Research &amp; Policy

Wohlwend, Karen E.

doi:10.58680/la201829452

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…They are used to rationalized, harmful practices of discipline and punishment. This denial of humanity plays out in early literacy research and classroom spaces, as discourses of skills-mastery (Wohlwend, 2009) compel the ranking and sorting of young children against narrow notions of reading and writing proficiency (Beneke et al, 2022).…”

Section: “Respecting the Humanity” Of Each Young Child In Literacy Re...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reimagining LRA in the Spirit of a Transcendent Approach to Literacy

Waldron

Willis

Tatum

et al. 2023

Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice

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This invited paper highlights the reflections of expert panelists who were spontaneously called upon, graciously accepted, and quickly organized to respond thoughtfully and compellingly to Dr. Arlette Willis' powerful and timely Oscar Causey address at the 2022 Literacy Research Association (LRA) annual conference. In her address, Dr. Willis issued a clarion call for a Transcendent Approach to Literacy (TAL) to a space where “We recreate literacy as an equitable and moral construct” (Willis, this volume). This paper comprises Dr. Alfred Tatum's comprehensive introduction, the cogent reflections on TAL by panelists Dr. Josh Coleman, Dr. Marcus Croom, Dr. Matthew Deroo, Dr. Michiko Hikida, Dr. Emily Machado, Dr. Patriann Smith, Dr. Chad Waldron, and Dr. Rahat Zaidi, and Dr. Willis' eloquent epilogue. In her epilogue, she provides not an ending but the genesis of a movement forward for the LRA community to “be brave” and actively and genuinely engage in a TAL that “democratizes literacy, declaring literacy belongs to all.”

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Section: “Respecting the Humanity” Of Each Young Child In Literacy Re...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reimagining LRA in the Spirit of a Transcendent Approach to Literacy

Waldron

Willis

Tatum

et al. 2023

Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This invitational work/play/making moved the Literacy-Cast community toward collectively framing writing as a complex set of social(ly-distanced) practices rooted firmly within a multimodal genres discourse. Positioning “writing” as inclusive of additional embodied modes of expression beyond linguistic, including aural, visual, spatial, gestural (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000), and as a way to communicate with (and entertain) other children who were similarly locked in at home, expanded community members’ access to being seen as a writer (Wohlwend, 2009b). Additionally, the digital aspect of writing in/for the Literacy-Cast community leveraged work of researchers who have found digital writing tools increase children’s motivation to write, engage reluctant writers to write more, and increase the quality of children’s writing (e.g.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

@Home collective(ly): Opening doors and doing books with literacy-cast

Wessel‐Powell

Buchholz

DeHart

et al. 2022

Journal of Early Childhood Literacy

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Although isolating, lockdown also created unexpected opportunities for connection and inspiration. This article describes the lockdown literacies of a sibling pair, Marco and Mara, as they wrote digital texts/books for Literacy-Cast, a virtual, interactive literacy space offered by Appalachian State University from March 2020-present. Since lockdown began, this virtual space has been enacted 4-5 days weekly with 70-250 participants logging in from “home” to co-construct a multigenerational, multilingual, geographically-dispersed community engaged in reading, writing/composing, making, speaking, and listening. Literacy-Cast was imagined, built, and enacted collaboratively among faculty, laboratory school teachers, graduate-level teacher candidates, and children (and families) in grades K-5. We hear a lot about the limitations of virtual classrooms/learning (e.g., COVID “learning loss,” lack of engagement, unequal access), particularly in relation to historically marginalized communities, but rarely are we offered counter-narratives: examples where young children who live and go to school in these communities shaped the creation of new virtual spaces/places by making visible meaningful “at home” literacy/language practices, cultural artifacts, and people. Through invitations embedded in the multimodal texts/books shared on Literacy-Cast’s digital bookshelf, children brought the community into their homes–bedrooms, kitchens, backyards, back porches, and backseats, reframing “home visits'' as sites/events for new kinds of community knowledge production. Research about home visits, educators visiting students’ homes to learn about children’s lives, has documented the impact of home environment awareness on school interactions, improved relationships between caregivers and teachers, typically focused on intervention supporting school-based achievement and school practices, often with unidirectional flow from school-to-home; however we conceptualize Literacy-Cast’s daily activity as multidirectional “home visits,” where invitations to come over and play, read, and write together brokered relationships and strengthened a gamut of literacy practices for all participants. Through collaborative ethnography, we explore ways “home” (e.g., objects/people/practices/languages/events) became tools/co-authors for children’s digital composing/making and, ultimately, home/community-making.

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