PHD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Calls for research in multimodality and multiliteracies have provided the field of writing studies with theories and outcomes suggesting that more research is necessary in FYC students' multimodal composing processes and literacy practices. Much of the research in New Literacies Studies (NLS) focuses on students' final products. This dissertation investigates the literacy activities that take place in situ while FYC students compose a multimodal project. Through empirical research methods, my research on multimodal composing processes addresses the question of what FYC students actually do when composing and aims to discover the literate practices, tools, and sites that FYC students draw on when composing an argument multimodally. Drawing on the scholarship of NLS, specifically that of the New London Group's Framework for Design and other new literacies scholarship, my dissertation provides thick descriptions through the use of screencasts and talk aloud protocol of 18 FYC students' multimodal composing processes. Each study participant recorded themselves for 60 minutes providing rich, generative data for description, interpretation, and analysis. My research interrogates the relationship between digital literacies and the ways in which FYC students identify, interpret, create, and communicate meaning across a variety of modes - - visual, linguistic, spatial, aural, and gestural - - and their affordances. It provides concrete examples of the technological and rhetorical forms of communication students engage with during the multimodal composing process of an academic argument. Participants in my study describe their choices of genres created for persuasion and agency. Beyond a linguistic notion of literacy, this study's participants display an awareness of the social contexts and wider cultural factors that frame communication and, in the case of their multimodal project, further their communicative purposes. This dissertation calls for professional development eff (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Pamela Takayoshi (Advisor) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2023, Antioch New England: Environmental Studies

We know that when children feel a sense-of-relation within local natural environments, they are more prone to feel concern for them, while nurturing well-being and resilience in themselves and in lands/waters they inhabit. Positive environmental behaviors often follow into adulthood. Our human capacities for creating sustainable solutions in response to growing repercussions of global warming and climate change may grow if more children feel a sense of belonging in the wild natural world. As educators, if we listen to and learn from students' voices about how they engage in nature, we can create pedagogical experiences directly relevant to their lives. Activities that relate to learners' lives inspire motivation, curiosity, and furthers understanding. Behaviors supporting environmental stewardship, environmental justice, and participation in citizen science and phenology are more probable when children feel concern for ecological landscapes. Internationally, some educators are free to encourage a sense-of -relation by bringing students into natural places. Yet, there are many educators who are constrained from doing so by strict local, state, and national education policies and accountability measures. Overcoming restrictions requires creative, relevant, and enjoyable learner-centered opportunities. Research shows that virtual nature experiences can provide for beneficial connections with(in) nature for children and adults. It is best to bring children outside. When this is not possible, a sense of wonder may be encouraged in the classroom. Our exploratory collaborative digital landscape-lore project makes this possible. We expand awareness about how we, educators, and children alike, are engaged within the landscapes and waterscapes significant to us. The term landscape-lore articulates the primacy of the places we find meaningful. Our intercultural investigations took place in collaborative public schools in colonized landscapes. New Hampshire and New Zealand, k (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Jordan PhD (Committee Chair); Jean Kayira PhD (Committee Member); Robert Taylor PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Ecology; Education; Education Philosophy; Educational Psychology; Educational Theory; Environmental Education; Environmental Justice; Environmental Studies; Folklore; Geography; Literacy; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Native American Studies; Physical Geography; Sustainability

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2019, EDU Teaching and Learning

This paper aims to support a multiliteracies pedagogy in equitable literacy programs. With the nature of literacy changing, schools should also change how they approach literacy. Through clarification of the definition of literacy and equity, a pedagogy of multiliteracies is suggested to be used to teach this new definition of literacy equitably. By reviewing roughly the past 20 years of elementary setting multiliteracies research, the author shares what a multiliteracies pedagogy has the potential to do to support equity in both theory and reality. Issues regarding implementation are also reviewed to discuss potential obstacles in effective use of what could be considered an equitable pedagogy.

Committee: Michiko Hikida (Advisor); Mindi Rhoades (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Literacy

EdD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Literacy and Second Language Studies

For over 20 years, researchers and state boards of education have been emphasizing the importance of incorporating digital literacies into instruction. Based on the perceived potential of digital technologies to create greater educational opportunities, and the push from state governments to empower students to fully participate in our knowledge-based economy, proponents have advocated for the incorporation of increasingly computer dependent, blended learning experiences in the classroom, presenting them as fundamental to academic achievement and career success. As public K-12 school districts in Ohio increase their investment in classroom technology through blended learning initiatives, it is important to understand how students and teachers from varied geographic and socioeconomic settings conceptualize the utility and value of blended learning as a platform for learning and literacy. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain insight into the conceptualizations of middle level students and teachers from three socioeconomically and geographically diverse public school settings regarding their experiences with blended learning in order to understand the factors that influence the teaching and learning transaction. To better understand these influences, the study employed metaphor analysis (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), as well as the critical lenses of Brandt's (2001) theoretical framework of literacy sponsorship and the theory of multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996). Analysis of the transcripts suggests that blended learning initiatives would benefit from enhanced blended learning curricula, emphasizing multimodality, choice, facilitation, and social context in digitally integrative instruction.

