Researching education in new times

Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference

30 November-4 December, 1997, Brisbane, Qld.

GREEB97.427 Title of symposium:

New Times For Literacy, Pedagogy and Young People: Research Challenges

Presenters: Bill Green (chair), Barbara Comber, Phil Cormack, Helen Nixon, Jo-Anne Reid.

Overview of symposium

Increasingly media culture and its associated literacies form not just

a context for research in education but also its object. Among other

things, this involves taking account of the complex and changing

relations between education and the media, as well as new forms and

relations of curriculum and literacy, and properly gauging the

educational and cultural significance of the new information

technologies. What needs to be better understood however is both the

nature of media culture in this regard, specifically in its implication

for education generally, and more broadly, the historical nexus between

educational practice and technocultural change. The symposium will

engage these issues with regard to researching cultural formations of

literacy, pedagogy and young people. What would a research programme in

this area look like? What would it entail? What would be its

methodological issues and problematics?

NIXOH97.431 Researching multimedia multiliteracies

Helen Nixon

Abstract:

This paper is based on a pilot study of critical approaches to the

teaching of literacy in a disadvantaged school in which the integration

of "new technologies" into the curriculum is a school priority.

Transcripts of student talk during the production of multimedia

Hypertext documents will be used to explore questions raised by the

study. These include: What are the possibilities and limitations of

ethnographic studies of computer-based literacy teaching and learning?

What are the possibilities and limitations of computer-based critical

literacy which attempts to connect with "real world" learning and

textual practice in "new times"?

NIXOH97.431 Researching multimedia multiliteracies

Helen Nixon

School of Communication and Information Studies

University of South Australia

St Bernard's Rd

Magill SA 5072

email: Helen.Nixon@unisa.edu.au

Tim Gill (1996), in his conclusion to the book Electronic children,

suggests that "we may be underestimating the complexity of children's

engagement with technology" (p. 101). Some of our recent research into

literacy, technology and disadvantage, leads us to agree with Gill on

this point. Further, our preliminary work on the curriculum integration

of computing and literacy in disadvantaged schools suggests the added

complexity of adopting ethnographic approaches, and principles of

critical, feminist and participatory research (Carspecken & Apple,

1992; Edelsky & Boyd, 1993; Reid, Kamler, Simpson & MacLean, 1996), to

explore the literacy-technology nexus. One conclusion we have drawn is

that there is a need for longitudinal research of individual students'

take-up and use of different literacy practices, including those

associated with the new technologies.

To this end, we are undertaking an ARC SPIRT-funded research project

with the South Australian Department of Education, Training and

Employment (DETE) beginning in 1998. This paper is based on the pilot

research project into literacy education in three disadvantaged schools

in term 4, 1996 and term 1, 1997 undertaken in preparation for that

grant application. The pilot was a collaborative venture between the

then Poverty and Isolation Team in the Department of Education and

Children Services (DECS), and the Language and Literacy Research Centre

at the University of South Australia (Comber et al., 1997).1 In this

project, literacy is understood not as a cognitive state, nor as a

discrete set of abilities, but as socially constructed in everyday

institutional and discursive practices (Comber, 1996). According to

this view, it is in day-to-day classroom life that student differences

(such as class, race, bilingualism, gender, location) impact on how

literacy is learned, taught and assessed.

The longer study is envisaged as contributing to a systematic analysis

of the literacy curricula that are made available to students in

disadvantaged schools and communities, and to provide analyses of what

individual children take from these curricula. The aim of the long-term

project is to better theorise the relationship between the development

of student literacies, the provision of literacy curriculum, and the

assessment of literacy outcomes. There was thus no specific focus on

the media, nor on the so-called new technologies, in the design of the

pilot project. Computer-based teaching and learning within the literacy

curriculum became one focus of the pilot study because of Westview

Primary School's curriculum development priorities, and particular

teachers' willingness to be involved in the project.2

The integration of technology into the literacy curriculum at Westview

Primary School

While literacy had been a priority in Westview's development plan over

a number of years, at the time of the pilot study the use of

information technology to support literacy learning across the

curriculum had become a focus of the school's professional and

curriculum development. At the time of writing, one priority for the

school remains the provision of an educationally sound and socially

just high technology future for students R-7. For example, one of the

school's stated goals is to increase the knowledge and involvement of

both teachers and students in the use of information technology. The

following are listed as outcomes/indicators in the school's development

plan:

