Course Syllabus

ED140AC

Literacy: Individual and Societal Development

(Fall, 2016)

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:30-2:00pm

277 Cory Hall and Respective Section Rooms (Tolman 5634, 4635, and 3515)

Professor: Glynda Hull

Email: glynda@berkeley.edu

Office:  Tolman Hall 5627

Office Hours: Mondays 1-3 and by appointment

Graduate Student Instructors

Jessica Adams Students with last names starting with A-J Section Time: Thursdays, 12:30-2pm Section: Classroom: Tolman Hall 5634 Office: 5513 Tolman Office Hours: Thursday, 2-3:30, by appointment Email: jadams333@berkeley.edu	José Lizárraga Students with last names starting with L-P Section Time: Thursdays, 12:30-2pm Section: Classroom: Tolman Hall 4635 Office: TBD, Virtual Office Hours: TBD, By Appointment Email: lizarraga@berkeley.edu
Jason Sellers Students with last names starting with Q-Z Section Time: Thursdays, 12:30-2pm Section: Classroom: Tolman Hall 3515 Office: TBD Office Hours: TBD Email: jesellers@berkeley.edu

Course Description:

The use of symbol systems such as language, writing, song, and gesture in communicating with others maintains a long history of scholarship, particularly in the field of education. With the coming of the digital age—one in which for many people paper and pencils and bodies have been replaced with screens and cameras and avatars—many practices of symbolization have moved into online, digital spheres of creation, curation, and circulation. To put this shift in perspective, every minute on the Internet in 2013, 72 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube, 216,000 photos were shared on Instagram, 278,000 Tweets were sent, and 571 new websites were created. According to a 2013 Pew Internet Survey, around 21 million (or 87% of) American teens (12-17 years old) use the Internet, while 33% of online teens share their own creative content. It is not surprising, therefore, that educators around the globe have taken a keen interest in better understanding how young people are learning online and with digital tools, and how these kinds of learning experiences can be mapped onto existing paper and pencil classroom practices and curricula. In this course, we are interested in understanding how youth develop their literate capacities, both in print and digital form, in classrooms and beyond them. We are also interested in understanding these literacy practices across time and space by exploring literacy in local and global contexts and examining schooling and education in culturally diverse classrooms in the US and around the world.

Drawing from both historical and contemporary sociocultural theories on literacy and language as well as recent empirical research from education and new media scholars, we will explore an array of digital and non-digital forms of meaning-making and symbolic creativity, such as meme-generating, video making, micro-blogging, multi-player gaming, and app designing, as well as more traditional and non-digital or pre-digital forms of cultural participation and civic engagement. Our inquiry will span both the technical and aesthetic dimensions of these practices, as well as the social contexts and global cultural and commercial flows that give those practices their meaning.

We will be guided by the following questions:

• What is literacy in a digital and global age, and what is the value of becoming and being perceived as literate?

• How do definitions of what counts as literacy vary—from place to place, context to context, time to time, language to language, mode to mode, and culture to culture?

• How do the social, cultural, and political values ascribed to these definitions of literacy impact or privilege certain modes and forms of meaning-making?

• How is literacy taught, learned, and acquired—in school and outside it, in a first language or a second or third, in global and local contexts, and online and face-to-face?

• How can classrooms be reimagined as spaces for youth to take collective action in the world as active and engaged citizens, informed by critical inquiry, self-reflection, and identity expression?

 

In this course, we will develop critical understandings of course content through the creation of texts and digital artifacts, focusing on how different media and modes of meaning-making can be used in the production and sharing of knowledge. We will also apply theoretical ideas from readings to recent news articles, teacher and practitioner blogs, educational websites, and other mediations of current happenings in the world, as well as through our fieldwork (see below for details), where we will apply key ideas and pedagogical strategies from course readings in our own educational work. In reflecting on how educational theories relate to practice, we also will learn the fundamentals of educational and ethnographic research. Students will draw upon their data collected through fieldwork, course readings, and other available course content in authoring a final Case Study paper that explores a relevant literacy theme or issue.

