September 2003 • Volume 35 • Number 1 • Pages 6-13
Student Achievement in New Literacies for the 21st Century
William KistIt is a chilly fall morning in Snow Lake, a town of 1300 people in northern Manitoba, Canada. Two sixth grade boys from Kerr School trudge off down the road toward the lakeshore. They are laden with two digital still cameras, a digital camcorder, and several notebooks. This is a school day and they are off by themselves to document the life of a local commercial fisherman. Their teacher, Clarence Fisher, has arranged for them to spend the morning with the man, who lives and works in their town. Earlier, the boys had interviewed the fisherman on the phone; this morning the boys are recording their experiences on the two digital still cameras and one video camcorder. They also write notes in their paper notebooks. When the boys get back, they sort through the data they have collected with Mr. Fisher. They use this data to make Web page reports as well as other exhibitions.
What exactly is student achievement in Mr. Fisher's middle school classroom? In brief, it involves both product and process, and achievement is assessed both individually and collaboratively. A key component of both the product and the process in this "new literacies" classroom is that the students need to be conversant in multiple forms of representation—they must collect and process a certain amount of information, including nonprint material such as photographs, video footage, and phone interview data. Also, students need to be able to think and talk about what they have done. The thinking and talking about the work is as much an expected achievement as is the product of the work.
Mr. Fisher echoes the thoughts of many new literacies teachers in that he believes there exists "official" achievement and "unofficial" achievement for his students. Some unofficial literacies are left out of the dialogue when we are talking about student achievement and remain hidden, missing, unassessed. This article describes some alternative conceptions of student achievement based on a research project that is profiling new literacies classrooms across the United States and Canada.
New Literacies (and New Achievement) for New Times
Our children exist in a world of multiple signs, with more engaging symbol systems available than ever before. Conventional print text is just one of many available sign systems. The challenge in these new times will be to teach students how to engage with these new textual worlds (Buckingham & Sefton-Green, 1994; Eisner, 1994, 1997; Flood & Lapp, 1995; Kress, 1997; Luke & Elkins, 1998; New London Group, 1996; Reinking, 1997; Willinsky, 1990). These new literacies have been referred to as "intermediality" (Semali & Watts Pailliotet, 1999), "critical media literacy," (Lankshear, with Gee, Knobel, & Searle, 1997), "multiple ways of knowing" (Short & Harste, with Burke, 1996) and "multigenre writing and reading" (Romano, 1995, 2000). The IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts have included a call for students to achieve literacy in both print and nonprint texts (National Council of Teachers of English/International Reading Association, 1996). Several nations and educational jurisdictions (Singapore, Australia, and the Western Canadian provinces) have now included "multiliteracies" in their standards documents. Students who are not able to take part in communicating with these new codes and the new identities they entail may be left out of the new economy. (For an overview of new literacies, see Hagood, 2000; Kist, 2000).
What will student achievement look like in an environment in which students will be engaging with new globalized texts as they negotiate new identities as well as become fluent in metalanguages to critically approach these new codes and economies? What is student achievement in a new literacies classroom?
Search for New Literacies Classrooms
For the last several years, I have been working on a research study to find new literacy classrooms across the United States and Canada (Kist, 2001). This study has been funded as an AT&T Learning Network Fellows study through the Research Center for Educational Technology (www.rcet.org) at Kent State University. The goal of this current research project is to find new literacy classrooms and use the case study approach to describe particular new literacies classrooms, and also to build grounded theory, thus using an heuristic methodology (Merriam, 1998). Conclusions and trends have come from data collected in real new literacies classrooms.
New literacies classrooms have been nominated by their peers or have been self-nominated via education-related listservs such as the Media Literacy listserv (Media-l@nmsu.edu) and the OCTELA Issues listserv from the Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts (OctelaIssues-L@listserv.kent.edu). Follow-up phone interviews have been conducted with nominees to finalize the selection process.
To be chosen for case study research, the classroom needed to show evidence, during follow-up phone interviews and observations, of exhibiting at least three of the five characteristics of new literacy classrooms—(a) allowing for and encouraging work in multiple forms of representation, (b) having open dialogues about the merits of various symbol systems, (c) teachers working in alternative media themselves, (d) assigning a balance of individual and collaborative work, and (e) demonstrating abundant evidence of student engagement (Kist, 2000). I felt that these characteristics, developed from a review of new literacies research, were rare enough that if a classroom had a majority of these characteristics, then I believed I was well on the way towards establishing this classroom as a new literacy classroom.
At this writing, four case studies have been developed, with approximately five more to be profiled in 2003. Out of the four classroom teachers profiled, three of them responded to specific queries focusing on achievement which forms the basis for this article. New literacies classrooms referred to in this article include Clarence Fisher's interdisciplinary (self-contained) classroom; Lee Rother's media-infused English class for at-risk adolescents; and Pam Bauman's multimedia-based elementary classroom.
Case studies of the classrooms have included observations, interviews of students and teachers, and document analysis (Merriam, 1998; Patton, 1990). Data sets have then been prepared, reduced, and analyzed in a recursive, interactive process (Merriam, 1998). Categories of data have been uncovered and refined utilizing the constant-comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), with the intent that the categories reflect the purpose of the research, be exhaustive, mutually exclusive, sensitizing, and conceptually congruent (Merriam, 1998). To verify interpretations, peer raters have coded 20% of the data from two cases and reached agreement with my coding more than 80% of the time. Also, a chain of evidence has been kept throughout data collection to serve as a "member check." In addition, participants in the study have read the final narratives and any published work related to the study, also serving as a "member check" (Merriam, 1998).
This article focuses on one of the questions I asked these participating teachers: "How do you conceptualize student achievement in a new literacies classroom?"
Some New Literacies Approaches to Achievement
Many of the new literacies teachers struggle with their own definitions of achievement. As these teachers attempt to create classrooms that honor and feature multiliteracies, they also see a widening divide between their own definitions of achievement, and the official state or provincial definitions of achievement, ones that tend to promote print literacy exclusively.
Clarence Fisher's classroom
"Achievement is a tricky thing to me as it covers a lot of ground," said Clarence Fisher. "There is the 'official' version of achievement which includes the students 'mastering' to the greatest degree possible the curriculum outcomes which have been mandated by the province I teach in. To me, this version is narrow and constrained and seems to be focused on very few things—academic knowledge, almost as a door to sort kids out not to help them achieve more. On the other hand, achievement to me personally means having the kids work on an expanded set of skills which are useful to them now and hopefully as they grow into citizens of a 21st century, technologically-advanced nation."
A sign in Fisher's classroom states, "School is not about doing—it is about thinking and learning." "This is what achievement means to me," Fisher says. "It is about students pursuing a learning agenda that grows out of what we are required to do by the province, but which evolves as we examine the issue as a class to have some personal meaning."
As Fisher notes, he does have to follow a government curriculum that has very specific objectives or indicators in the areas of English, French, social studies, science, and mathematics. But Fisher and his colleagues at Kerr School took the government curriculum and wrote 56 large units that stress higher-level thinking skills and use of technology. Each class usually progresses through six major units each year. Several units spanning several grade levels focused on one of the nearby lakes that used to be a tourist attraction but is "falling apart." In each of the grades, students study one aspect of the lake—its history, for example, or environmental concerns. Fisher's class also works on international collaborative projects; this year his students are collaborating with a class in the Netherlands on a project studying lifestyles and sustainable industries in both Manitoba and the Netherlands. The students are utilizing software called Knowledge Forum that Fisher describes, "as a database with scaffolds. Students input data as they do research and these notes become searchable. [The software] has opened up our space—kids can input data and read comments from home or anywhere."
"So achievement is tricky," Clarence says. "It has an official angle and an unofficial angle and it is often a tricky balancing act as a teacher to ensure that these two contradictory sides of the issue are held in some type of balance. It often involves teaching the kids about these two angles and teaching them why they are important to work with and when it is important to pursue each angle. Teach the kids the rules so they know when to break them!"
Lee Rother's classroom
Lee Rother teaches in an alternative setting housed in Lake of Two Mountains High School, a school for grades 7-11 in suburban Montreal. The day that I observed, his "at risk" students were chanting in unison the shot numbers as they examined a storyboard (with numbered scenes) for the crop duster sequence in Hitchcock's North by Northwest. As the scene played silently, students closely matched the storyboard with what was actually put on the screen. As each edit occurred, students shouted out in unison the corresponding scene number. Meanwhile, two students were in the back of the room working to create an animated graphic design using the Flash animation software. Another student worked nearby editing a video on a desktop computer. Dr. Rother had brought in some raw footage from a family wedding, and the assignment was to weave the footage together into a coherent story using titles, graphics, and editing techniques. As I watched over his shoulder, the student had set up his first title which read, "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful maiden." As much as this may look like a video production class, it is not. It is an English class.
How does Rother conceptualize achievement in such a learning environment? When I asked him, he also compared and contrasted the official sanctioned achievement with the unofficial achievement. "Really there are two ways to answer you; one is according to schooling's definition (i.e., marks, credits, and graduation). The other is my way." Lee goes on to say that the official signposts of student achievement in his school include having students complete coursework in which they have fallen behind and being able to go on to some kind of further education. "My (own) definition of student achievement is first, completing two years in my program (especially suffering under my teaching); completing two to four work study sessions; developing self-confidence; opening up in terms of communication skills; and, emotionally, desiring to learn and continue learning in and out of school, and no longer (being) resistant to writing and reading print." Rother admits, "Frankly I have always had difficulty defining achievement, especially when considered in a collective and/or schooling context."
Pam Bauman's classroom
Pam Bauman teaches at Lafayette Elementary School in rural Medina, Ohio. Her classroom is infused with multiple forms of representation as students listen to music, examine newspaper advertisements, draw, design "quilts," work in various software, and, of course, read. Thinking about student achievement Bauman says:
Every school district feels the pressure to improve test scores as evidence of achievement. … I can embrace high expectations for each child but resist the notion that if I teach harder the students will learn faster. … I believe there are developmental stages through which each child will pass at his or her own pace and that is as it should be. The children learn on different schedules and in so many different ways—through song, movement, art, chatting with others—all of them valid. It is my charge to create those opportunities for learning that engage each child. It is my job to meet each student and take each as far as I can. To that end, I believe students achieve most when they are in a stimulating, joyful environment that encourages discovery and risk-taking. As their teacher, I want them to enjoy the "journey." Student achievement is evidenced by examples of their work over time in portfolios. [I look for evidence of] students who have honed social skills and students who have resources for solving problems. I have succeeded as their teacher if I have helped to mold students who can think, who have strategies for finding answers, and who are good friends and citizens.
Achievement in New Literacies Classrooms
These new literacies teachers all express a tension between official conceptions of achievement and their own conceptions of achievement. Based on their comments and my own observations, I have formed some characteristics of achievement in a new literacies classroom.
Achievement equals fluency in multiple forms of representation
Achievement in a new literacies classroom means that students work daily at reading and writing in multiple forms of representation, including both print and non-print media. Achievement means that students become capable of both authoring and reading in media beyond print. In Fisher's classroom, this characteristic of achievement resides both in the product and in the process of authoring. Each is assessed using rubrics. Indeed, achievement might be correlated with a student's ability to go back and forth between different media—"code switching," in effect.
As Eisner (1997) has stated, "competency in the use of a form of representation provides access to particular forms of experience and therefore to ways of understanding" (p. 353). And, as Dewey (1934/1980) said, "The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so close to the object that he is producing that they merge directly into it" (p. 16). When students are allowed to utilize non-print-based media, some students seemed to find a fluency that they had rarely experienced in traditional classroom settings (Gardner, 1983, 1993, 1995). As Rother comments, "When the kids often come to my program, for all intents and purposes, they are mute. … They've learned to shut up. Keep your mouth shut, and the teacher won’t know that you don't know the answers. I want to get them talking." Student achievement in new literacies classrooms equates with students being free to express themselves in a variety of media.
Achievement equals critical thinking and talking about the work
In new literacies classrooms, there are explicit discussions of the merits of using certain symbol systems in certain situations with much student choice allowed and encouraged (Eisner, 1994, 1997; Greeno & Hall, 1997; New London Group, 1996). Achievement in new literacies classrooms is reached when students are able to have a conversation about (even deconstructing) different symbol systems. In these classrooms, there are meta-dialogues by the teacher who models working through problems using certain symbol systems (Tishman & Perkins, 1997). Achievement in such a classroom would really correlate with a kind of empowerment of students to utilize all the symbol systems available.
In Fisher's classroom, the day usually starts with a freewheeling discussion of both large-scale and small-scale questions related to the work at hand. Students ask burning questions, perhaps left over from the day before. These questions may be technical in nature: "How do we re-size images on a Web page?" "How do we make contact with information (we need?)" "What do we do if we find three different answers on three different Web sites (for example, the population listed for a town)?" Mr. Fisher recently had a dialogue around the question "What is 'quality'?" What is quality for a picture? For a Web page? For a math problem? Then Fisher may do a lesson or two that are research or tech-related. After that, the students are off and running on their research projects, as were the two boys going off to spend the morning with the fisherman.
In Rother's classroom, there is much explicit discussion of all of the tools of communication and how those tools can be used. One of Rother's students, Steve, described how he had learned to "read" a movie: "Basically, it’s taking down mental notes on everything that does happen in a movie—foreshadowing, for instance, like small things, like why things happen in a movie, and for what reason exactly—the background, the lighting, the mood, the settings. There's a lot of things that take place. … You just look at the movie differently. You realize it more." Interestingly, Steve comments on his ability to draw on these critical "reading" skills when he interacts with print: "When you read a book, you basically see it as if you are watching a movie, but you’re reading. We learned to read a movie, so now, when you read a book, it’s like, basically reading the movie."
In new literacies classrooms, student achievement goes beyond the ability to regurgitate plot details. In these classrooms, students are achievers when they demonstrate the ability to discuss and reflect on the characteristics of the multiplicity of codes now available to them in these new times.
Achievement equals collaboration
Students in new literacies classrooms are frequently expected to collaborate. In fact, this balance between individual and collaborative activities is a key part of their development of creativity and thinking (John-Steiner, 1997). In Fisher's class, students are expected to return to their groups and reflect on how they have made progress on their group planning chart, which they have formed at the beginning of the week to make work plans for the week. In Bauman’s class, a key part of the day is "Workshop" when students pair off at the computer, work collaboratively at math stations, or read collaboratively. As Bauman explained, her desire to get students adept at collaborating plays an important part in how she structures her classroom. In addition, students in Bauman's classroom also have room to work by themselves. Always during Workshop I would see some students working by themselves, intently drawing a picture or reading a book. The Workshop structure allowed for a balance between individual and collaborative activities. It was important to Bauman to help students learn to work together. In discussing her math stations setup, she says, "I think … as much as they need to practice the math skills, they also need to practice their negotiating skills. And if you spill something, you clean it up. And if you can’t work the rules out with somebody, then you have to talk about and you have to figure it out."
As students will be entering a world in which economies are frequently structured around collaborating even on an international level, it is important for these new literacies classrooms that student achievement equals student collaboration.