students will be accessing, reconstructing and presenting information

using information technology

students will be using information technology as a tool to enhance

their learning across the curriculum

staff will be aware of and implementing the technology Statement and

Profile and planning to implement it in other Statement and Profile

areas

As part of the initial step to implement the plan for change in the

school, the school leadership team conducted a number of sessions which

addressed very broad-based information technology-related issues. The

leadership team's strategies were based on the belief that teachers

will be committed to change when they are clear about the purpose of

change, and their role in the process (Nixon et al., forthcoming).

Workshops were thus set up in which teachers worked in teams to explore

contemporary "takes" on what constitutes "education" and "literacy" in

the eyes of the broader community. For example, when communities have

access to on-line libraries and museums, employers expect workers to be

"computer literate", and parents believe in the importance of "computer

literacy" for their children's future success, then the new

technologies become culturally aligned with commonly understood and

valued literate practices. As Green and Bigum (1993) point out, such

conceptualisations which align literacy and the new technologies,

contribute to a phase in the history of literacy pedagogy which they

describe as "technologizing literacy".

At Westview, it was put to teachers by the leadership team that in such

a scenario, continuing to ignore the new technologies in the school's

curriculum is not an option. Indeed, it was argued that the provision

of access to, and proficiency in using, the new technologies becomes a

key equity and social justice issue in these times. For these reasons,

and because the school is located in a community which is more likely

than many to have low percentages of computer ownership at home,3 there

was general agreement at Westview that issues of literacy and

technology should become priority issues. According to this argument,

information and communications technologies can be compared with

reading and writing. Like reading and writing, the new technologies

(with their associated multimodality) are conceptualised as powerful

tools - and as technologies in the Foucauldian sense (Green, 1995b,

1997a) - for retrieving, constructing, and presenting information. That

is, computers are envisaged as powerful new technologies for learning

(Green, 1997b).

For the two teachers whose classes I observed during the pilot study,

computer technology was envisaged as another "tool" for use in the

literacy curriculum; another aid to be enlisted in the broader workings

of the curriculum. On the other hand, the teachers' focus on students'

production of multimodal texts in the unit of work I observed, brought

the research into the domain of what have been called "technological

literacies" (Lankshear & Knobel, 1997), "multiliteracies" (New London

Group, 1996), and "metamedia literacies" (Lemke, 1997). Moreover,

because these teachers' emphasis was on students' making texts using

the new technologies, their classroom became the site of what Bill

Green has called "post-age" composition, a site in which students were

compos(IT)ing" (Green, 1995a). Exploring further what it might mean to

research the "interface" between English and technology (Green, 1997a),

or what it might mean to move literacy curriculum "from page to screen"

(Snyder, 1997), remain major topics of interest for the presenters of

this symposium.

Key principles for curriculum development at Westview

The enacted curriculum and pedagogical practices which I observed in

the pilot project took place within the school policy context just

described. I was invited to observe the theorised practice of two

teachers: Anne Sutton, a year 7 teacher, and Ruth Motley, then the

curriculum coordinator with a technology and literacy brief. A key

principle informing these teachers' curriculum was that information and

communications technologies should be used as tools for students to

both access and construct multimodal texts across the curriculum. As

Ruth Motley explains it, her multimedia/literacy curriculum was

constructed according to the following understandings (Motley & Nixon,

1997):

¥ Multimodal texts are central to everyday meaning-making and the

communication of meaning in society today (cf C. Luke, 1995; New London

Group, 1996; Kress, 1997).

