Strategic readers know that the purpose of reading is to understand, and that there are a number of comprehension strategies that they can adopt in order to build knowledge from reading. Strategic readers are able to apply such strategies in “the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language,” as the Rand Reading Comprehension Study Group defines reading comprehension. Strategic readers process information by constantly monitoring their understanding. In that process, strategic readers, when faced with understanding challenges, engage in problem solving and self-correction.
Buehl (2007) provides insight into the seven cognitive processes of proficient readers, beginning with making connections to one’s prior knowledge – which is regarded as the one most critical strategy for learning to take place, since no new knowledge or understanding is constructed in a vacuum – to generating questions, creating mental sensory images, inferencing, prioritizing, and synthesizing the information being read. Add intrinsic motivation to that process and the result is a strategic and engaged reader. Importantly, the more one reads to understand, the more motivated one becomes, and the more social interaction ensues, for engaged readers are prone to sharing and socially connecting around what they are learning. The more one interacts, the more strategies are mobilized, and the more one’s knowledge base grows, leading to the desire to read more. That is the engagement cycle, as defined by Swan (2003).
Teachers and librarians not only can but indeed they must foster engagement and self-regulation as critical ingredients for strategic reading by means of a balanced comprehension instruction approach that encompasses a supportive classroom context and a model of comprehension instruction that models and supports the development of reading strategies for learners. (Duke & Pearson, 2002)
CONNECTIONS
The seven comprehension processes of proficient readers (Buehl, 2007) are mirrored in the six individual comprehension strategies that excellent reading teachers are intent at scaffolding and modelling for and with learners (Duke & Pearson, 2002). Think-alouds represent a strategy for activating schemata and generating questions. Inferencing and determining importance are engendered in text structure analysis. The ability to synthesize is exercised by means of summarization. The creation of visual and sensory representations is both a process and a strategy which boosts one’s synthesis capacity, also helping in the self-monitoring and self-correction process.
RAND (2002) provides us with the heuristic for thinking about reading comprehension, defining its components: the reader, the text, and the activity, all of which are nestled within a sociocultural dimension, which is by and large overlooked by NAEP (2015/2019). Indeed, how does a standardized assessment account for a virtually infinite sociocultural variance? If RAND gives us the reader, the text, and the activity, Duke & Pearson (2002) give us the teacher, and CORI (Swan, 2003) pulls in the sociocultural dimension by articulating skills and strategies, knowledge, motivation, and social collaboration.
Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction gives us the ‘how’ by leveraging the three basic needs for intrinsic motivation, namely competence, autonomy, and belonging. In other words, learners need a sense of self-efficacy, choice, and opportunities for social interaction and human connection. CORI then represents the supportive classroom context articulated by Duke & Pearson, one in which learners read a lot, read for real reasons, engage in high quality talk about text, and ultimately strive for the construction of conceptual knowledge.
I find that one of the greatest challenges in my own teaching context, as well as in the Brazilian educational system, is making instruction coherent as opposed to fragmented, as proposed in CORI. Such coherence and transdisciplinarity entails a whole set of very unique beliefs that have not necessarily been cultivated by teacher training programs, and certainly not in traditional and mainstream educational settings. The shift from a fragmented to a relational and systemic view of and approach to knowledge construction and instructional design (as opposed to lesson planning) requires major transformations in teacher education and school culture.
IMPLICATIONS/QUESTIONS/CRITIQUES
Fragmented teaching is not time productively spent, at least not for learners. It may make teaching and planning less complex for the teacher, but it is ultimately disengaging for all involved in the educational experience. I was particularly struck by the difference between lesson planning and instruction design: intention. Johnson (2014), referring to the implications of the TPACK framework, says:
“The framework supports and deepens literacy practices, allowing teachers to become thoughtful instructional designers. Washburn (2010) writes, ‘Instructional design differs from lesson planning, the term we traditionally use to describe a teacher’s pre-instruction preparation. Designers communicate by intentionally combining elements’ (pp.2-3)”
I wonder what a teacher development program that enables teachers to operate that shift from fragmented to systemic, from instructor to coach, from planner to designer, looks like?
I wonder what will it take for teachers of all subject areas to realize that they are, first and foremost, literacy teachers?
References:
Duke, N.K. & Pearson, P. D. (2002). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. In What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction, 3rd edition. International Reading Association.
