Teacher–writer–crafter–maker: an exploration of how making mattered for one writing teacher

Abstract

This qualitative case study documents a secondary English teacher's making, writing and teaching. The focal teacher engaged in diverse making practices – including composing, crafting and digital fabrication. She also participated in a National Writing Project (NWP) Summer Institute that focused on both teacher writing and digital composing. Data include observations at this NWP Project Summer Institute and in the focal teacher's English classroom, as well as interviews and artefact collection related to her making practices. The findings describe how this teacher's making mattered for her understandings of writing and for her teaching (or not). The case offers insights into why it may be important to cultivate educator making, as well as potential tensions between experiencing making and incorporating it into writing pedagogy. Ultimately, it contributes to writing research interested in examining how various forms of production and making are enmeshed.

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

“…As Perry and Medina (2011) suggest: embodiment in performative pedagogical practices … describes teaching and learning in acknowledgement of our bodies as whole experiential beings in motion … The experiential body is both a representation of self (a 'text') as well as a mode of creation in process (a 'tool') … Within performative pedagogy bodies can be acknowledged, made visible, and moved to the center of pedagogical experiences. (p. 63) Like other forms of composing, performative dramatisation is production-oriented, uses various semiotic resources, and results in communicative artefacts (see Woodard, 2019).…”

“…In the field of literacy education, these ideas have led to a shift from thinking narrowly about writing (i.e., primarily focusing on linguistic/alphabetic modes) towards thinking more expansively about multimodal composing (i.e., embracing ensembles of modes, including linguistic/alphabetic, visual, aural, gestural, and/or spatial). From this perspective, composition can be conceptualised more broadly than is typical in schools as a ‘production‐oriented process that uses various semiotic resources to result in communicative artifacts’ (Woodard, 2019, p. 2). This perspective acknowledges the ‘changing nature of written texts’ (Maun and Myhill, 2005, p. 7) in today's digital world, and encourages literacy teachers to shift pedagogical focus from conventional writing towards ‘designing’ texts with attention to both what is intended to be conveyed and how to best express it using multiple tools and/or modes (see Cope and Kalantzis, 2009).…”

“…Like other forms of composing, performative dramatisation is production‐oriented, uses various semiotic resources, and results in communicative artefacts (see Woodard, 2019).…”

On the relational autonomy of materials: entanglements in maker literacies research

“…How could the relational autonomy of materials impact maker literacies pedagogy? Research on teachers' maker literacy practices (Woodard, 2019) and students' maker literacies (Rowsell et al, 2018; Rowsell and Shillitoe, 2019; Wohlwend et al, 2018) pushes us to address the possibilities and tensions of posthumanism in makerspace research. We exemplify this research by attending to posthuman methodologies and by being receptive to how data glows in relationality (MacLure, 2013).…”