We have scheduled a series of talks, reading discussions, and one interview to be announced soon.

4pm

Drawing on the recent emergence of digital data collection in qualitative social investigation of potentially sensitive topics (e.g. Pearce, Thorgersen-Ntoumani & Duda, 2014; Dawson, Einion-Waller & Jones, 2021), my research uses instant messaging to explore the work experiences of a group of postdoctoral academics working in research and/or teaching roles in UK higher education, for whom English is an additional language.

The research is framed by second language socialisation, which typically explores how newcomers to a language community become competent participants in the practices of that community (Duff & Doherty, 2014) including its literacy practices.  Much important research has focused on students and PhD candidates (e.g. Zappa-Hollman & Duff (2015), Anderson, 2017). Less is known about how learners employed in the language community of UK higher education, dispersed across multiple workplaces, become members of the academic professional community.

Nine postdoctoral academics have downloaded the Signal app to their mobile phones and send a message the researcher when something happens in their work that is significant to them.  Alongside the instant messages, participants are taking part in 3 semi-structured interviews over the 12-month data collection period.

In the presentation, I will discussion my methodology and my choice of instant messaging as a data collection method.  I will also discuss some implications of using this method: the relationship between researcher and participant, the data and how it compares with data from interview, and some practical considerations of instant messaging to collect qualitative data.

Somewhat surprising in this context, the work we present uses a quantitative approach, a choice that is usually associated with the assessment of writing performance (Weigle. 2002) through large-scale tests, such as IELTS or SATS,. Since these tests produce reliable judgements of texts written in an almost context-free vacuum, they are not compatible with our understanding of literacies, but does this exclude quantitative methods per se?

In our presentation, we will explain why we began to work on this unusual methodology, how it works and what it can potentially inform the teaching of writing. We also outline what it can contribute to literacies research by challenging the traditional divide between quantitative methods and those that seek a more nuanced understanding of how people use discourses in specific contexts.

Tuesday 27th

4pm UK

Tuck, J. (2024). Defamiliarizing assessment and feedback: Exploring the potential of ‘moments of engagement’ to throw light on the marking of undergraduate assignments. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 49(1), 72–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2023.2181942

We will circulate a pdf nearer the time. The discussion will be followed by an interview with the author on March 4th, and should provoke some questions we can pose around learning, assessment and literacy in higher education.

Tuesday 12th

4pm UK

We have scheduled a series of interconnected talks, reading discussions and one interview with Karin Tusting, Professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language, editor of the Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Ethnography and convenor of BAAL Linguistic Ethnography forum.

3pm (UK time)

My approach is in the action-research ethnographic tradition. Using narrative enquiry, I had therefore identified methods such as interviews and collecting stories of experience as useful data on the everyday lives of my cohort of learners.  As the study has developed, the narrative enquiry approach focused my study further, highlighting the important role adult education can offer for adults to ‘restory’ themselves and their experiences of education.

Key topics: Literacy as social practice, research in practice, narrative enquiry

4pm (UK time)

4pm (UK time)

Karin Tusting is a full professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, and co-director of the Lancaster Literacy Research Centre. Her research has been predominantly in the areas of literacy studies and linguistic ethnography, with particular interests in workplace writing practices, literacies in organizations, and literacy and identity. She has recently published Academics writing: The dynamics of knowledge creation (Routledge 2019), co-written with Sharon McCulloch, Ibrar Bhatt, Mary Hamilton and David Barton, and edited the Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Ethnography (2020).

Presentation abstract

Speaker

*We will send this PDF to those registered in our mail list here.

Complementary reading: Hyland, K. (2016). Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58-69.

Denise de Pauw, Lancaster University.

To begin, I briefly review this long-term ethnographic study’s settings, methods, and theoretical framework for researching literacy and protest based on the New Literacy Studies, Social Movement Studies, and related areas. After, I propose an addition to this RPL framework by introducing a set of concepts drawn from South American social movement studies on the anthropology of time. Work on communication and protesting has tended to focus on spatial practices more than temporal – I suggest ways to add to the later through this anthropological perspective.