Swan (2003). Why is the North Pole Always Cold? In Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI): Engaging Classrooms, Lifelong Learners
Johnson, D. (2014) Reading, Writing and Literacy 2.0. Teaching with Online Texts, Tools, and Resources, K-8 (chapters 1 & 2)
Buehl, D. (2014). Fostering Comprehension of Complex Texts (Chapter 1 pages 3-11) in Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning (4th Edition). International Literacy Association.
RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: Rand.
National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP] Abridged Reading Framework for the 2015/2019
My purpose in this paper is to reflect on my experience in the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy in terms of how the learning experience impacted my role as an educator, digital storyteller, and as a leader engaged in promoting innovation processes in my pedagogical practice with teacher professional and digital literacy development. In my roamings within my original academic field of study, Cultural Anthropology, as well as in my existential rumblings through adulthood, I have embodied my life experience around the theme of story, inspired by the concept of bliss, as proposed by american Mythologist Joseph Campbell. Campbell traces back the notion of bliss to the Sanskrit phrase sat chit ananda, which he translates as being, consciousness, and rapture. He articulates his interpretation of this transcendental phrase in his famous quote (2004), and one which has been a source of personal and professional inspiration:
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.”
Campbell talks about one-to-one conferences with his college students and how he was able to notice a student’s eyes light up when an idea or theme sprang up into the conversation. He would make a point of encouraging his students to pursue those ideas further, to allow themselves to be driven by their curiosity and follow their bliss. Thus, it is in pursuing a journey of inquiry, driven by themes that enrapture our senses, our intellect and spirit, that we perceive value in our existence. People are not seeking the meaning of life per se. What we seek, according to Campbell, is an experience of being alive. We create meaning from acting on our experience, and also from reflecting on the consequences and the value that results from reflecting on experience. (Dewey 1916, 92) In that sense, I would like to explore the meaning making that is achieved in the process of storytelling by sharing some of my digital literacy learning background, for it is in the process of creating and sharing our stories, our own personal myths with others, that we gain a deeper sense of identity, confidence, and purpose. Importantly, reflection on experience, as expressed in stories, operates change in how we view ourselves and in our being in the world. We change, therefore, we learn through sharing our personal experience of embodied life with those around us.
My central thesis in this reflective piece is that digital storytelling is a rich means for empowerment, playing a critical role in scholarly, professional and personal identity formation in educators. My story as an inhabitant of the digital universe began in 2014, when I explored the concept of rhizomatic learning in participation within a community of global educators in a cMooc (connectivist massive open online course) called Rhizomatic Learning: the Community is the Curriculum. At the time, the feeling was that of diving into the deep end of the digital literacy swimming pool. Driven by my curiosity and a longing for interaction in a new learning space, I immediately began engaging with other members of this rhizomatic community, who responded to Dave Cormier’s course provocation-assignments in the form of blogs and digital art, which were also shared on Twitter via the hashtag #Rhizo14. My first digital creations took the shape of writing in my own, then newly-created blog, and also in interacting with other participants in their digital spaces on their blogs and on social media. This was the year I began building my professional learning network on Twitter, which plays a critical part in my everyday digital literacy and professional learning habits.
The image above was a design I created and offered the Rhizo14 community. Some of us got t-shirts made with this piece of digital art. I used Canva.com in this creation.
Notably, the more participants engaged in collaborating to cocreate new meaning by commenting on one another’s blog posts and tweets, the deeper our appreciation for collaborative inquiry became, which is one of the three core design elements of the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy. My Rhizo14 cMooc experience was intense, generating dense human connections, despite the fact that it was fully online. One of such strong bonds were with Egyptian scholar Bali Maha, whose prolific digital scholarship has been an inspiration in my own learning in digital spaces. My digital literacy learning journey both in Rhizo14 and in SIDL have helped me increase my confidence as a digital creator and storyteller, for they were both instances which enabled me to exercise my voice and choice. Indeed, my sense of agency as a learner was increased in such inquiry-driven, collaborative educational contexts. After all, it is:
“(…) by choosing how to creatively express ideas and create media, as well as explore different ways of taking social action, (that) learners may explore their identities as citizens who can improve their communities and society.”
(Hobbs et al. 2019)
The intensive face-to-face dimension of SIDL brought to the fore the interactive and relational aspect of digital creation. The minds-on, hands-on work with my dyad partner, Carla Arena, and the interplay between our different modes of collaboration (I am a “southwest” and she is a “northeast” as identified in the compass points dynamics we engaged in during SIDL) shifted the focus from skills with digital tools to interpersonal and time management skills in managing the complexity which naturally emerged from our collaboration. Furthermore, our knowledge with the digital tools used in our design studio project shifted our challenge focus from digital skills to digital literacy, in the sense that we were concerned with how the audience of our project – educators – would engage and make meaning with the digital artifacts we were creating together. In other words, we found ourselves more focussed on the who, when, where, why and how learners would make sense of the digital materials we were engaged in co-creating. This is the difference between digital skills and digital literacies:
“We often hear people talk about the importance of digital knowledge for 21st-century learners. Unfortunately, many focus on skills rather than literacies. Digital skills focus on what and how. Digital literacy focuses on why, when, who, and for whom.”
