Liminal Spaces Of Writing In Adolescent And Adult Education

Liminal Spaces of Writing in Adolescent and Adult Education addresses the persistent gap in writing reform at the middle, secondary, and post-secondary level. Through an examination of “useful” and “liminal” writing, the book explores the intellectual and creative space where structured expectations verge with individual imagination in writing. The premise of the book is built around a multiplicity of ways to invite adolescent and adult students to enter into states of liminality where they are encouraged to experiment with style, form, genre, and voice. Through research featuring the perspectives of adolescents, classroom teachers, teacher educators, graduate students, and literacy researchers, the book offers numerous insights into fostering a liminal and useful approach to writing instruction. Each author takes the reader through a journey of finding the liminal as teachers, writers, and researchers. Taken together, this tapestry of perspectives puts forth the argument that liminal moments are necessary caveats to explore in order to cultivate fully actualized writing where students are in control of structures and traditional writing expectations but also free to imagine new ways of breaking with conventions and being as writers. Thus, the book argues liminal writing is critical in bringing about sustained writing reform.

This book aims to reconceptualize teaching and learning in spaces with diverse populations of young people. Chapters focus on the schooling experiences and social and cultural adaptation issues of individuals who, through the meaning that they assign to their lived experiences, ascribe to multiple identity qualifiers. Contributors explore the impact of this cosmopolitan awareness on students, educators, and educational institutions, presenting issues such as curricular concerns around civic engagement, individual subjectivity versus social identity, and the convergence of context-specific policy and teaching environments on global dynamics in education reform. An emphasis on this understanding promises to better equip educators and policy-makers to plan instructional approaches and devise pedagogic resources that serve the needs and career aspirations of an expanding cohort of multifaceted learners.

Changing Conceptions, Changing Practices demonstrates that it is possible for groups of faculty members to change teaching and learning in radical ways across their programs, despite the current emphasis on efficiency and accountability. Relating the experiences of faculty from disciplines as diverse as art history, economics, psychology, and philosophy, this book offers a theory- and research-based heuristic for helping faculty transform their courses and programs, as well as practical examples of the heuristic in action. The authors draw on the threshold concepts framework, research in writing studies, and theories of learning, leadership, and change to deftly explore why faculty are often stymied in their efforts to design meaningful curricula for deep learning and how carefully scaffolded professional development for faculty teams can help make such change possible. This book is a powerful demonstration of how faculty members can be empowered when professional development leaders draw on a range of scholarship that is not typically connected. In today’s climate, courses, programs, and institutions are often assessed by and rewarded for proxy metrics that have little to do with learning, with grave consequences for students. The stakes have never been higher, particularly for public higher education. Faculty members need opportunities to work together using their own expertise and to enact meaningful learning opportunities for students. Professional developers have an important role to play in such change efforts. WAC scholars and practitioners, leaders of professional development and centers for teaching excellence, program administrators and curriculum committees from all disciplines, and faculty innovators from many fields will find not only hope but also a blueprint for action in Changing Conceptions, Changing Practices. Contributors: Juan Carlos Albarrán, José Amador, Annie Dell'Aria, Kate de Medeiros, Keith Fennen, Jordan A. Fenton, Carrie E. Hall, Elena Jackson Albarrán, Erik N. Jensen, Vrinda Kalia, Janice Kinghorn, Jennifer Kinney, Sheri Leafgren, Elaine Maimon, Elaine Miller, Gaile Pohlhaus Jr., Jennifer J. Quinn, Barbara J. Rose, Scott Sander, Brian D. Schultz, Ling Shao, L. James Smart, Pepper Stetler