¥ Multimodal texts are a major part of students' out-of-school lives

and "home literacy events" (cf Downes & Reddacliff, 1997; Green, Reid &

Bigum, in press; Papert, 1996; Sanger et al., 1997).

¥ Mass media and/or multimodal texts are important resources for the

construction of what Dyson (1993) calls a permeable curriculum.

Further, the permeable curriculum, theorised as a bridge to the valued

curriculum, provides an approach to addressing questions of educational

disadvantage.

¥ Students are envisaged as both authors and designers of multimodal

texts (cf Kress, 1997).

¥ The construction of multimodal texts is understood to be an integral

part of the broader critical literacy curriculum (cf Lankshear &

Knobel, 1997; Lemke, 1996; A. Luke, 1997). Students' construction of

multimodal texts is seen as helpful in the development of critical

reading positions with respect to other multimodal texts. In addition,

students' construction of multimodal texts for real purposes and

diverse local audiences is understood as providing opportunities for

students to critically evaluate, synthesise and transform the

information they access into their own texts for use in social action

(cf Luke, O'Brien & Comber, 1994).

While the teachers at Westview have done much to build a working

curriculum based on these principles, less has been done as yet on

evaluating the outcomes. Students are only just beginning to produce

multimodal texts in this way, and more empirical work needs to be done

to test the teachers' aims and objectives against students' literacy

learning. For example, more needs to be known about how such work

carries over into the so-called "critical reading" of other multimodal

texts, and how and for whom the creation of such texts for social

action might produce educational or social benefits. Nonetheless, there

are signs that such curriculum innovations allow the participation of

some students who would not normally take up what is on offer in the

literacy curriculum.

Students construct a multimedia school history

The unit of work I report on here had been designed by Ruth Motley and

Anne Sutton for fifteen students who had chosen not to participate in

the Westview School choir, and for whom an alternative curriculum had

to be provided during choir rehearsal time. The group was considered by

the teachers to contain students with literacy learning problems and a

high proportion of students who were particularly difficult to motivate

and keep on task. The curriculum was planned according to a learning

framework devised by Motley (Motley & Nixon, 1997), and adapted from

Gawith's (1987) work on resource-based learning and developing

information and research skills with students. In planning the

curriculum, Motley reworks Gawith's framework in the light of her

position on critical literacy, and includes communications technologies

among the tools to be used by students in the resource-based learning

process (see also Moline, 1995).

In the three terms before the pilot study began, the students had been

working towards the construction of an interactive, multimodal text

that rewrote the history of the school. The product was envisaged as

being a more vibrant and inclusive text than the existing brief print

history. The new text was to reflect different points of view and

"voices" from the school's immediate and broader community. It was to

be a hypermedia text - an interactive CD-ROM which included words,

sounds, pictures and graphics - and which could be made available for

public access in the school entrance foyer.4 As the school was entering

a stage of major redevelopment, the review of its history was

considered topical and timely. Moreover, as the year sevens were soon

to move on to secondary school, they were positioned as having some

degree of expertise in relation to the topic.

During the course of the unit, students worked in groups to research

past and present aspects of the school's history around topics they had

jointly devised: Buildings, School Uniform, Curriculum, Report Cards,

Extra-curricular Activities, and so on. Audio-taped interviews were

conducted with long-serving members of staff, parents and other

community members who had been associated with the school's history.

Examples of past and present documents were collected, and scripts and

text for the history multimedia document were devised. As the project

progressed, the teachers used brainstorms and conceptual maps to help

students conceptualise how the hypertext document might be constructed;

that is, how their separate pieces of "information" on a topic might

best be cross-referenced laterally to others' work by hypertext hot

links. Plans were made to include digital photographs and to scan

documents in to the hypermedia text.