Committee: Connie Kendall Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Laura Bauer Ed.D. (Committee Member); Mark Sulzer Ph.D. (Committee Member); Susan Watts Taffe Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Software

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, EDU Teaching and Learning

Multimodality is beginning to receive attention in the field of L2 writing research; however, its impact on the development of L2 learners' writing ability is not yet fully understood. Of several issues of multimodal composition research, where multimodal composition takes place and what L2 learners learn through composing multimodal are two issues that need to be addressed to gain a more comprehensive understanding of learners' multimodal composition practices. In response to the potential issues of the current multimodal composition research, this qualitative study intends to investigate undergraduate ESL learners' experiences in the multimodal composition curriculum to understand how they navigate through the curriculum and what they learn through engaging in multimodal composition. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of multiliteracies, multimodality and the socio-cognitive approach to second language acquisition, this dissertation employs multiple sources of data in order to construct a multi-faceted view of L2 learners' experience in the multimodal composition curriculum, including course materials, student weekly reflections, progress journals, students' written and multimodal productions, interviews, class session videotaping, and researcher's fieldnotes. Findings from this dissertation suggest, while L2 learners see multimodal composition as motivating, more attention needs to be paid on L2 learners' challenges of using digital tools in multimodal composition. The three focal participants displayed versatile strategies of using different modes of communication (e.g., text and images) during the creating process. The findings also reveal a complementing role of skill-based writing exercises to the multimodal composition projects in the multimodal composition curriculum. The analysis of students' multimodal composition products indicates that L2 learners managed to use multiple semiotic resources to represent meanings in different multimodal composition p (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Youngjoo Yi (Advisor); Alan Hirvela (Committee Member); George Newell (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, EDU Teaching and Learning

As new technology has changed adolescents' literate life pathways outside school in remarkable ways, new uses of terminology, such as “mutiliteracies” (The New London Group, 1996), are necessary to capture the multi-dimensional nature of current encounters with what was long called “literacy,” a term that reflects a more limited presence in a print-mediated environment. However, there has been relatively little interest in the multliteracies experiences of Korean adolescents in the U.S., especially I the framing of them as transitional youth. This study asserts that the term “transitional youth” best captures the nature of their movement from the native language and culture they are moving from to a very new language and culture. This study examined the literacy practices of transitional Korean adolescents across three contexts—school, home, and community—from a sociocultural perspective. I conducted multiple case studies of three transitional Korean adolescents in a Midwestern city in the U.S. Over a six month period, I used multiple approaches to data collection: participant observation, non- participant observation, semi-structured interviews, field notes, informal conversations, documents, and artifact collection. I used inductive analysis of the data by focusing on the transitional students' literacy experiences in three contexts (school, home, and a community center) in terms of ways of engaging in both school and out of school literacies, the accomplishments associated with out of school literacy practices, the movement of literacy practices across contexts, literate identities in multiliteracies experiences, and the relationship between academic literacy and multiliteracies. Findings revealed that the out of school literacy practices of the participants were intricately involved in transitional and multiliteracies features of literacy activities. Their out of school literacy practices served as a means of constructing identities (a group identi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: English As A Second Language

EdD, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Education : Curriculum and Instruction

This research attempted to answer the question, “To what extent is student voice a factor in educational reform?” Student voice is defined as giving students the ability to influence learning to include policies, programs, contexts and principles (Harper, 2000). Many factors of current reform efforts support the concept of student voice to include multiliteracy pedagogy (New London Group, 1996), psychological learning principles such as student centered learning (McCombs, 1999), and emerging technologies as tools for learning (Kulik, 1994). Theoretical considerations bring to light how students and teachers must share power within the learning environment moving students along a spectrum from apprentice to expert. These ideas of situated learning (Brown, Collins and Duguid, 1989) and communities of practice (Wegner, 1998) support the call for student voice. To validate these arguments, the researcher conducted a Delphi Study (Linstone, Turoff, 1975). A group of experts in student voice, literacy, cognitive psychology, educational technology, teacher education, and educational reform participated in a process which generated significant aspects of student voice and consolidated them into a single instrument to measure student voice within a school culture. With this student voice survey instrument, which was tested for reliability and validity, the researcher then conducted a stratified, random survey to measure student voice within K-12 public schools in the United States. Due to a low response rate, no statistical or practical significance could be found. However, insights into possible relationships and information regarding student voice emerged. Student voice appears to have some value in accomplishing educational reform. Further investigations could lead to implementations of educational reform models that assist schools in preparing students for citizenship in a global, diverse and technologically advanced society.

