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Addressing young people’s
out-of-school literacies
Catherine Burwell & Kimberly Lenters
Engaging New Ideas in Education
February 8, 2012
1. Thinking about out-of-school literacies
2. Case Study 1: Max and the Captain Underpants
kids
3. Case Study 2: Talking back to Gossip Girl
4. Why should we recognize young people’s out-ofschool literacies?
5. How should we recognize young people’s out-ofschool literacies?
What the scholars say
“The
tendency exists to build a “great
divide” between in-school and out-ofschool literacies. This divide can lead us
to dismiss “the engagement of children
with non-school learning as merely
frivolous or remedial or incidental”
- Glynda Hull & Katherine Schulz, 2002, “School’s out:
Bridging out-of-school literacies with classroom practice”
“...focusing solely on school literacies at the
expense of literacies that students practice
out of school is for many students a grave
injustice because it invalidates those
literacies in which they are fluent and
effective out of school.”
-Michele Knobel, 2001, “I’m no pencil-man”
“Schools must devote more attention to
fostering what we call the new media
literacies: a set of cultural competencies
and social skills that young people need in
the new media landscape. The new
literacies almost all involve social skills
developed through collaboration and
networking. These skills build on the
foundation of traditional literacy, research
skills, technical skills, and critical analysis
skills taught in the classroom.”
- Henry Jenkins, Confronting the Challenges of
Participatory Culture: Media Education for the21st Century
Max and the Captain
Underpants kids
The 10 Most Frequently Challenged Books of
2010
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And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Crank by Ellen Hopkins
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Lush by Natasha Friend
What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Revolutionary Voices by Amy Sonnie
Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
Source: Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association
Max and
friends
◦ Reading by the time he entered Kindergarten
 had several playmates who were not reading
◦ Introduced to Captain Underpants series by an older cousin
 passed the books around his group of playmates
◦ These boys soon turned comic making into a part of their play
and began reading books of the same genre together
 activities that persisted over a period three years
Lenters, K. (2007). From storybooks to games, comics, bands and chapter books: A young boy's appropriation of literacy
practices. Canadian Journal of Education, 30(1), 113-136.
The Adventures of Tushy Man vs. Spanky Spark & his Spank Warriors
One day Tushy Man was flying around the world with his
friends Jhon and Arthur
Meanwhile, Spanky Spark was in their school.
Then the police came for a presentation to the kids and saw
Spanky Spark
Then Spanky Spark spanked the police so his butt was
red and his butt was swollen.
Tushy man was in the other side of the earth and he found
diaper dalmation.
Then he took Diaper Dalmatian as his partner.
Policeman: “Turn your partner.” Tushy Man“That’s not it.”
No, that dumb guy is wrong! It’s partnership!
Policeman: “Well, I’ll do it anyway.”
Never mind him, let’s get to the real story…
(Book title: How you do diaper dancing)
Then Spanky Spark invaded the bank with his evil army!
Then Spanky Spark spanked out everyone.
Max, speaking of the comic book afterward :
“I’m planning to turn it into a children’s book
like Captain Underpants, but more like the
Day My Butt Went Psycho because it is going
to be a longer chapter book.”
Grade 2 – Max
and his father
are reading
Lemony
Snickett
together.
The
“unfortunate
events” became
a text around
which Max and
his friends
organized their
recess play.
The role-playing
game was “so
cool that we
wanted to turn it
into a book.”
They tried to do
so at lunchtime.
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Through grade 1 and into grade 2, the Captain
Underpants series continued to very popular
amongst Max’s peers
As each new installment came out, it became a
sought after commodity, traded amongst the boys
The school was very uncomfortable with the
subject matter and language of this series and did
not allow the books in class
However, they recognized the value of the literary
engagement comics held for students who were
reluctant readers and writers in class.
◦ Formed a lunchtime boys’ comic book club
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Young children and youth engage in creative literacy practices
out of school that are often viewed as “forbidden” literacies
When they bring these literacies to school, their presence is
often met with either discomfort or disapproval
While admirable, the formation of a boys’ comic book club in
this case study evokes questions of gender equity.
 Why just boys?
 What is communicated by the club being held at lunch?
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How might we, as teachers, balance the tension between the
kinds of creative enterprise young people are engaged in at
home and the constraints a school context necessarily
imposes?
Talking back to
Gossip Girl
• Twelve Young Adult novels
produced between 2002 and
2009, with four appearing on
the New York Times bestseller
list
• Novels began as a “conceptual
product” developed by Alloy
Media + Marketing, whose
properties include the
controversial classroom
television network Channel
One
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Naomi Wolf writes that the novels
commodify teen sexuality,
encourage consumption, and
glamorize adult corruption and
teen meanness
Wendy Glenn identifies four
themes within the series: empty
relationships, entitlement, class
disparity, and conspicuous
consumption
Elizabeth Bullen suggests that
product placement within the
series acts as a “pedagogy of
consumption”
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In 2007, The CW, a
network targeting
young female
audiences,
announced the
addition of Gossip
Girl to its line-up.