In sum, a great deal of work had taken place before the students began

work on the computers. Many "information literacy" skills had been

honed; for example, Deciding, Finding, Using, Recording and Planning

how to present the information (Gawith, 1987). When the researchers

arrived in term 4, the students were about to begin the creation of the

final hypertext product. Confident about what their role was in the

project, students eagerly anticipated the translation of their

hand-written-work plans into multimedia form.5

Researching issues of gender and "engagement" in computer-based

literacy learning

Over a number of observations of the year seven class as a whole group

and in sub-sets, specific attention was paid by the researcher to two

students, a boy and a girl. While observing the multimedia history

project reported here, the researcher's attention was mainly directed

towards these students. In this paper, the student given the name Jim

provides the focus for the discussion and the girl is absent. There is

no suggestion in what follows that a comprehensive picture is provided

of what was happening in the whole class over time. Rather, snapshots

of Jim and his partner at work are provided to "ground" the broader

questions raised by the study.

The following snapshots have been chosen to highlight issues raised

anecdotally by the teachers before the study began. For example,

teachers commented that computer use appears to improve the motivation

of some students, particularly boys. They noted that this seemed to be

particularly noticeable in the case of boys considered to be at "at

risk" with regards to literacy achievement. Although boys' engagement

with computers is borne out in the literature (eg Downes, 1997; Joiner,

1996; Sanger et al., 1997), there is little known about the nature of

boys' (or girls') engagement with computers (Griffiths, 1996), its

relationship to computer game playing (Griffiths, 1996), nor about how

such engagement might carry over into other aspects of school learning

and literacy learning (Green, 1997b; Green, Reid & Bigum, in press;

Johnson-Eilola, 1997). Relatedly, Westview teachers expressed concern

that computer use in school raises yet again issues of gender

inequities, and inequities related to socio-cultural difference of

other kinds. They were concerned that little is known about how such

inequities might play themselves out in the computer-based classroom,

or about how best to address these matters in curriculum planning and

classroom management. As it happened, incidents involving the focus

students during the pilot study provided an opportunity to reflect

further on the issues raised by teachers.6 For now, I turn to some

extracts of data generated around incidents relating to boys'

"engagement" with computers to raise some questions about the

possibilities and limits of this kind of ethnographic work in

researching multimedia multiliteracies.

Boys engage/interface with the computer screen

The transcripts under discussion here are taken from my observations of

the first lesson in which students moved from print-based to

computer-based literacy work in the production of the multimedia school

history. The focus student Jim is here paired with Theo as they work on

the Report Cards section of the hypertext. One of the most striking

things for the researcher - who had previously observed the boys in

more conventional whole-class contexts - was the way Jim and Theo were

mobilised by their entrance into this Hypercard phase of the history of

Westview project. Engrossed in the task, Jim and Theo asked the teacher

for help, requested information from other students, and responded to

requests for help from their peers. This kind of behaviour from the

boys had not previously been in evidence. The second factor which

aroused my interest was the way in which Jim produced "spontaneous

verbalisations" (Griffiths, 1996) and a running commentary as he

worked. Some of this talk is reproduced in what follows. One question

for researchers and teachers alike which follows from our readings of

this data, is what to make of these "screen-related events" (Sanger et

al., 1997). What exactly is going on when Jim is doing what can be

described as either reading the screen, inter-facing or interacting

with the screen? What other out-of-school screen-related events are

being imitated or drawn on here? How are teachers and researchers to

find out more about this? And how might they best be able to make use

of what they find out?

The lesson from which the following transcript is taken began with

direct instruction from the teacher, a fairly rare occurrence in the

computer room at Westview. As was the pattern in other lessons observed

by the researcher, in this lesson Jim's and Theo's attention was not

directed towards the teacher, nor towards the large screen on which she

projected the Hypercard demonstration. Rather than facing the front and

listening to the teacher as they had been requested to do, the boys

began playing with various computer functions on the machine. However,

once the teacher took students step by step through the process of card

creation, with students following as she went, Jim and Theo listened,

collaborated with each other, and were able to duplicate what the

teacher did. The key points of the lesson were learning how to create

new buttons and new cards, including the creation of an "effect" on the

screen that would accompany the transition from card to card.7

Extract 1

When making their choice about which "effect" to use to accompany the

transition from one screen to another in the Report Cards section of

the history, Jim and Theo spend a great deal of time trying out each

effect, and at each speed made possible by the software. They

eventually decide on a "wipe to the left" effect, which means when

moving from card to card in the hypertext the reader/ user will see

what appears to be the screen peeling back to the left to reveal what

is on the next card or link. As he tries out the effects, Jim repeats

each one many times, saying out loud (but to no-one in particular): "I

just want to keep on doing these wipe-outs ..."

