“I. Am. a. Star.”: exploring moments of muchness in children’s digital compositional play and embodied science learning

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine playful practices in the science video composition of a fourth-grader. Design/methodology/approach With an analytic interest in “chasing the theory of muchness” (Thiel, 2015a) that describes distinctive moments of affective energies in playful learning, the authors explored a child’s video in which a food chain is dramatized. Findings The authors identified how muchness manifested in/through her compositional play. Originality/value The potential of playful composing and dramatizing to support meaning-making across contexts and disciplines is discussed.

‘Be Creative and Have Fun’: elementary‐aged children's digital and embodied composing in science

“…Another form of multimodal science composing that is relevant to this project is embodied composing, specifically through dramatisation. Both here, and in our previous work (see Varelas et al, 2010; Varelas et al, 2022; Woodard et al, 2023), we have explored embodied learning where children's bodies become sites of learning and meaning‐making as they explore and improvise while learning science (Edmiston, 2003). In particular, we are interested in scholarship at the intersection of drama/theatre and literacy (e.g., Perry and Medina, 2011) situated in larger conversations about the embodied nature of literacy (e.g., Ehret and Hollett, 2014; Haas and Witte, 2001; see also Enriquez et al, 2015; Zapata et al, 2018).…”

“…Another form of multimodal science composing that is relevant to this project is embodied composing, specifically through dramatisation. Both here, and in our previous work (see Varelas et al, 2010;Varelas et al, 2022;Woodard et al, 2023), we have explored embodied learning where children's bodies become sites of learning and meaning-making as they explore and improvise while learning science (Edmiston, 2003).…”

“…In Woodard et al (2023), we examined the playful embodied literacies of a fourth‐grade student in her remote science class. This work documents the affective energies and playful learning demonstrated through a child's multimodal and embodied digital science compositions.…”

“…Audre submitted two multimodal compositions related to the assignment the following week: one where the cursor was not visible because she was working from presenter view (i.e., she could see the cursor moving as the presenter, but it was not captured in the audience's view on the screen recording), and one where she fixed this issue so that viewers could also see her cursor move. Rather than acting out the science ideas in these videos, which was typical for her (see Woodard et al, 2023), both of these compositions were entirely digital. Audre explained that this was because her camera was broken.…”