Throughout the course, we ask how culture intersects with learning to read and write, and we will be alert as well to how symbolic systems like written language and image convey cultural meanings and how these meanings and the cultures they represent shift, blend, and hybridize in a global and digital world. We will examine race and culture in the US across different geographic and ethnic dimensions; however, we will also explore readings and conceptual frameworks on race, culture, and language in a global world. In so doing, we will consider how traditional and bounded categories of race, culture, and language are shifting and blending amidst the broad scale circulation of cultural goods, peoples, and connective technologies.

Learning Objectives:

• Students will gain a foundation for understanding socio-cultural ideas about literacy and language through an engagement with theoretical texts, video lectures, and discussion/learning activities with peers.
• Students will gain practical strategies for teaching and working with diverse groups of young students through an engagement with practitioner blogs, video interviews with teachers, and reflective practice on their own teaching.

• Students will learn key terminology and ideas about how different forms of media, social and cultural context, and aesthetic forms shape meaning in literacy practices in and out of school, locally and globally, through engagement with key texts, video lectures, and through analysis of digital artifacts.
• Students will gain the methodological tools for conducting ethnographic and educational research through engagement with key texts, video lectures, and through their own fieldwork experiences, which culminate in drafting a case study report of their research.

• Students will gain an understanding of relationships between meaning-making and literacy practice and race, ethnicity, class, and culture, focusing on the North American context but also introducing global contexts as well through an engagement with key theoretical and empirical texts and video interviews with researchers working in these areas.

• Students will gain an understanding of the impact student race, culture, and ethnicity has on education and schooling through engagement with key texts, video lectures and reflective practice on their own teaching experiences.

• Students will gain fluency in writing and knowledge of two academic genres by composing a personal essay and a social science research report.
• Students will learn to use new digital tools in creating multimedia texts that demonstrate critical understandings of course content, as well as learn how these tools shape the meaning of texts through their own experiences.
• Students will learn to work collaboratively online through the use of digital tools.
• Students will gain an understanding of the relationships between literacy practices and meaning-making and democratic participation and civic engagement through analysis of key texts, video lectures, and examples found online.

Grading Breakdown:

Section Participation and Online Activities (20 Total Points):

Based on your work each week moving through the online activities and participation/attendance in section meetings. The Engagement Index will not be used directly for grading, but will be consulted by GSIs for rapid feedback about progress. Students will be rewarded for contributing interesting artifacts and learning materials to the class, commenting and discussing with peers, and impacting the learning community both online and in the section meetings. Please note our attendance policy in the next section.

Field Notes (25 Total Points):

Throughout the semester, students will submit 8 field notes that use qualitative research methods learned during the course in observing, documenting, and analyzing fieldwork experiences. Each field note will focus on a specific set of issues, and draw from relevant course readings. Detailed instructions on writing field notes will be given to you before writing your first note (during week 3). Make sure you follow these guidelines, including those related to formatting the field notes. In general, field notes should include lots of vivid, detailed description. You will relate your experiences to class readings and discussions in an insightful way.  Don't repeat the same insights week after week.  Your field notes will be given a letter grade by your assigned GSI and returned to you promptly.  Please note that your GSI will comment on your first 2-3 field notes in detail, making sure that you understand how to write excellent ones.  Thereafter, your GSI or a reader will read and grade each field note, but will not comment in detail.

Literacy Autobiography (25 Total Points):

Students will author a personal narrative that documents their own experiences in ‘becoming literate.’ Drawing from theories and key terminology from course readings to frame their narratives, students will relate their own narratives to broader issues pertaining to education, literacy, society, and culture. The Literacy Autobiography will allow students to engage multiple forms of creative expression, including image, sound, video, and text, and will be assessed using a literacy autobiography rubric by GSIs.

Case Study (30 Total Points):

Students will write a qualitative research paper (8-10 pages, not including references and appendices) that employs course concepts as a theoretical framework and analysis of the 8 Data Artifacts assignments to explore a research question focused around a relevant literacy issue in education and the comparative examination of race and culture. The Case Study will be assessed by GSIs using the Case Study rubric.