Some questions we might ask of this data include:

¥ What are we to make of the apparently motivating effects of providing

Jim with the opportunity to create his own "special effects"?

¥ How might such engagement be related to his familiarity with the use

of effects in computer games, film and television?

¥ Are there specific ways in which the use or study of special effects

could inform literacy curriculum and pedagogy likely to engage students

like Jim?

Of some significance here is the position taken by teachers at Westview

that there will be no computer game playing at the school of any kind,

at any time. One of the consequences of this is that such research into

the literacy-computer game nexus as is suggested in Beavis (1997),

Johnson-Eilola (1997) and Smith and Curtain (1997), may be less likely

to inform these teachers' literacy curriculum. This would seem

particularly problematic when the school's literacy policy and

curriculum are premised on the fact that today's students live in an

electronic media-saturated world, and when early research shows that

many young people do have access to computer games outside school,

whether or not there is a computer in their household (Downes &

Reddacliff, 1997; Sanger et al., 1997; Smith and Curtain, 1997).

Extract 2

As Theo centres the keyed-in text on their first Hypercard card, the

centring function is registered on the screen by a dot point graphic (

which moves next to the word "Center". Jim notices this and responds

out loud, although apparently to himself.

Jim: Target. (slight pause)

(He raises his arm as if holding a rifle. He points with an imaginary

rifle at the icon/target on the screen. He makes an explosive gun shot

noise as if firing at a target).

Target shopping ... (said in sing-song voice, reminiscent of an

advertising slogan ... then he laughs)

(There is a Target shopping centre near to the school.)

Jim appears to enjoy responding to the software icons displayed on the

screen. He makes imaginative, metaphoric leaps between icon and word;

intertextual references to other arenas of life; and diverse physical

gestures and vocal responses. In this process, local knowledge and

popular cultural references intertwine; the worlds outside and inside

the classroom interconnect. There had been no previous evidence of this

kind of verbal dexterity and playfulness on Jim's part when he had been

observed by the researcher in other classroom contexts. What can be

learned from this?

Johnson-Eilola's (1997) work on computer interfaces and literacy

practices would seem particularly suggestive with respect to designing

further research arising from these observations of Jim. For example,

Johnson-Eilola writes that computer interfaces - by which he means

visual screen displays, keyboards, mice, trackpads, sound waves through

speaker and microphone and more - "play out a range of assumptions,

authorisations and challenges to literacy practices" (p. 190). He

argues that both entertainment and educational computer games encourage

forms of what he calls "simultaneous, parallel reading". Further, he

goes on to suggest that simulation games may teach users to "juggle

multiple, dynamic vectors of information without attempting to

understand them fully. Instead, they play out multiple hypotheses about

connections among numerous symbolic forces" (p. 194-5). Introducing the

construction of multimodal texts into the literacy curriculum seems

certain to provide opportunities for students to make connections -

both conventional and experimental - among numerous symbolic forces,

and in ways which print literacy does not.