Committee: Joyce Pittman (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, English

“From Private to Public: Narrative Rhetoric in Composition Pedagogy” argues for a rhetorical revision of narrative in composition studies. Informed by the interdisciplinary narrative turn, this project aims to move past counterproductive debates surrounding ‘personal' writing in order to attend to the rhetorical nature and uses of narrative. To this end, I draw upon a year's worth of classroom-based qualitative research at The Ohio State University in which students analyzed and composed autobiographical texts in multiple genres and modes. Based on this research, I suggest that narrative rhetoric offers an ethical, dialogic orientation toward communication with significant benefits for composition pedagogy and promise for public use. The introductory chapter establishes the exigency offered by the narrative turn and suggests that composition studies has an opportunity to redress a neglect of production in these conversations. I then briefly rehearse the history of personal writing in composition studies, wherein scholars and teachers have debated the merits of narrative in terms of student-centered pedagogies, academic discourse, and critical consciousness. Without diminishing the value of these conversations, I suggest that they have resulted in a terministic screen that emphasizes psychological and personal concerns to the relative neglect of the rhetorical uses of autobiographical composition. To more fully attend to the richness of narrative communication, I propose an alternative set of terminology gleaned from humanistic and social scientific rhetorical theories of narrative. This narrative communication model becomes both a heuristic for analysis and heuretic for production of multimodal narratives in the composition classroom. Building upon this foundation, the three case studies approach autobiographical narrative through different genres and modes. In the course documented in Chapter 2, students analyzed and composed graphic memoirs, examining comics' capa (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Evonne Kay Halasek PhD (Committee Chair); James Phelan PhD (Committee Member); Cynthia L. Selfe PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Education; Educational Technology; Higher Education; Instructional Design; Language Arts; Literacy; Pedagogy; Reading Instruction; Rhetoric; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, ED Teaching and Learning (Columbus campus)

Although several studies have shown that children use diverse ways to communicate, and many scholars have stated that early childhood education must include multiple routes to literacy, there is a lack of research using a multiliteracies lens to study how teachers and children use different modes (e.g., visual, gestural, sound) and media (e.g., book, screen, radio) to teach and learn in early childhood classroom settings. This qualitative case study took place in a kindergarten classroom where the teacher utilized multiple semiotic systems (visual, auditory, gestural, spatial, linguistic, and multimodal) in her classroom instruction and valued the children's multiliteracies performance. This study investigated why and how the teacher utilized multiple semiotic systems in the teaching and learning process, and it explored how the teacher's classroom instruction related to the children's multiliteracies performance. Serving as a participant observer, the researcher visited the case study kindergarten classroom four days a week for two months during the data collection period. Data sources included 29 entries of field notes, 29 entries in the researcher's reflection journal, 29 videotapes documenting daily classroom interaction (two hours each in average), 17 audiotapes recording interviews with the teacher (15 to 20 minutes each), 564 photographs documenting the teacher's and the children's artifacts and teaching and learning moments, and documents from the school and the teacher. The data were organized, transcribed, coded, and analyzed. Analysis of the data revealed that the kindergarten teacher's rationale for utilizing multiple semiotic systems in the teaching and learning process included: 1) to structure rich learning experiences to engage the children in actively constructing knowledge, 2) to provide a meaningful context for the children to acquire content area knowledge, and 3) to help the children make literature connections. Data analysis also revealed (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Barbara Lehman (Advisor); Patricia Scharer (Advisor); Barbara Kiefer (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2007, English

This thesis is a discussion of the author's qualitative descriptive research project, wherein the author interviewed nine graduate students in a mid-sized Midwestern university to investigate their uses of multimodality. Using the New London Group's (2000) definition of modes and designs for meaning-making, this thesis discusses the discursive and material limitations experienced by participants in the study. The study reveals the participants' pedagogical uses of multimodality, focusing on the affordances and constraints of working in traditional and computer classrooms. Following Porter, Sullivan, Grabill, and Miles' (2000) institutional critique, this thesis looks at the discursive and material spaces as they relate to the authority constructs through which graduate students navigate. It indicates a need to further explore the graduate seminar as a site for multimodal learning, as participants reveal concerns about the limitations on modality both within the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition and within their own program of study.