Course Logistics

Attendance:

Please expect to attend lectures and sections, and be alert to the fact that excessive absences will affect your final grade. You may be absent 2 times during the semester without your grade being affected. If you are absent more than the allowed number of days, two points per additional absence will be subtracted from your final grade in the course (unless you present legitimate documentation, such as a doctor’s excuse or a letter from your coach, etc.).  Here is an example of the grade penalty for excessive absences: A student accumulates 4 unexcused absences during the semester. The first 2 do not count against the student. The additional 2 absences will result in 4 points being subtracted from the final course grade. Please note, however, that during the flu season we ask that you not come to class if you are ill. If you need to miss class for this reason, please email your GSI to let them know (you do not need a doctor’s note in this case).

Weekly online activities are due at the end of the week by 11:59 pm every Sunday. Due dates for field notes, literacy autobiography and the case study are indicated in the Weekly Topics, Readings, and Due Dates section. All assignments must be turned in by the stated due date. Late assignments will be penalized with the reduction of one third of a letter grade per class meeting.

Please note:  A roster will be available each day in class; be sure to sign it to indicate your presence. If you need to miss class, or if you need special accommodations for completing assignments, or if you want us to have emergency medical information, please let your GSI know.

Field Work:

Purpose: Field work is an integral component of the course because it gives students an opportunity to apply what they are learning in our class to their experiences working in an educational context.  Students will develop tutoring and mentoring skills in a supported environment (with guidance from the course instructor, GSIs, and school site coordinator), while simultaneously forming strong bonds with youth.  To that end, we have developed a set of requirements and guidelines that will help students in our course and the youth that they are working with have the best experience possible.

Requirements.

For this 3 unit course  students will complete approximately 25 (not including travel) hours of fieldwork during the semester at a local school or community center, where they will work with school-age students in varying capacities, such as after-school tutors, teachers’ aides, and mentors. We expect students to attend their field work site on 8-10 occasions for approximately 3 hours on each visit. However, students are welcome to go to their assigned site more times if desired.  Students will be provided options for completing fieldwork on the second week of the course, and can communicate directly with GSIs and the course instructor about fieldwork options. These options will include both visiting school sites as well as participating in online tutoring and mentoring of school children participating in affiliated schools and after-school programs. Students will be supported in their field work through video tutorials, course readings, and direct communication with GSIs.

Ed 197 Field studies unit: Students who wish to receive course credit for field work will need to sign up for 1 unit of Education 197 (Section 48, CCN: 28893).  Please note:  Students will need to complete an extra 15 hours for a total of 45 (not including travel) hours of fieldwork in order to receive credit for Education 197.  At the end of the course students will be required to complete the GSE evaluation for Education 197 in addition to an evaluation for Education 140.

Keeping Track of Hours. To ensure successful completion of the required number of hours, GSIs will contact site supervisors to confirm students are attending their programs. Students will maintain a timesheet that will be initialed by the site supervisor after each visit and be submitted to the GSI at the end of the semester. GSIs will then verify the timesheet with the site supervisor.

Other Procedures and Paperwork: All students are required to complete and submit the Volunteer Code of Conduct and Telecommunication Responsible Use Agreement, and must provide proof of TB clearance to conduct field work at school sites. TB testing can be done at the Tang Center or other medical facilities. Student health insurance covers 100% of the cost of the TB skin test tests done at Tang. For students with private insurance the cost is $20. Information and hours for testing are posted on the Tang Center website. Your TB test results should be turned in to designated staff at the school. Note that some sites may require a background check (fingerprinting) prior to your starting field work.  The majority of our sites also require that student volunteers complete  the training online at www.virtusonline.org.

Getting to Your Site: We encourage students to organize car pools or to travel together to sites on public transportation. We are able to reimburse your transportation costs with proof of payment (i.e., receipts for public transit and vehicle information if a private vehicle is used FOR CARPOOLS ONLY) and properly completed campus reimbursement forms.  More information and details will be provided in class and on the Canvas course site.

Navigating the Online Course and Working with Digital Tools:

This is flipped course; that is, video lectures and activities take the place of the in-person lecture. This course requires no previous experience working in online environments or with digital tools. Course introduction materials will provide students with a general tutorial for navigating the Canvas environment and course content, as well as for launching collaborative tools. An archive of tutorials will also be provided for helping students use freely available digital tools for completing multimedia assignments, such as using movie-making, photo editing, and sound editing software.

Managing Your Work in this Course:

This course requires ongoing participation in completing course assignments. For instance, it is not advisable for students to try to complete a week’s worth of work in a single sitting. Instead, students should plan a consistent schedule for working on course materials at least three times per week, and should be responsive to other group members’ messages at least every other day. This will help ensure equal participation and successful collaboration. There may be times during a week when a student may need to complete activities out of order, or leave an activity unfinished before moving onto a next one (such as in the case of waiting for other group members to complete an activity). Students will not be penalized in such cases, and can return to an activity to complete it at any time. The recommended amount of time spent on assignments per week is listed in the course activity flow and aligns with university-mandated time spent per unit (i.e., 1 unit= 3 hours). Each week contains numerous supplemental and auxiliary course content and resources, which students are encouraged to visit on their own time. These are meant to assist students in completing projects, sharing knowledge with peers, or for use in their case study.

Satisfying University Course Requirements:

This course satisfies an elective course for the Education Minor. It also satisfies the American Cultures requirement.  If you complete 45 hours of fieldwork and register for Section 45 of Education 197, the course will satisfy one unit of the the required fieldwork for the Education Minor.

Research:

EDUC 140AC is part of a research study in piloting the using of our online learning platform. Students will have the option to voluntarily participate in interviews, complete surveys, and provide feedback on the course. Your GSI will provide more information and consent forms and your choice to participate or not does not affect your grade in the course.

Weekly Topics, Readings, and Due Dates

(8/25): Course Introduction

Week 1 (8/30 & 9/1): What is Literacy

Gee, J.P. (1998). What is Literacy? In V. Zamel & S. Spack (Eds.), Negotiating Academic Literacies: Teaching and Learning Across Languages and Cultures (pp. 51-59). New York, NY: Routledge.

Scribner, S. (1984). Literacy in three metaphors. American Journal of Education 93(1), 6-21.

Week 2 (9/6 & 9/8):  Creativity in Everyday Literacy

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Wolfe, R. (2000). New conceptions and research approaches to creativity: Implications for a systems perspective of creativity in education. In K. A. Heller, F. J. Mönks, & A. Harry Passow (Eds.), International Handbook of Research and Development of Giftedness and Talent (pp. 81-93). New York, NY: Pergamon.

Kirkland, D. E. (2009). The skin we ink: Tattoos, literacy, and a new English education. English Education, 41 (4), 375-395.

(optional) Willis, P. E., Jones, S., Canaan, J., & Hurd, G. (1990). Chapter 1: Symbolic creativity. In Common Culture: Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Cultures of the Young (pp. 1-29). Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Week 3 (9/13 & 9/15): Research in Literacy

Field Note 1

Bogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K. (1998). Qualitative research in education. An introduction to theory and methods (pp. 101-110). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

May, W. T. (1993). "Teachers-as-researchers" or action research: What is it, and what good is it for art education? Studies in Art Education, 34 (2), 114-126.

Week 4 (9/20 & 9/22): Critical Literacy  

Alim, S. (2011). Chapter 14: Hip hop and the politics of ill-literacy. In B. A. U. Levinson and M. Pollock (Eds.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Education (pp. 232-246), Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

Freire, P. (1970). Chapter 2: Banking concept of education. Pedagogy of the oppressed (pp. 71-86). 30th Anniversary Edition (2000) with an introduction by Donaldo Macedo. New York: Continuum

Week 5 (9/27 & 9/29): Learning as Social Participation

Field Note 2

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between learning and development & The prehistory of written language. In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.), Mind in Society (79-91). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Palinscar, A.S. (2003). Collaborative approaches to comprehension instruction. In Anne P. Sweet & Catherine E. Snow (Eds.), Rethinking Reading Comprehension (pp. 99-114). New York: Guilford Press.

Week 6 (10/4 & 10/6): Connectivism and Connected Learning

Field Note 3

Reynolds, R. (2015). The promise of connected learning. Retrieved from https://nextthought.com/thoughts/2015/04/the-promise-of-connected-learning

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. Retrieved from http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm

Surowiecki, J. (2014). The collective intelligence of the web. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-collective-intelligence-of-the-web

Week 7 (10/11 & 10/13): Language in and Out of the Classroom

Field Note 4

Canagarajah, A. S. (Ed.). (2013). Introduction. In Literacy as Translingual Practice: Between Communities and Classrooms. New York, NY: Routledge.