Maha Bali (2016)
Another core design element of SIDL is motivation as a primer for learning and development. A powerful connection with motivation is the concept of the ‘Golden Circle’, as proposed by Simon Sinek. Agency is heightened by a clear sense of purpose, and that is what we experienced in the SIDL opening event. Participants were prompted to create their own meanings of digital and media literacy, and share those with other participants and faculty members in order to spark communal dispositions among all people in the learning space. Moreover, the Digital Learning Motivation Profiles list supported participants in making connections between their educator identities and their motivations for engaging in digital and media literacies developmental work with learners. This horoscope-style self-assessment served as a catalyst for people to orbit towards others with similar motivations, fostering further connection among participants, who also felt valued and respected in their diversity of motivations in approaching the work of digital and media literacies. Importantly, this illustrates the very nature of the digital literacy mosaic created by the engagement of people coming from multiple knowledge areas and interests.
The third design element at the core of SIDL is the most powerful, and the one which most resonates with my work as a change agent and social practitioner in the field of innovation in education. As an advocate for human-centered innovation, I share the concern expressed by Hobbs et al. (2019) with regards to the reduction of digital literacy pedagogies to the practice of the so-called personalization of learning which is driven by software algorithms. Such device-centered approach to digital literacies development disengages and disenfranchises both educators and learners, promoting a dangerous power shift which puts the machine in the center of learning, rendering the human element of the experience less important and peripheral in the essentially human process of learning though meaning making and the construction of understanding. Rather than personalized, learning is personal in that it is built in inquiry-driven cooperation among people. According to Dewey, as argued by Dyehouse, “shared understandings are the consequence, not the cause of cooperative action.” Dyehouse continues citing Biesta (2006, 30):
“For Dewey, education is more basically a matter of ‘those situations in which one really shares or participates in a common activity, in which one really has an interest in its accomplishment just as others have.”
Dyehouse (2016, 175-176)
These are the participatory situations in which successful collaborative activity results in learning and understanding. Dyehouse concludes by saying that “(…) for Dewey, the real key to understanding is in doing things together.”
This view of making learning personal validates the networked and collaborative practices I have adopted in the design of professional development opportunities for educators both with my dyad partner Carla Arena in Amplifica, and in my role as innovation specialist in my school, Casa Thomas Jefferson. In the first Amplifica seminar for educators, in which I participated as a presenter in 2015, my talk was titled “The Power of Connections”. This was an inspirational talk in which I shared the design principles informing the technology integration and digital literacy development practices adopted in one of my early projects as technology integration coach in my school. Similarly to Hobbs et al. (2019, 408), I believe that the work of digital literacy development requires the intentional design of professional development opportunities that:
“(…) foster teacher agency so educators gain confidence in designing their own lesson plans and instructional units for inquiry-based digital learning. We see teachers as eminently capable of supporting and scaffolding student learning through inquiry and collaboration.”
Hobbs et al. (2019, 408)
Bali (2016) mentions the 8 elements of digital literacies proposed by Belshaw (2014). Interestingly, she points out the element of confidence is an important one among the elements. Belshaw explains that the element of Confidence requires a slightly different approach to its development in comparison to the other elements, for Confidence is a transversal element to all others. He refers to the process of Confidence development in digital literacies as the act of connecting the dots. According to Belshaw (2014, 52):
“Developing the Confident element of digital literacies involves solving problems and managing one’s own learning in digital environments. This can be encouraged by the kind of practices that work well in all kinds of learning experiences. Namely, self-review focusing on achievement and areas of development, paired with mentoring. I believe P2PU’s ‘schools’ to be an extremely good example of an arena in which the Confident element of digital literacies can be developed. Not only are learners encouraged to reflect on their practices, but to form a community. Such communities can help build confidence.”
Belshaw (2014, 52)
Source of image of the PDI Framework above: Coiro, J., Castek, J., & Quinn, D. (2016). Personal inquiry and online research: Connecting learners in ways that matter. PDF, page 9.