Based on the above, I then present a work-in-progress analysis of two incidents overviewed in my book which call for further consideration: i) a text trajectory through which favela social movements assert a differentiated socio-political positioning during a historic period of mass protests in Brazil; ii) a repertoire of social movement communicational practices mobilized in response to a controversial Brazilian Army occupation of a set of favelas. Lastly, I discuss examples and raise questions regarding informal and non-formal learning in and around protest events and social movements.

Abstract: In this presentation, I will describe and analyse the literacy development of a group of educational researchers in Mexico that aim to frame a community. First, I will share some personal reflections based on my own locus of enunciation and positionality as a researcher. Particularly, I will focus on the selection of this community, the alienation needed to distance myself from their epistemological culture, the place of randomness in this process, and some meanings of the writing process itself. I will describe the methodological design that combines an autoethnographic perspective and contemporary art. This approach allowed me to identify contrasting appropriations of the educative discourse through its text diversity, genres, and writing styles. Finally, I will share some findings and preliminary conclusions about the different phases of literacy development based on its political, historical, and economic conditions. 

University of Cape Town, South Africa

My research into children’s literacy practices is motivated by my work in educational publishing for multilingual African contexts and a keen interest in qualitative engagement with children representing a diversity of bi/multilingual experiences. In addition to deepening scholars’ understanding of learners with multiple linguistic proficiencies, such engagements also create space to review and possibly invigorate normative/dominant theories about literacy and language.The results of standardised literacy assessments are often conveyed in terms of a discourse of deficit concerning representations of bi/multilingual young people from socio-economically marginalised contexts, especially in the global South. I would like to offer a richer and more nuanced picture of multilingual African children’s language and literacy repertoires, while also addressing the issue of how such children continue to be systemically marginalised through language hegemony and social injustice. In this presentation I will share some of my emerging findings from ethnographic fieldwork with children at two public libraries, in socio-economically marginalised areas of urban Kenya and South Africa. My focus during the library fieldwork was the activities of children as regards their language(ing) and literacy practices in general, but particularly engaging with primary school-aged children about language, reading/viewing practices, and reading materials.

Abstract: In this presentation, I will discuss insights based on preliminary analysis of my PhD project, which examines online translanguaging practices of Chinese university students who are sojourning in the UK. By adopting literacy as social practice as the theoretical framework, I will review how Chinese international students take advantage of networking opportunities when they are studying in the UK and how they treat social events as language learning opportunities, especially regarding their translanguaging practices on social media.This study adopts a mixed-methods approach. A baseline survey is conducted first, then followed by a collection of posts & chat logs of WeChat, and techno-biographic interviews, to investigate how technology and social media have affected Chinese students’ literacy practices online and study experience. How transitions over time vary and how language is learned and conducted in the informal digital context can affect students’ language learning and study practices. For this discussion, I intend to share a preliminary analysis with the audience and engage in a conversation on how my results could inform us about how the translanguaging practices of Chinese international students’ innovative forms of “networked language learning” cross the boundaries of social and educational life.

4pm (U.K. time)

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil)

Presentation:

Negotiating voice: An ethnographic academic writing study in a postgraduate multilingual context

REGISTRATION LINK

In this talk, I will explore some of my perceptions on how students negotiate their voice in the context of a postgraduate multilingual program in Brazil. First, I will briefly discuss what I have been reading about voice through a sociocultural lens (Canagarajah & Matsumoto, 2016; Ivanic & Camps, 2001; Hyland, 2008). Second, I will present my context of investigation and the methodology that I am employing to conduct my data collection and analysis. Finally, I will discuss some of my initial findings on students’ voice while writing their master’s thesis.