Wong Fillmore, L. (2009). English language development: Acquiring the language needed for literacy and learning. (pp. 1- 15). Research into Practice. Pearson Education.

Week 8 (10/18 & 10/20):  Language and Identity

Literacy Autobiography Paper 10/23

Rodriguez, R. (1981). The achievement of desire. In Hunger of memory: The education of Richard Rodriguez, An autobiography (pp. 43-73). Boston: D.R. Godine.

Fadiman, A. (1997). Chapter 1: Birth , Chapter 6: High-velocity transcortical lead therapy, & Chapter 8: Foua and Nao Kao. In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (pp. 8-18, 43-52, & 62-69). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Anzaldúa, G. (1987).  How to tame a wild tongue In Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza (pp. 53-64). San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

Week 9 (10/25 & 10/27): Writing in the Classroom

Field Note 5

Hull, G., & Rose, M. (1990). " This wooden shack place": The logic of an unconventional reading. College Composition and Communication, 41(3), 287-298.

Morrell, E., & Duncan-Andrade, J. M. (2002). Promoting Academic literacy with urban youth through engaging hip-hop culture. English Journal, 88-92.

(optional) Heath, S. B. (1993). Rethinking the sense of the past: The essay as legacy of the epigram. In L. Odell (Ed.), Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing: Rethinking the Discipline (pp. 105-31). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

(optional)Falkner, S. (2011). “Signs of Life” in the high school classroom: Analyzing popular culture to provide student choice in analytical writing. English Journal, 101(2), 44-49.

(optional) Brannon, L., Courtney, J.P., Urbanski C. P., & Woodward, S.V. (2008). The five-paragraph essay and the deficit model of education. The English Journal, 98(2), 16-21.

Week 10 (11/1 & 11/3): Remix and the Living Text

Bakhtin, M. M. (2003). The dialogic imagination (pp. 73-81). In P. Morris (Ed.), The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Madvedev, & Voloshinov. London, UK: Arnold.

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2008). Remix: The art and craft of endless hybridization. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(1), 22-33.

Week 11 (11/8 & 11/10):  Multimodality and Digital Storytelling

Field Note 6

Hull, G., Kenney, N.L., Marple, S. & Forsman-Schneider, A. (2006). Many versions of masculine: An exploration of boys’ identity formation through digital storytelling in an afterschool program. New York: The Robert Browne Foundation.

Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and literacy in school classrooms. Review of Research in Education, 32(1), 241-267.

(optional) Miller, S. M. (2007). English teacher learning for new times: Digital video composing as multimodal literacy practice. English Education, 40(1), 61-83.

(optional) Walsh, C., (2007). Creativity as capital in the literacy classroom: Youth as multimodal designers. Literacy, 41(2), 79-85.

Week 12 (11/15 & 11/17): Connecting School and Culture

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that's just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into practice, 34(3), 159

Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a

qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, (31), 2, 132-141.

Field Note 7

Weeks 13 (11/22): Coding Field Notes

Saldaña, J. (2009). Chapter 1: An Introduction to codes and coding (pp. 1-31). In The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. London, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Hull, G. A., Stornaiuolo, A., & Sahni, U. (2010). Cultural citizenship and cosmopolitan practice: Global youth communicate online. English Education, 42 (4), 331-367.

Pratt, M. L. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession, 33-40.

Week 14 (11/29 & 12/1): Globalization and Cosmopolitanism

Hull, G. A., Stornaiuolo, A., & Sahni, U. (2010). Cultural citizenship and cosmopolitan practice: Global youth communicate online. English Education, 42 (4), 331-367.

Pratt, M. L. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession, 33-40.

Field Note 8

Week 15 (12/6 & 12/8): Reading/Review/Recitation Week (no class meeting)

                                            Case Study Consultations with GSIs (by appointment)

Field Work Log Due 12/9 before midnight

Week 16

Case Study Due December 12 at Noon