With its New York
location, its genesis in a
best-selling book, and
its cast of affluent, white
characters preoccupied
with shopping and sex,
Gossip Girl has more
often been likened to
Sex and the City than to
other teen programs.
• Young women are
promised economic and
social success through
participating in a “feminine
masquerade”
• Placement of designer
clothes is a major source
of revenue for the program
• Emphasis is placed on the
sexualized and fashionable
female body
• Young women’s use of
technology is mostly
passive
Gossip Girl books and television series have little place in
secondary school classrooms. But young women’s digital
remixes of Gossip Girl, produced in their own time:
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challenge representations of girls as passive consumers of
technology
shift the focus on the program away from the body and
towards relationships and emotions
create powerful social and learning communities
involve girls in significant discussions around contemporary
cultural questions of intellectual property
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRdnZztQ
kNE&list=PLF5465426643FAE19&index=7&f
eature=plpp_video
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Making remixes requires:
◦ sophisticated technical skills
◦ active participation in learning communities
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We can find evidence of community in the
comments and ratings surrounding “Vienna”
Since it was posted in 2008, the video has
received over 30,000 views and 180
comments
These include praise, questions about
software and technical effects, and
admissions of influence
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Many skills learned through digital culture have an
important place in formal education (e.g., problemsolving, judgement).
Production of digital messages and texts is increasingly
linked to processes of agency, identity formation and
learning.
Ability to read, manipulate and create digital media
leads
 to more fulfilling social participation in citizenship and work
 and to more equitable social relations.
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To create a level playing field, all young people must be
able to use media to their advantage.
Young people require spaces to develop the ethical
norms needed to cope with a complex and diverse
social environments online.
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Play — the capacity to experiment with texts in order to play with
meaning, identity and aesthetic qualities of the text
Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media
and popular culture content
Text integration— the ability to search for, synthesize, and share
information
Transmedia Navigation — the ability to create narrative flow across
multiple platforms
Collaboration – the ability to work with others through dialogue and
negotiation around texts that personally meaningful
Community-building – the capacity to create and experiment with social
spaces around common interests and texts
Purposeful reading, writing and multimodal production
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Paul Willis writes that “accepting popular culture
does not mean a lazy throwing open of the school
doors to the latest fad, but rather committing to a
principled understanding of the complexity of
contemporary cultural experience”
Bringing popular culture and students’ out of
school literacies into the classroom opens up
possibilities for:
◦ Authentic textual production
◦ Critical analysis of young people’s practices and pop
culture texts
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In Writing Superheroes (1997), an ethnography
of literacy learning in an inner-city grade one
classroom, researcher, Anne Dyson, chronicles
the story of a teacher and students grappling
with Power Rangers and X-Men’s presence in
the classroom
From the position of her own values and beliefs, [the teacher]
tried to free her children from taken-for-granted characters
and plots by negotiating – talking – with them. In fact, her
notion of “freeing’ children – of critical pedagogy – through
composing crystallized in response to the children
themselves. (p. 176)
X-Men and Power Rangers in a grade one classroom
For many educators of young children, the entrance of
superheroes into the classroom presents numerous dilemmas
-many of the storylines are violent
-many present stereotyped portrayals of masculinity and
femininity
-for some teachers these comic book or television story
lines do not represent the kinds of literature they want to
promote in their classroom
And yet…. this is the literature their students know and love
In this classroom, the scripts and dramatic play produced and
performed by the children became sites for critical literacy
- The teacher led the students to question taken for
granted plots and plots, to write their own values
into their scripts.
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http://vimeo.com/32476458 (twilight remix)
Young people “read and write for social, emotional,
intellectual, and spiritual purposes. Their reading and
writing practices foster communication, relationships, and
self-expression among peers and family members;
support their economic and psychological health; and
allow them to construct subjectivities and enact identities
that offer them power in their everyday lives. These
consequences of literate practice in the everyday world
should not be diminished by the quest to improve the
school achievement of all young people, even as educators
pursue the important goal of closing the achievement gap.
Indeed, future studies of literacy development should
continue to examine how educational practice and policy
can draw from and support — without co-opting,
exploiting, or diminishing — the powerful literacy
practices of young people’s everyday lives.”
- The Complex World of Adolescent Literacy: Myths, Motivations, and Mysteries,
Elizabeth Birr Moje, 2008