1. New literacies, inquiries, and
technology: The Rest of the Story
John K. Lee, North Carolina State
University
Carl A. Young, North Carolina State
University
American Educational Research Association Conference
San Diego, California
April, 2009

2. New forms of literacy in teaching and
learning
What forms of “reading” What forms of
do technologies communication are
enable? enabled by technology?
learning
Information
playing living
working

3. New Literacies
Project involved 16 seniors in an TPACK
undergraduate language arts and social
studies teaching methods course
conducting personal content-based and
new literacies-oriented investigations
using a specific approach to inquiry and
then considering the technological and
pedagogical implications of the knowledge
they developed
Inquiry

4. New Literacies
• Involves modes of communication and the cognitive, cultural, and social contexts
in which communication occurs (New London Group, 1996)
• Conditions and contexts for new literacies enable “post-typographic forms of
textual practice” (Lankshear & Michele Knobel, 2003, p. 17)
• Subject to almost continuous change (Leu, 2000)
• “Skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to the
rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts that
continuously emerge in our world and influence all areas of our personal and
professional lives” (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004, p. 1570).

5. TPACK
• Transactional interplay of technological, pedagogical and content
knowledge
• Involves traditional (specific, stable, and transparent) and digital
(protean, unstable, and opaque) technologies (Koehler &
Mishra, 2008)
• TPACK as wicked problems (Rittal & Webber, 1973) -
incomplete, contradictory, and changing conditions (Mishra &
Koehler, 2006)

6. Inquiry
• Way of learning that uses real-world resources to investigate authentic
problems
• Emerges from experiences that are shaped by human curiosity and
reflection (Dewey, 1910)
• Bruce and Davidson (1996) literacy-based inquiry model centered on
student interests including reflection, dialogue, writing, experimentation,
observation, drawing, music, etc.
• Others pointing out benefits of inquiry-based learning - Applebee (1981),
Dewey (1938), Hillocks (1986), Harvey (1998), & Lindfors (1999), Macrorie
(1980, 1986, 1988), Short & Harste (1996)

7. How do pre-service teachers
negotiate humanities content,
inquiry pedagogies and podcast
technologies as they develop
specific forms of teacher
knowledge?

8. Participant activities
• Conducted an inquiry on a topic relevant for middle grades
language arts or social studies using an open-ended inquiry
method
• Considered the pedagogical and technological implications
of their inquiries given their knowledge about new
literacies
• Reflected on the processes they engaged in their inquiry
and their instructional planning

9. Method
DATA ANALYSIS
• Participants’ work • Erickson’s (1986) analytical
induction method
• Observations
• Empirical assertions with
• Reflections by participants
evidence from the data
• Examples of how participants
developed specialized knowledge
• Illustrations of transactional
thinking

10. Method
• Constant comparative style of Glaser and Strauss (1967)
• Focus on transactional interaction among participants’
• Emergent topics were compared and collapsed into nine coding
categories
• Data were re-read and coded, emergence of additional topics or new ideas
• Nine codes were supplemented with one additional code in the second
reading.
• Findings were collapsed into three assertions about participants’
pedagogical thinking related to their inquiries

11. Limitations
• Research activities influence perceptions (judgments about the value of
podcast and the inquiry approach used)
• An inherent part of qualitative research focus on transfer of findings
• “Fittingness” or a “degree of congruence between receiving and giving
contexts” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985 p.124)
• Rich descriptions and participant quotes to enable the transfer of findings

12. Assertion 1 – Participants engaged in a small-
scale new literacy form of text reformulation
• New forms of knowledge representation (audio and video)
• Participants wrote in multiple forms including inquiry,
written text, audio podcast, irony, and biography
• Engaged in a new literacy example of text reformulation
(Camps & Milian, 1999)
• Specifically, reformulating printed text into a dynamic
podcast presentation

13. Dana
Struggled to compose an inquiry question
Initial text formulation
“What were the politics and controversies
around this historical event?”
Research notes and short memos
Second text formulation
Narrative essay – simple chronological telling of
Third text formulation
the events
From report to Rest of the Story text - focused
First major text
on Max Yasgur
reformulation
Sequencing of irony and the suspension around
Fourth text formulation
the identity
From Rest of the Story text to audio podcast
Second reformulated
form - required that Dana experiment with
text
text cadence and sentence structure

14. Assertion 2 – Pedagogical adaptation served as an overriding
context for all thinking about instruction in participants’ work

15. Assertion 3 – The podcasting form was transparent, but the
technical procedures required to produce and publish a podcast
were overly cumbersome
• The recording process Maxine
– Selecting an audio recording process
• Text reformulation - written story
– Using specific audio recording software
as performance
(Audacity, etc)
– Using an external microphone
• Initial reading and recordings
– Managing the audio quality
using Audacity, over 100 minutes
– Editing the recording
• File conversion, 60 minutes
• The audio file
– Sharing, emailing, or transporting audio
• Uploading file to iTunes, 2 hours
files
• What skills translated to other
– Converting audio file types
– Uploading the audio file to a file server teaching and learning tasks?
– Managing the file size
• Maxine did not see herself
• Creating the podcast
teaching students these technical
– Setting up an iTunes account
– Uploading to iTunes steps - felt empowered to work
– Naming files and proving meta information with facilitate students to help
for locating audio podcast files
them create audio podcasts.

16. Discussion and Conclusion
• Text reformulation evident in this research (writing and oral
communication) consistent with the New London Group’s
(1996) notion of a multiple communications channels
• Shift from producers to distributors
• Focus on reworking texts in multiple technologically enabled
contexts

17. John Lee
john_lee@ncsu.edu
Paper online at www.newlit.org