es la versión de autor del artículo publicado en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in: El acceso a la versión del editor puede requerir la suscripción del recurso Access to the published version may require subscriptionPublished as: . Literacy artifacts and the semiotic landscape of a Spanish secondary school. Reading Research Quarterly, 47 (1), 61-88 1 LITERACY ARTIFACTS AND THE SEMIOTIC LANDSCAPE OF A SPANISH SECONDARY SCHOOL David PovedaUniversidad Autónoma de Madrid, SpainPublished as: . Literacy artifacts and the semiotic landscape of a Spanish secondary school. Reading Research Quarterly, 47 (1), 61-88 2 AbstractIn this article I examine literacy artifacts placed by students in different locations of a staterun secondary school of the city of Madrid, Spain. The data were gathered as part of a twoyear long multi-level ethnography focused on the social and academic trajectories of immigrant students in Spanish compulsory secondary education. The analysis draws from concepts developed in semiotics, linguistic anthropology, literacy studies and social geography. Two broad types of literacy artifacts configured the school's semiotic landscape:political texts and graffiti. In turn, these artifacts were tied to two youth expressive styles present in the school: left-wing anarkas and Latino reggaetoneros. Students associated with these expressive styles tended to have different ethnic backgrounds and followed different socio-academic trajectories: anarkas tended to be of Spanish origin and often moved on to pre-university education while reggaetoneros were predominantly Latin American and were geared towards vocational/remedial forms of secondary education. Drawing from concepts in social geography, the analysis suggests that anarka texts occupied official spaces in the school and were construed as 'in place' while reggaetonero artifacts occupied unofficial spaces and were construed as 'out of place'. I argue that this distribution, alongside other institutional practices and discourses, contributed to the construction of Latin American origin immigrant students' less favorable academic trajectories. The data collected between these two episodes strongly suggest that their protagonists were different 'types' of students who engaged in different social practices, seemed to have different academic trajectories, participated in different peer and friendship networks and were defined and approached differently by institutional agents at the school. The students who took the stage in these events were also not prototypical in any normative-demographic sense. Rather, they seem to be a sub-group of adolescents intensely engaged in particular expressive styles, which originated outside the school walls and were brought into the school and made visible in, among other ways, formally organized school rituals. One conspicuous aspect of these styles was that they involved the consumption of particular semiotic artifacts The above episodes are just two examples, produced in specific public events ...

Emergent Bilingual Students and Digital Multimodal Composition: A Systematic Review of Research in Secondary Classrooms

“…Numerous studies emphasized the ways in which composing with visuals, sound, and text offered EBs multiple points of entry (Jewitt, 2008) into a composition for expressing, negotiating, and affirming their identities (Danzak, 2011; Goulah, 2017; Honeyford, 2013a; Hughes & Morrison, 2014; Johnson & Kendrick, 2017; Karam, 2018). The semiotic freedom of choosing and combining different modalities created space for EBs to represent aspects of their lives in novel ways (Kim, 2018; Poveda, 2012; Wilson & Boatright, 2011; Zenkov, Harmon, Bell, Ewaida, & Lynch, 2011). Students’ purposeful infusion of their identities into their work ranged from showcasing out‐of‐school interests and skills (Gynne & Bagga‐Gupta, 2015; Skerrett, 2012; Wiltse, 2015), to making popular culture connections (Smith, 2018; Wilson, Chavez, & Anders, 2012), to sharing their cultural histories and practices (J. Anderson & Macleroy, 2017; Pacheco & Smith, 2015).…”

Changing Digital Media Environments and Youth Audiovisual Productions

“…Among adolescents at ICA there was a group of more active digital users engaged in creative and collaborative digital practices, creating content, uploading videos, etc. -these engaged users at ICA was especially involved in Hip-Hop / Rap culture (Poveda, 2012). There were also students with particular interests in technology and programming, who planned to continue their studies and training in this area.…”

“…Adolescents at ICA, especially immigrant adolescents, also had social media profiles in emergent and popular platforms at that moment, such as Myspace and MetroFLOG-the latter especially popular among Latin American adolescents as it allowed them to sustain their transnational networks (Calvo, 2012), which they primarily accessed through their home computers. Among adolescents at ICA, there was a group of more active digital users engaged in creative and collaborative digital practices, creating content, uploading videos, etc.-these engaged users at ICA were especially involved in hip hop/rap culture (Poveda, 2012). There were also students with particular interests in technology and programming, who planned to continue their studies and training in this area.…”

Immigrant Students and the Ecology of Externalization in a Secondary School in Spain

“…The majority of immigrant residents in the district occupy homes within Carabanchel Bajo and surrounding neighborhoods. Despite this border location, the secondary school receives most of its students from Carabanchel Bajo and serves a student body that is increasingly of immigrant origin and identifies itself with the working‐class neighborhood of Carabanchel rather than the middle‐class homes that surround the school (Poveda ). Based on figures reported by the school, the proportion of immigrant students at IES Central‐Aluche grew from 16 percent in the 2003–04 school year to 32 percent in the 2005–06 school‐year, to 50 percent in the 2008–09 school year.…”