Johnson-Eilola's suggestions may be useful in understanding what Jim is

doing here, as well as the context in which he might have learned to

make such responses. For example, Jim's verbalisations with respect to

the dot point graphic ( on the screen show that he is making multiple

associations, based initially at least on the multimodal semiotic

potential of the graphic: its visual associations with a shooting

target, its narrative associations with the act of shooting, and its

aural associations with gun shots. This is quickly followed by other

associations, for example, the visual association with the Target

shopping centre logo, which in turn leads to a connection with the

musical modalities of in-store audio advertising and television

advertising jingles. It may follow that, as Smith & Curtain (1997)

suggest, "it may be more productive for educators to understand the

content and pedagogy of advertising and commercial IT entertainment

instead of educational theoretical dogma" (p. 230).8

Extract 3

In the course of her instruction about how to make buttons, the teacher

describes the icon which indicates an "active" button as having

"marching ants around it". Within an instant of her saying this, Jim

and Theo physically zoom their faces in close to the screen. They peer

at the moving line around the button icon and start talking to the dots

as if they are ants. What they say is inaudible. The boys then

simultaneously burst out laughing. A few minutes later, they act out a

more elaborate scenario based on the phrase "marching ants".

Jim: (in a sing-song voice)

I'm looking at ants ... ... black ants ... ...

(changes tone ) ... white ants ...

(laughs at the implication of white ants)

In harmony, but apparently spontaneously, Jim and Theo break into a

military style rendition of soldiers marching in unison on parade,

swinging their arms in time with the words:

Jim: Hup ... Hup ... Hup ...

Theo: Hup ... Hup ... Hup ...

When this performance ends, Jim again moves his face closer to the

screen and begins to construct a narrative about the ants/ dashes

moving around the button icon.

Jim: Look ... (to no-one in particular) .. it's gonna die ...

Aaaaaaah ... (screeched as an ant character)

Catch you later, buddy. ... (spoken as a character in the narrative

pursuing the ants)

It falls into a hole. ... (spoken as narrator of the narrative)

Eeeeeeeh Aaaaaaah ... (spoken as an ant character)

What can be said about this extract of the transcript? Firstly, it may

well have been the teacher's use of metaphor - the moving dashes as

marching ants - which triggered the boys' behaviours. Secondly, as Jim

and Theo engage with the screen, they seem to be able to bring to bear

some interests - and perhaps some "literacies" - which are not in

evidence or not sanctioned in other non computer-based lessons. These

have some resonance with Johnson-Eilola's points with respect to

computer interfaces and literacy practices. Thirdly, we could speculate

that there is a particular kind of what Bourdieu calls habitus in

evidence here. That is, the boys exhibit a particular set of

dispositions and competences, ways of holding the body, and so forth,

as they act-out, jump about, sing and chant, and generally "relate" to

the screen. These are perhaps more normally associated with the forms

of dramatic play in which young children engage than with what year 7

students routinely do in literacy lessons. It is worth considering

whether there may be lessons to be learned here with respect to the

kinds of curriculum and pedagogical practices likely to "engage" boys

like Jim, even where no computers are present.

Fourthly, as the boys engage with the screen, Jim in particular

provides a running commentary which can be compared with multimedia.

That is, what Jim does could be described as a kind of multimodal

performance. While he works at the screen he makes sounds, makes word

associations and puns, sings, jokes, and tells stories. This in turn is

a performance which makes references to scenarios from popular media

culture and raises complex issues to do with "living (in) media

culture" (Green, 1992/1995). Teachers and researchers may well ask

whether and how such practices should be harnessed towards the

production of more conventional classroom literacy activities and

outcomes.

Extract 4

Jim and Theo begin to enter their pre-drafted written text into the

computer onto the Hypercard cards. While at first this appears

daunting, they do not give up.

Jim: We have to write all that, Theo ...

(groans as he lifts the text on the written plan up to Theo's face for

him to see)

Theo: Read it out to me ...

Jim: (Reads from text) "Report Cards ...

Once the heading "Report Cards' has been entered, Jim continues by

directing Theo about how to enter text.

Theo: Read it out to me ...

Jim: (Reads from text)

"Report Cards.

Teachers gave out Report Cards every term.

Nowadays, teachers give them out at the end of second term and the end

of fourth term.

(gives Theo instructions about layout)

Para ... Next line ...

(evaluates how it looks on the screen)

That's it.

(confirms it is OK to continue keying in text, then changes his mind)

Do another gap.

(Theo presses the return key, adding more space. Satisfied with the

layout on the screen, Jim returns to reading from the prepared text

while Theo keys in the words)

"The Report Cards have changed frequently over the past years. They

have always informed parents and the kids on how they are going in the

classroom ...

Here Jim and Theo seem to be doing something quite interesting by way

of making apparently seamless transitions between the visual and the

verbal, between various kinds of literate practices. Here they show

evidence of paying attention to conventions of standard Australian

spoken and written English. They also pay attention to the "look" of

the text on the screen, to the layout of the text. They seem able to

communicate this quite sophisticated knowledge to each other in a way

which gets the job done efficiently. The boys are engaged in the task

of producing a linguistically "correct" piece of text which is also

shaped to be aesthetically pleasing. They seem to be carrying over to

this multimedia task existing knowledges from at least two domains:

conventional literacy teaching - for example, scribing and

conferencing; and their media-related experiences out of school - for

example, experiences with screens, visual and verbal effects, and so

on. What they demonstrate is a kind of hybrid literacy or what Downes

and Reddacliff (1997) call "bi-literacy".

Concluding remarks

The pilot study described here is informed by the view that literacy is

better described in the plural as "literacies", and that literate

practices are constructed in actual sites where people use language for

particular social purposes. Ethnographic research is regarded as useful

for conducting researching in this area. However, we have not been the

first to realise that collaborative, ethnographic, participatory

research is not an easy thing to do (eg Edelsky & Boyd, 1993; Reid et

al., 1996). During the course of our short time together, the teachers

and the researchers - separately and together - had moments of

anxiety, stress and disagreement, which Motley and I eventually decided

to call "moments of productive tension" (Motley & Nixon, 1997). Much of

the stress in this kind of research arises because the work is

labour-intensive and requires considerable negotiation to fit into the

complex demands of the school-day and the university researchers'

schedules. However, our experience in this pilot study suggests that

some of the limitations of ethnographic approaches were due to the

computer-based nature of the work. For example, the physical

disposition of students and machines is such that there is increased

difficulty in seeing and recording what it is that students say and do

as they work. Further, there is often so much activity that there are

further difficulties with recording it. Nonetheless, it seems to us

that ethnographic work of this kind is still necessary and useful. The

observations of student talk and behaviour previously discussed which

had been "unavailable" to Motley and Sutton, suddenly became available

for use by the teachers in carrying out their computer-based literacy

teaching. The teachers freely acknowledge that their own work was

modified - and in their view for the better - as a result of

discussions they had about the researcher's field notes.

The ten week period of the pilot study was insufficient to develop

detailed profiles of the literacy development of the focus students in

each site. We were unable to focus as closely on individual children as

we had intended due to complexities of programming, which meant there

were limited occasions during which individual children could be

observed. It also proved difficult to focus on more than one or two

students at any one time. In addition, case studies require continued

observation over a period of time rather than intense observation

within a short period. However the observations that were done

demonstrated the value of looking at the enacted literacy curriculum

through the responses of different children. What is highlighted,

however, is the great deal of commitment, time and energy required to

carry out this kind of longitudinal ethnographic research.

In general terms, the researcher's observations of Jim at work

constructing multimedia texts reconfirmed that a great deal more than

teachers' "intended" curriculum happens in the literacy classroom. For

example, the data generated by the researcher provides very little

information against which to evaluate Jim's achievement with respect to

Motley's aims and objectives listed earlier. On the other hand, the

data is rich with respect to the complexities of "teaching" the

construction of multimedia texts within the literacy curriculum.

Further, the research produced other "findings" of use to teachers

attempting this kind of work. For example, teachers found that using

technology in the repertoire of literacy teaching means that as

teachers they need to develop new skills, such as those related to the

teaching of "design". They also found the need to consider how to

develop understandings of the semiotic potentialities of modes other

than the verbal (Kress, 1997). More broadly, a critical orientation to

pedagogy in such contexts may require that attention be given to

teaching and learning abut the production and reception of images. Thus

what is understood by teachers as "critical literacy" curriculum may

change markedly when the use of computers is integrated into the

curriculum (Peters & Lankshear, 1996).