Situated at the intersection of two of the most important areas in educational research today — literacy and technology — this handbook draws on the potential of each while carving out important new territory. It provides leadership for this newly emerging field, directing scholars to the major issues, theoretical perspectives, and interdisciplinary research pertaining to new literacies. Reviews of research are organized into six sections: Methodologies Knowledge and Inquiry Communication Popular Culture, Community, and Citizenship: Everyday Literacies Instructional Practices and Assessment Multiple Perspectives on New Literacies Research FEATURES Brings together a diverse international team of editors and chapter authors Provides an extensive collection of research reviews in a critical area of educational research Makes visible the multiple perspectives and theoretical frames that currently drive work in new literacies Establishes important space for the emerging field of new literacies research Includes a unique Commentary section: The final section of the Handbook reprints five central research studies. Each is reviewed by two prominent researchers from their individual, and different, theoretical position. This provides the field with a sense of how diverse lenses can be brought to bear on research as well as the benefits that accrue from doing so. It also provides models of critical review for new scholars and demonstrates how one might bring multiple perspectives to the study of an area as complex as new literacies research. The Handbook of Research on New Literacies is intended for the literacy research community, broadly conceived, including scholars and students from the traditional reading and writing research communities in education and educational psychology as well as those from information science, cognitive science, psychology, sociolinguistics, computer mediated communication, and other related areas that find literacy to be an important area of investigation.

Digital integration is the driving force of teaching and learning at all levels of education. As more non-traditional students seek credentialing, certification, and degrees, institutions continue to push the boundaries of innovative practices to meet the needs of diverse students. Programs and faculty have moved from merely using technology and learning management systems to unique and innovative ways to engage learners. The Handbook of Research on Innovative Digital Practices to Engage Learners is an essential scholarly publication that offers theoretical frameworks, delivery models, current guidelines, and digital design techniques for integrating technological advancements in education contexts to enforce student engagement and positive student outcomes. Featuring a wide range of topics such as gamification, wearable technologies, and distance education, this book is ideal for teachers, curriculum developers, instructional designers, principals, deans, administrators, researchers, academicians, education professionals, and students.

Drama and Digital Arts Cultures is a critical guide to the new forms of playful exploration, co-creativity, and improvised performance made possible by digital networked media. Drawing on examples from games, education, online media, technology-enabled performance and the creative industries, the book uses the elements of applied drama to frame our understanding of digital cultures. Exploring the connected real-world and virtual spaces where young people are making and sharing digital content, it draws attention to the fundamental applied drama conventions that infuse and activate this networked culture. Challenging descriptions of drama and digital technology as binary opposites, the book maps common principles and practice grounded in role, embodiment, performance, play, and identity that are being amplified and enhanced by the affordances of online media. Drama and Digital Arts Cultures draws together extensive original research including interviews with game designers, media producers, educators, artists and makers at the heart of these new digital cultures. Young people discuss their own creative practices and products, providing insight into a complex and evolving world being transformed by digital technologies. A practical guide to the field, it contains case studies and examples of the intersections of drama conventions and networked cultures drawn from the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Singapore and Australia. Written for scholars, educators, students and 'makers' everywhere, Drama and Digital Arts Cultures provides a clear understanding of how young people are blending creativity and learning with the powerful and empowering conventions of drama to create new forms of multimodal and transmedia storytelling.

Naming the Father is a collection of essays on the subject of fatherhood: its enduring power, its secret ruses, its unsettling provocations. Despite the considerable critical attention devoted to motherhood in literature-and despite the late-twentieth-century focus on patriarchy-there is surprisingly no comparable collection on fatherhood. This volume was born of the conclusion that critics of modern and contemporary literature may comprehend the father too little for presuming to have comprehended patriarchy so much. Naming the Father begins with a series of nonfiction essays that attempts to locate the missing father in the individual experiences of three scholars at various stages of their careers. The following thematically grouped sections recover and discuss fatherhood in fields ranging from Caribbean fiction to African American drama and in the work of authors as diverse as Rebecca West, Anzia Yezierska, William Burroughs, and Stephen Wright, as well as Henry James and James Joyce. A variety of critical approaches, from biographical to deconstructive, activate and engage with the cultural, national, and global implications of fatherhood for the family and for the future of literary studies. Scholars and students of contemporary literature, cultural studies, and gender studies will find this book a fascinating and invaluable collection.