4.30 pm (U.K. time)

Western University
Canada

REGISTRATION LINK

Research (Min 2019; Poullton 2020; Priestley et al., 2015; Priestley et al., 2021) indicates curricula’ positive effects and outcomes that explicitly support teacher agency in curriculum making. Recent curriculum policies in many different countries, including Scotland, Australia, and Brazil, have acknowledged teachers as agents of change (Goodson, 2003; Nieveen, 2011; Lennert da Silva and Molstad, 2020; Poulton 2020; Priestley, 2012; Priestley et al., 2015) suggesting the importance of teachers having a role in curriculum development. This teacher view comes after decades of policy de-professionalizing teachers through prescriptive curricula and standardized testing (Priestley et al., 2013). These recent moves to encourage teachers to contribute to curriculum development effectively and reform imply instituting a bottom-up curriculum approach that centers teachers in the curriculum-making process. The literature related to the ecological model of teacher agency (Priestley et al. 2015) indicates that programmatic curricula are important to supporting teacher agency and can be considered as part of a complex cluster of other individuals, social, cultural, and material dimensions that enable/disable teacher agency. Unfortunately, not all curricular policies support teacher agency.

My teaching experience in Libya, the findings of my master’s research, and my new learning experience in Canada (Ph.D. courses and seminars) have all given rise to the specific focus of my Ph.D. dissertation (teacher agency, relationships, and curriculum). These factors are also motivating me to want to initiate cross-academic cultural information exchange and appreciation. Specifically, my study seeks to understand the role of professional relationships in teachers’ agency and how these relations may or may not be impacted by the programmatic and institutional curriculum in two different contexts (Canada and Libya) using mutable data sources (interview and document analysis).

4.30 pm (U.K. time)

Universidad Veracruzana

Reading and Writing Conceptions in a Graduate Program in Architecture in Mexico

REGISTRATION LINK

In this talk, I will present the results of a research study carried out in a graduate program in Architecture, in a public university in Mexico. The objective of the study was to describe the conceptions that teachers and students hold in relation to academic reading and writing. In order to achieve this, I adopted a plurimethodical perspective and divided the study into two phases. In phase one, I applied a self-administered questionnaire with open-ended questions to explore the conceptions and determine key actors. In phase two, I conducted interviews with teachers and students. The results, consistent with other research, verify that conceptions are not presented as opposites in the same person, but there is a greater proportion of one or the other. Thus, those who have a greater proportion of transmissive conceptions understand that reading and writing are processes of encoding and decoding written messages, which are used to obtain or transmit information. That is, reading and writing are conceived as general tools that can be used in any context. On the contrary, those whose conceptions are mostly transactional conceive reading and writing as dialogic, creative and meaning-building processes that are used to think (analyse, question, problematize), transform one’s own thinking and form one’s own criteria.

November 

4pm (U.K. time)

Syracuse University (USA)

A life in boxes: tracing the informed consent genre inside CVD’s archive

Teams LINK

In this presentation I will share some of my findings and challenges in trying to bring archival material to life to understand the literate practices of a vaccine research center located in Santiago de Chile. This work is part of my dissertation project and looks specifically into the informed consent and how it is located and contextualized within the larger genre ecology of the research project. Through intertextual analysis, I locate the informed consent at three moments in the research project: the protocol design; the application of consent with participants; and the re-visions following the emergence of serious adverse events. What this analysis suggests is that the informed consent is not a form, but an ongoing process, distributed across multiple moments, actors, and actions, that runs throughout the whole research. This invites reflections on the nature of written genres and reinforces the importance of studying literacies ecologically.

4pm (U.K. time)

Teams LINK

This meeting is a social encounter with members. We will bring a topic of discussion related to the practice of research in literacy studies. This will be a fantastic opportunity to get to know other members and make relevant contacts with those with similar research interests.

4pm (U.K. time)

Lancaster University

Students’ writing from an emic perspective: talking around text interviews as a methodological and theoretical option

Teams LINK

In this presentation, I will share the process of analysis of 10 “talking around text interviews” (Lillis, 2008, 2001; Ivanic, 1998) with Chilean students from schools with a high index of economic vulnerability (according to the Ministry of Education of Chile, 2021). In this analysis, I pay attention to students’ perspectives on their own writing practices and their choices of meaning-making through texts. I also look at how texts are mediated by artifacts and technologies that play a role in students’ transitions to further education. Finally, I will discuss the “talking around text” method –and the theory behind it– to reflect on the role of students’ perspectives in the study of writing.