Finally, in SIDL, we had the opportunity to experience the Personal Digital Inquiry model proposed by Coiro et al. (2016) scaffolding our knowledge building and the development of participants’ digital literacy skills. The PDI model was clearly articulated throughout the SIDL immersive learning experience, its power notably evident as the Design Studio unfolded. Dyad partners dove deeply into the inquiry process by wondering and discovering, accessing, analyzing and evaluating knowledge and ideas in collaboration and discussion, then taking action and creating digital artifacts with which to promote learning. Reflection pushed us forward and back into the PDI Framework for Teaching and Learning, eliciting the refinement of our final projects. Keynotes and workshops in SIDL were instances of teacher-driven action quadrants illustrated below the (green) line of inquiry in the image, in the giving and prompting stages of technology for knowledge building. We were then gradually released into the upper, learner-driven quadrants of making and reflecting as the inquiry was sustained until the end culminating event where dyads proudly shared their learning artifacts with the whole community.
Circling back to the element of confidence in the development of digital literacies, I find myself wondering about the interplay between one’s process of confidence development and the development of one’s leadership persona. I am intrigued by the inner workings of the identity formation of a digitally literate individual, learners and educators alike, in such collaborative learning environments.
Photo of the mystic crossing the threshold image above. A powerful symbolic exercise into language.
The experience of exploring imagery that would represent ourselves as digital literacy leaders in our own contexts was a very powerful one to me, in particular. I gravitated towards a picture of a mystic crossing the threshold of visible reality in order to unveil the inner workings in the backstage of the universe. This symbolic exercise provided me with new language to articulate how I sense my calling to lead change in my educational context. I was left feeling a sense of potency and intentionality with regards to the leader in me. Interestingly enough, I am now engaging in the design and facilitation of a leadership academy for middle managers in my educational organization. Ever since my experience in SIDL, I have gained a renewed sense of agency, self-efficacy, and even courage to tackle this great challenge. SIDL has made feel validated in my rhizomatic and communal approach to learning, leaving me with a sense of belonging and sustained curiosity for what is to come.
Belshaw, D. (2014). The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. Retrieved from <http://digitalliteraci.es>
Campbell, J., Kudler, David, editor. (2004) Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation.
Coiro, J., Castek, J., & Quinn, D. J. (2016). Personal inquiry and online research:Connecting learners in ways that matter. The Reading Teacher, 69(5), 483-492.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education.
Hobbs, R. & Coiro, J. (2018). Design features of a professional development program in digital literacy. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. DOI: doi: 10.1002/jaal.907
Hobbs, Renee, editor. (2016). Exploring the Roots of Digital and Media Literacy through Personal Narrative. Temple University Press.
There is certainly a lot to process still. And I must say that I was privileged to have been accompanied by a group of brilliant Brazilian educators, all engaged in the promising Educamídia program, set forth by the Instituto Palavra Aberta and supported by Google.org. Educamídia was created to empower educators and educational organizations, as well as to engage society in the process of youth media education by developing their communication potential in various media.
This week, my dyad partner Carla Arena and I had the chance of sharing some of our most powerful takeaways from our experience at the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy (video above). We chatted in Portuguese then (we are Brazilian), but I would like to begin sharing my most compelling insights with you in this post.
Inquiry at the Core
I had already been made aware of the fact that inquiry-based learning approaches are truly in the center of powerful learning experiences. My experience in DigiURI really drove that home for me. I found myself fully immersed in thinking, creating, communicating and building meaning, both on my own and collaboratively. The constant sharing among all participants was very powerful. The digital artifacts which we created as the outcome of our collaboration were purposefully designed because they were a natural result of the powerful process in which we engaged, in constant reflection and feedback loops from our dyad partners. Inquiry-based learning is the pedagogical pathway that naturally pulls in critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity. It also naturally elicits the meaningful use of technology. It’s the pathway to follow for ‘minds on – hands on’ learning.
Inquiry at center – the sketch I created and that served as inspiration for our DigiURI project
Use Language to Change the World
Inspired by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, Kristin Ziemke struck a chord when she talked about literacy development in young learners, and how powerful it is when kids begin naming the world – their world. Kristin made us aware of the power of visual literacy, and also of the meaning making process that we engage in when learning to name our own worlds. Therefore, changing language is part of the process of changing the world. And that, my friends, is exactly what happens throughout the inquiry-based learning pathway. Language is used to empower, to set high expectations for students, to reflect, and to communicate learning to the world.
Kristin Ziemke in her keynote (photo by Carla Arena)
…to be continued soon
Still more on the power of images, how it connected to leadership for me, and digital empathy.
Little did I know 