In conclusion, one of the complex questions we are left with is, what

can we do - as researchers and teachers - to explore further the

potential of the kind of "engagement" and hybrid literacy practice

evidenced by Jim and Theo during this project? More broadly, what might

be the implications for curriculum and schooling of some of these

apparent cross-overs between the screen-based worlds outside and inside

the classroom? Specific questions which research might address include:

¥ what are useful ways of recording and generating data for

ethnographic research into computer-based literacy teaching and

learning?

¥ what relationships are there be between "screen-related events"

(Sanger et al., 1997) and "literacy events" as they are conventionally

thought of? What comparisons can be made between the kinds of reading,

talking, listening and writing surrounding students' work in

print-based literacy and in computer-based literacy activities?

¥ what is the potential of computers (and popular culture?) to bridge

the outside/inside school gap? To inform literacy curriculum and

pedagogy?

¥ if this kind of carry-over mainly comes from boys' experience with

computer and video games, what are the implications for girls? What

might inclusive curriculum and pedagogy more generally look like in

these contexts?

¥ what might a critical multimedia literacy look like in practice? How

might it be evaluated?

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1 The pilot study "Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Students and the

Acquisition of School Literacies" was conducted by B. Comber, L. Badger

and H. Nixon, Language and Literacy Research Centre, the University of

SA, with J. Pitt, DECS, and DECS teachers R. Motley, A. Sutton, M.

Davies, R. Dow, M. Wells and S. Pininis.

2 For DECS, one desired outcome of long-term project is that the

information produced about how specific school literacy curricula take

account of socio-cultural factors in literacy education can in turn

inform policy development and professional development with respect to

literacy and disadvantage. Some outcomes of this kind from the pilot

project are in the process of being produced for publication in 1998,

for example Nixon et al., (forthcoming).

3 In Australia, computers are more likely to be found in households

that have children, are classified as white collar, are located in

capital cities, where the head of the household left school after age

17; and that have a high household income (Apple Computer Inc., 1996).

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on the household use of

information technology shows that 19.5% of households with incomes of

$13,001-$24,000 had a household computer, as compared with 30.6% of

households with incomes of $24,001-$38,000, 46.6% of households with

incomes of $38,001- $46,000, and 52.9% of households with incomes over

$57,001 (ABS, 1996).

4 The final version of the text remains incomplete as the end of the

year came and Motley left the school. Nonetheless, the researcher

observed the year 7 students creating the sets of Hypercard stacks

which formed the structure of the hypermedia text, and Motley had

previously taken similar projects to completion with other student

groups across the range of year levels.

5 Although all students had some previous experience with the

multimedia software Claris Kid Pix to make slide shows and newspapers,

the software Hypercard and hypertext documents were new to most of

them.

6 Time does not permit a full discussion of both issues here. The

issue of gender inequities is discussed in more detail in Nixon et al.,

(forthcoming) where it is suggested that the new spatial dispositions

of computer-based classrooms may require rigorous scrutiny in terms of

gendered practices. The limited observations in this pilot study

suggest that gender imbalance and the harassment of girls seem to work

themselves in micro-dimensions of practice which may be "newly

invisible" to teachers in computer-based classrooms.

7 In Hypercard, new buttons become 'hot links' in hypertext, enabling

the 'creator' and 'reader' to move from point to point - ie card to

card - in a document in a non-linear fashion. What 'appears' on the

screen at each point or link is what is inserted on each card by the

constructor of the hypermedia/multimedia text. This may include written

text, graphics, sound and video.

8 I am presently undertaking an inquiry which has some affinities with

this kind of research for my doctoral dissertation "A critical

discourse analysis of the information highway and "new literacies"

within contemporary media cultures" being undertaken in the Graduate

School of Education at the University of Queensland.