Playful Multiliteracies: Fan‐Based Literacies' Role in English Language Arts Pedagogy

Abstract

Standards and their corresponding assessments have continued to narrow English language arts (ELA) curricula, pushing more playful, creative composition to the margins or to out‐of‐school pursuits. Simultaneously, students enjoy writing creatively in many extracurricular spaces and activities, like fanfiction. Building from research showing that fan‐based literacies align with ELA curriculum, this collective case study explores how three secondary ELA teachers incorporated their professional learning about fandoms into their classrooms. Framed in multiliteracies and theories of play, qualitative data generated through interviews, surveys, and artifact collection were iteratively analyzed to establish themes that illuminate how these teachers valued fan‐based literacies within their curricula. Findings reveal teacher perspectives about fanfiction's role in fostering analytic reading of texts, cultivating creative responses to literature, scaffolding essay writing about real questions, and engaging students in the work of ELA. An argument for centering playful reading and writing in classrooms is presented.

Literary play gone viral: delight, intertextuality, and challenges to normative interpretations through the digital serialization of Dracula

“…If we want literature classrooms to be joyful places of consequential meaning-making, we must turn our focus to undoing systems of oppression that deaden more playful multiliteracies (Lammers et al , 2022). Oftentimes, the conversation narrows to text choice.…”

“…Indeed, though forces of standardization have often deadened playful literacies in formal educational contexts (Lammers et al , 2022), playfully analyzing literature together through intertextual connections and multimodal memes has the potential to be both emotionally resonant, culturally relevant and supportive of important literary interpretive practices.…”

The social drama of digital multimodal composing: A case study with emergent bi/multilingual newcomer students

“…Furthermore, studies have typically focused on the general benefits of DMC and analysis of artifacts, while fewer studies have focused on DMC processes, for example, how students collaborate on creating DMC products (Li & Akoto, 2021), including interactional processes (e.g., Smith et al, 2017). Crucially, although play‐based pedagogies, which carve out spaces for choice‐driven, modally rich, imaginative, and socially liberating textual explorations and role‐performances, have been suggested as beneficial for learners across the curriculum and beyond early childhood education (Fisher et al, 2017; Lammers et al, 2022), few studies explored play‐based or drama‐based approaches to DMC among adolescents, especially in school settings. Finally, a dramaturgical approach to analysis of DMC processes, considering them as a social drama that includes specific roles, props, scripts, and actions, has yet to be explored.…”

Navigating and hybridizing interpretive claim-making across discursive communities

“…However, from a social justice perspective we recognize the importance of supporting syncretic literacies, hybrid languaging practices that develop as youth move across "virtual and geographical boundaries" (Gutiérrez, 2014, p. 50). Educators are starting to value and intentionally address the sensemaking practices that youth learn through fandom discourse (Lammers et al, 2022). For example, discourse analysis of youth conversation about fan texts has shown how youth construct hybrid interpretive communities that merge literary and fandom-based sensemaking (Storm et al, 2022), but there is a need to extend such classroom-based research to show how instructional routines can be leveraged to explicitly support youth navigation in formal learning spaces.…”