Achievement equals engagement
New literacy classrooms are places of student engagement in which some students report achieving Csziksentmihalyi’s (1990, 1991, 1993) "flow" state. These new literacies classrooms are not places for passive learners. In each of the classrooms I have observed, students spend very little time sitting and listening. They are expected to be active readers and writers of various texts on their own, with frequent breaks for reflecting and deconstructing work both individually and collaboratively. Steve, the student in Rother's class reports, "I don’t dread coming to school in the morning as I did in my previous school. … Back in my old school, I think I was in school I think like 50 days out of the whole school year. I had no intention of waking up and going to school. I thought staying at home was funner. Now, I was sick one day and it was boring at home."
In Rother's class, when they are not deconstructing various media texts or creating their own media texts, students are engaged in running their own business—a media center that serves the entire school district. The students videotape school and community events, edit them, and distribute them. Also included in the media center is a circulating library of videos that the students administer. In new literacies classrooms, students are expected to be active, engaged, doers. In these classrooms, student achievement equals student engagement.
Implications
In any consideration of student achievement, the issue of assessment must follow. So how is student achievement assessed in new literacies classrooms that gets at whether a student can read and write in nonprint forms of representation; whether a student is able to carry on a metadialogue about a text he or she has authored or one authored by another; whether a student is able to effectively collaborate; and whether a student is engaged? In the four new literacies classrooms observed at this writing, students were most often assessed in a variety of ways and these assessments were collected in some kind of portfolio system. A crucial component of these assessments is that students must reflect on their own self-made goals. Students are assessed on their product achievement and their process achievement and complete a portfolio of their work in multimedia form, essentially creating a kind of electronic portfolio system. Such an electronic portfolio can include scanned photos of student work in multimedia; checklists of student behaviors as they collaborate; video footage of each student working collaboratively; examples of "think-alouds" as students describe their processes of creating a product in some medium; and letters in which students self-reflect on how they believe they have reached their goals. Traditional paper/pencil achievement tests, which are taken in isolation and use print-based formats, are not going to assess the achievements needed by students as they move deep into the 21st century.
One of the prime reasons given for broadening our definition of literacy has been empowerment for those who need to be able to speak using a variety of media (Bruce & Hogan, 1998; Delpit, 1995; Gee, 1996, 2000; Luke, 2000; New London Group, 1996; Willinsky, 1990). But in addition to the political dimensions of new literacy, there may also be motivational, affective implications of creating new literacy classrooms. Readers who are categorized as at risk may actually suffer from passive failure—they have the skills to process print, but they are not motivated to do so given the boring texts they are often given (Johnston & Winograd, 1985). What can teachers and parents do to encourage more engaged reading (Gambrell, 1996; Guthrie, 1996)? We know that one big motivator has been students’ being allowed some choices (Gambrell, 1996; Hunt, 1970/1996; Worthy, 1996). We need to broaden the choices available to students to include choice of medium.
Ultimately, to meet the needs of our adolescents, we will need to meet them (and assess them) on their own literacy turf. And their turf is wider and more encompassing of different media than the turf of older generations who gravitated to print—which was itself once an "alternative" medium to orality (Ong, 1982; Resnick, 1991).
These new literacies classrooms truly honor "cognitive pluralism" (John-Steiner, 1997) simply
by allowing students to work on applied projects (Dewey, 1899/1980) carried out in a variety of media. Cognitive pluralism is achieved in both implicit and explicit ways—students are given tacit approval to work in multiple forms at the same time that the characteristics of these forms are explicitly discussed. Attention is called explicitly to the qualities of different forms. There is also a balance of individual and collaborative experiences (John-Steiner, 1997).
Ultimately, a print-centric focus for student achievement in our schools may be holding some of our adolescent readers and writers back from achieving to their utmost capabilities and developing meaningful literacy lives that will last them well into this century.
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William Kist is an assistant professor of curriculum & instruction at Kent State University, Stark Campus, Canton, Ohio. E-mail: wkist@kent.edu
Copyright © 2003 by National Middle School Association