Committee: W. Michele Simmons (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2003, Educational Leadership

Literacy is an ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information in any form. Educators have worked to systematically address the understanding of words for students. What are we doing collectively in schools to address understanding of the image? A goal of visual literacy and effective viewing are included in the Ohio Competency Based Curriculum Model for Language Arts, leaving teachers to determine techniques and purposes independently. This qualitative, interpretative study illuminates the meanings, purposes, and methods for a visual literacy curriculum for language arts teachers within a small suburban school district in southwestern Ohio. Through ethnographic techniques a visual arts teacher searches for ways to help language arts teachers curricularize and teach for visual literacy. With philosophical underpinnings of phenomenology and Deweyan pragmatism, professional development work sessions allow teachers to determine their own working definition for visual literacy and to determine elements and art forms to be considered. Individual planning sessions, followed by classroom observations, help to draw a picture of district possibilities and directions through narrative and metaphor. Theories of cultural studies, multiliteracies, and visual culture lead students to critically deconstruct visual imagery and move them beyond individual interpretation in order to benefit the wider community. Close connections to a visual arts curriculum for visual literacy are highlighted through an autoethnographic portrait of a secondary art education approach to instruction for visual literacy. Determinations relate to levels of literacy development leading from recognition literacy, reflective literacy, to reproductive literacy, and ultimately to transformative literacy according to theories by Unsworth and the New London Group. An integrated curriculum model for teaching for visual literacy may hold the most promise for future development.

Committee: Thomas Poetter (Advisor) Subjects:

PHD, Kent State University, 2011, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Multimodal communication theorists and writing scholars have begun urging writing researchers to give increased attention to modes other than the visual. Bezemer and Kress (2008) lament the lack of constructive attempts to “elucidate the effects of the distinctive affordances of different modes and media.” Shankar (2006), focusing on affordances of speech in place of writing, argues that literacy values assigned to writing can be achieved in the domain of the oral and asserts that oral forms might fruitfully be revalued as literate composition. Glynda Hull and Mark Nelson, in their 2005 article, “Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality,” reference the tendency to favor print over other modes, then also go on to invite further research into semiotic function of isolated, yet co-present modalities. Their research and analysis of data involving “multimedia digital storytelling” prompts them to call for a reconceptualization of writing—one that embraces multimodality in the composition of texts. Bezemer and Kress (2008), Shankar (2006), and Hull and Nelson (2005) have called for greater attention to the mode of sound, and while some preliminary work along these lines has been done, the discussion on the use of audio in writing classrooms is quite limited. One emerging writing form, the audio essay, uses digital technology to stretch the traditional essay assignment across the two modalities of speech and writing. Although the audio essay is becoming increasingly common in writing classrooms, we as yet know little about how this new form is understood, either by students or by teachers. The goals of this dissertation project are to describe four instances of classroom practice in which a multimodal essay writing assignment foregrounds the mode of sound. The project provides a snapshot of instructor practices at a specific point in time, describing the way four instructors talk with undergraduate writing students about affordances of sound and related principles of c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Pamela Takayoshi PhD (Committee Chair); Raymond Craig PhD (Committee Member); Brian Huot PhD (Committee Member); Gene Pendleton PhD (Committee Member); Deborah Baurnbaum PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric

PHD, Kent State University, 2007, College of Education, Health, and Human Services / Department of Teaching, Leadership and Curriculum Studies

This grounded theory study, set in the context of two English Language Arts classrooms, sought to explore the processes and influences involved in the reading and writing (Designing) activities of two groups of students using video as the storytelling medium. The research questions guiding this study were: 1. What processes do students use to Design with video text? 2. What influences students' decision-making while Designing video texts? These questions were developed to help explore implications of students reading and composing video in an English Language Arts classroom, and what bearing those implications may have on the future of the English Language Arts curriculum. Through several data sources, including concurrent think-aloud protocols, interviews, and the students' video projects, this study demonstrated that the two case study groups were influenced heavily by their knowledge of genre and narrative structure in piecing together video narratives from pre-existing video footage. This study also demonstrated that the groups' processes of Designing were different in many ways, but shared the characteristics of being iterative and demonstrating attention to creating clarity of meaning for the audience.

Committee: David Bruce (Advisor) Subjects: