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Rebecca Luce-Kapler

By using online, web-editing software,teachers can develop newpractices that

engage students in exploring new

literacies and help them gainvisual literacy sldis. i,, i

ce-laeplep teQueen's UnivUstan, Ontarl&-maH rabecccapler@tuee

"i have never made up my mind aboutthe literacy," the sixth-grade teacher commented aswe discussed my upcoming research in his class-room in which I would engage the students in dig-ital literacy practices. He was expressing hisresponse to the rigid assessment culture in whichhis students were required to take government ex-ams focused on narrow print-literacy parameters.He was hopeful that my work with the class wouldbroaden the literacy learning opportunities. I wasinterested in seeing if student exposure to RadicalChange texts and experience with wild writing

Swould encourage collaborative work and an un-derstanding of connectivity as a different way tolearn and understand. As the study progressed,however, the teacher and I were disappointed be-cause students produced "e-literature" with smallchunks of mostly clich6d writing interrupted byseemingly random collections of pictures with a

* few hyperlinks.

We felt we had overestimated the students'ability to understand and use the qualities ofRadical Change in a digital environment. Ratherthan identifying the qualities of Radical Change

in the books and then using them in their writ-ing, the students were more interested in identify-ing how pictures made the stories "strange" or

"weird" and how they could create

such effects in their stories. It was notersity, until I closely examined the inter-o, Canada; views, however, and looked at whataluce-MnUM. they had created that I recognized that

the students had connected to the vi-sual dimensions of the texts and

adapted those qualities into their wild writing. Inwhat follows, I describe how our focus on devel-oping broad digital skills nearly led to our miss-ing the subtler learning that was actually takingplace as students gained visual literacy skills, andwe developed teaching practices that engaged stu-dents in exploring new literacies.

Radical Change and wikiwritingDresang (1999) identified a steadily increasingtrend in literature for children and young adults-a trend she labeled as "Radical Change.' She care-fully chose the word radical to point to its Latinorigins, radix, meaning "root:' "I think of the en-tire body of existing literature for youth,' shewrote, "as a sort of rhizome (a horizontal, root-like structure), from which new developmentsemerge in a random, spontaneous manner" (p. 4).With the world awash in multimedia, character-ized by fragmentation, juxtaposition of differingforms, and demands for what Murray (1997)

JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT &, ADULT LITERACY 51.:3 NOVEMBER 2007214

called "kaleidoscopic" thinking, it is not surprisingthat we see such qualities also emerging in litera-.ture.

Drawing on the nature Of the rhizome,Dresang (1999) identified three characteristics,any or all of which might appear in a RadicalChange text: (1) changing forms and formatssuch as new forms of graphics, new levels of syn-ergy between text and pictures, nonlinear andnonsequential organizations and formats, andmultiple layers of meaning and interactive for-

mats; (2) changing perspectives such as multiple'points of view both visual and verbal andprevi-ously unheard voices, including youth; and (3)changing boundaries such as dealing with previ-ously forbidden or overlooked subjects and set-

tings, new types of communities, characters por-trayed in new and complex ways, and unresolvedendings. My study focused particularly on chang-ing forms and formats because I was interested instudents' use of digital technology to developtheir own Radical,Change texts in response to thepicture books we introduced.

The technology I chose was the wiki because

it is an easily learned, open-source software pro-gram that allows all users to access and edit thepages on an ongoing basis (Dobson, in press;Luce-Kapler & Dobson, 2005). Wiki is theHawaiian word for quick and beautififlly describeshow users can, within minutes, create webpages.From a wild launch pad, (see Figure 1) one cancreate a page, click on the "edit this page" link, (see

,.Figure I,Wiki launch pad

I 0 _ u

This wikl...

is herm to host resource pages for UBC': Office or Learning Techrecogy. and provide a space for anyone in thelearning comxtunlry who is interested in apWtoing i. E•mail the wi0ukeeper tbrlan.iamboubc.cal with your questions,cormmentv, ciompliaints and confessions.

- Thivfs a wv• * in perpetual pr2reess, and any contrbution,is rnost ivo;come.

Feelfre *ostar yor on pice f tiso 9min wikl unArsv. For a quAck overIview art how to get store checkFeet fetosartiyou oikiwny otsout IWkii•'askis.•. "@away...

JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY , 51:3 NOVEMBER 2007

AduenturosInWiltiland -an Introduction to this waky web publishing environment, and links to some cool applications.

WilOnWIkI is a shambling mess that aspires tor be a beginner's workshop.

Rousabloalmodla @ UBS - a set of rinks to projects and tools to support the use and reuse of digital learning resources.

215

Figure 2) type in their text or revisions, includethe URL of pictures if desired, and then click on"save.' just as easily, users can type in links to oth-er pages created by themselves or others. Withoutknowing more than how to access the launch padon the Internet and how to create links, studentscan begin developing hypertextual stories.

Three months in sixth gradeThe project described here is part of a larger,three-year study of digital literacy with both ele-mentary and secondary students to explore dif-ferent forms of e-literature (e.g., Patchwork Girl:A Modern Monster, Jackson, 1995) and softwarefor digital writing (Storyspace and wikis) as wellas Radical Change print literature. The overall in-tention of the study is to delineate some of the

teaching and learning skills and processes for dig-ital literacy. Our data sources include classroomobservations and field notes, student interviews,and examples of student digital products.

In the fall of 2004, my research team workedin a sixth-grade class with approximately 30 stu-dents (the numbers shifted over time because thiswas a highly mobile population). They came froma wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds andincluded a dynamic mix of cultures and ethnici-ties, both immigrants and those born in Canada.Every week over the three months, graduate stu-dents and I visited the class, which the teacher di-vided into four groups. (One of the groups wascomposed of two Chinese girls who had just ar-rived in Canada. My Chinese graduate studentworked with them, introducing them to the booksand wikis and using translation as required.)

JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 51:3 NOVEMBER 2007

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216

I used two picture books to introduce theclass to the concepts of Radical Change: The

Three Pigs (Wiesner, 2001) and Black and White

(Macaulay, 1990). These titles along with two

others described below were chosen primarily be-

cause they represented the changing forms and

formats of Dresang's (1999) categories, which was

the focus of my study. In The Three Pigs, Wiesner

retells a well-known tale through three enchant-

ing pigs who challenge the whole notion of the

book (e.g., they "notice" the readers, and they

jump in and out of other stories such as the hurs-

ery rhyme HeyDiddle Diddle). Black and White

is four seemingly separate stories told on fourpanels across each two-page spread. As the bookcontinues, the stories reveal links (both visuallyr

and textually) that suggest th6 stories are very

much connected.

As I read the books to the class, we talked

about what they noticed and how these books

differed from other reading they had done. We

noted the use of imagery, the multiple connec-

tions, the intertextuality, and the challenging sto-

ry forms. Later, when I met each group in the

computer lab to learn about wikls, I reminded

them of the books as a way of helping them think

about how they could design their texts. I began

the wild sessions by demonstrating that they

could create a webpage simply by putting their

own code name after the question mark in the

URL. Once the students had accomplished this

task, I illustrated how they could add text by

clicking on "edit text of this page" and encour-

aged them to experiment by writing a few lines of

response to The Three Pigs. Later, I showed them

how typing the IURL of an image chosen through

a search on Google Images enabled them to add

pictures to their stories. Once they seemed com-

fortable with these two skills, I demonstrated

simple HTML language so they could change the

appearance of their text (e.g., <b>bold</b> and

<i>italic</i>). I also encouraged them to look at

stories written by their classmates and to make

links where they might see connections. While

students quickly discovered they could edit one

another's pages, the teacher and I asked students

to discuss changes and additions with the creatorof the page and get permission after we heard[the.indignation of a student who had had his spellingcorrected by a classmate. The experience suggest-ed that this aspect of the process would need timeand specific work with group skills, which the ,teacher saidbhe would continue to develop afterthe study's end.

While I worked in the computer lab with

one of the groups, two of the graduate studentsintroduced two other Radical Change picturebooks to the other groups-Voices in the Park(Browne, 1998) and Starry Messenger: GalileoGalilei (Sis, 2000). Voices in the Park is a story toldfrom four different perspectives-a mother andher son and a father and his daughter-with thevoice, tone, and artwork shifting with each view-point and between socioeconomic classes. Thesecondbook, as the title suggests, is an interpreta-tion of the life of Galileo, replete with rich im-agery and text that can be visually challenging attimes. During these sessions, the graduate stu-dents further reinforced the qualities of changingforms and formats with the students.

I anticipated that after their experience with

the texts, students would begin to notice some ofthe metafictive and intertextual features of the

Radical Change texts and that they would con-sciously choose to use them in their responsesand the wild writing. For instance, we thoughtthat the students might make connections be-tween the texts and their experiences with otherstories as is evident in The Three Pigs. Instead,what was immediately obvious was the tensionthat occurs whenever-one introduces somethingnew into a classroom, especially something thatchallenges reading and writing practices that have

longstanding traditions. On the one hand, thestudents spent much time commenting on whatwas unusual about the stories, while on the other,when asked to participate in response activities,they offered responses that were more typical inschool. The teacher commented, "In a class whereeverything is 'seen' and 'judged' by the teacher ona daily basis and...would be inspected,by parents,

JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 51:3 NOVEMBER 2007

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217

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the students likely-viewed the book foremost asyet another obligation.' And yet, between thosemoments of strangeness and familiarity, the stu-dents were noticing and engaging in a differentpractice of meaning making. Lauren's comment isindicative of the student insight:

I liked that we talked in a group rather than writingstuff down because writing stuff down is harder thansaying it aloud. These authors are...like they're differ-ent. They make the stories into chunks and then havebits and pieces where they want them. I can do it withmy story but it's a bit harder.

We recognized that starting with the famil-iar (picture books) that challenged the edges ofcomfort with unusual order, powerful visual rep-resentations, and multiple voices were helpful inpreparing the students to move into creating theirown digital texts and to consider that the medi-um offered new opportunities for writing.Nevertheless, we did not know how many newskills they would need to create e-literature. Forinstance, the students did not undeistand howhyperlinks, be#ond taking One to a new Internetpage, could actually deepenthe meaning of thestory or change the expected order of the text.They also could not grasp that making connec-tions to the stories of their classmates would ex-tend the possibilities and interpretations of theirtexts. Most of them regarded each story as a dis-crete creation for which one student would re-ceive credit (not surprising because assessmentfocuses on individual performance). So instead ofcreating an unusual story order or linking withother texts, they chose to respond to the challengeof doing something different by working with theskill that seemed most familiar-the image.

What we learned from thestudentsIn his interview, one of the students, Joseph,alerted us to what had been important for, thestudents: "I think the pictures are more impor-

tant because they actually show what's happenedbecause you're reading and you're like what?What's? What's in the Three Little Pigs? What?"He added that he would choose to write withwilds most of the time because "You don't have towrite with your hand and pencil, and plus it'sfunner because you can put pictures in that areactually real pictures.'

In every instance of the individual inter-views, the students commented on their observa-tions of the images such as Tera's comment,referencing Voices in the Park. "I like how Whenon the page where the monkey's walking the dogyou look through the gates and there's a tree withfire and that's cool.' The teacher confirmed ourobservations about the importance of the visualaspects of the stories and wilds in his interview:

I was looking for a whole lot of stuff to carry over andI'm not sure how much I've seen yet that could trans-late to a...sort of a willingness to experiment with lit-eracy like I was expecting. I did see some thingsthough.... For example, I saw kids now...are just rou-tinely pulling down graphics-from Google...they justdo it so readily.

One of the graduate students made the fol-lowing observation in her field notes followingher time in the computer lab with the researcher:

The largest influence I observed Radical Change hav-ing on the students' wiki writing was their use of im-ages. Most of the wiki print offs looked like visualpieces and artwork as opposed to writing texts. Thestudents working in the computer lab seemed mostexcited when they were able to find a really "cool" im-age, especially if it was animated. They seemed more,responsive and more familiar with images over text.When asked about what the most important feature ofwiki writing is, one boy commented he thought thepictures were most important because they "actuallyshow what's happened."

We wondered if the students were more at-tracted to the visual elements in the books and fo-cused on them in their own writing simplybecause we had relied on the images to introduce

JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 51:3 NOVEMBER 2007218

the conception of "something different" and mod-eled how we "read" the pictures. Nevertheless,when we interviewed the students, most were ableto clearly explain the relationship between the pic-tures and the story. For example, Joseph had a sto-ry that had images of three pigs, but he also had apicture of some snakes. It was not immediatelyclear to us why that picture was included.

Interviewer: That's a very cool snake. Do you thinkthat snake could actually eat the pigs?

Joseph: Probably. If it's one off the movieAnaconda--a big, giant one.

Interviewer: What kind of character would he be?Joseph: He'd be like the wolf only and it

wouldn't be the same story over it wouldbe a different character.

Interviewer: OK. The snake would do differentthings.

Joseph: Yeah. He would be veniacly evil.Interviewer: Where would he live?

Joseph: He would live in a mud pit. With a littledome underneath the mud.

Interviewer: Oh so he'd live under the ground in alittle dome sort of thing?

Joseph: Yeah.Interviewer: And be veniacly evil?Joseph: And have like a lab area.

It was clear from Joseph's response that he hadchosen the image for a specific reason, which he

could articulate. He also made connections topopular culture and attempted to use a more so-phisticated vocabulary. (We thought he meantvenally in the instance above.)

The addition of images to the text alsoserved to interrupt the notions of more typicalstories the students might write in school.KyeonyMin, in her interview, expressed similarsentiments to other students that this work wasdifferent from what they might do for school.

KyeonyMin: I said I'm going io write a story butmake-it different.

Interviewer: If the teacher asked you to write a storyin class you probably would have done

something different than this wouldyou? Or would you have done this story?

KyeonyMin: If We,were doing this thing in real writ-ing then I don't think I would have donethat [her wiki story].

At the same time, the students were confi-dent that meaningful engagement with the story

would still occur in this "different" and more am-biguous form. Many described how their work

could be 'seen as more than one story-(as illustrat-

ed by the following comments from Buddy), and

they wanted readers to be interested in the cre-

ation, whatever their interpretation:

Interviewer: (after discussing his images) So how areyou thinking about this as a story? Likewhat do you think people would thinkabout it as a story if they read it?

Buddy: It's not supposed to be the one wholestory. It's just supposed to be a bunch ofstories, differently.

Interviewer. OK. So how many stories do you thinkyou've got going on that page?,

Buddy: Probably four.

Their acceptance of this ambiguity can per-

haps be explained in part by Johnson's (2005) ar-gument that one of the cognitive effects of

exposure to multiple forms of popular culture is a

tolerance of uncertainty. For instance, he de-

scribed how many computer games function not

by specific, predetermined rules but rather in an

ambiguous state where the player must seek out

the objectives of the game. A number of current

television shows, too, are open ended with mean-ing developing over time. As Johnson pointed*out, popular shows like The Simpsons depend, atleast in part, on remembering incidents and linesover a number of shows as, there are intertextuallinks among the growing body of episodes. Thistype of exposure, he contended, has taught stu-

dents skills such as dealing with ambiguity andmultithreaded plot lines.

Kress (2003), in his discussion of the influ-ences of new media, focused more specifically on

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the role of image in print and digital texts. He not-ed howwriting has become only "partial in rela-tion to the message overall" (p. 11). He understoodthe text as having a different logic (i.e., time) thanthe image, suggesting a synergistic relationship:

Human engagement with the world through imagecannot escape that logic [spatial relations]. It ordersand shapes how we represent the world, which in turnshapes how we see and interact with the world. Thegenre of the display is the culturally most potent for-mal expression of this. "The world narrated" is a dif-ferent world to "the world depicted and displayed."(p.2)

Many of the students in the study had cometo understand something about spatial relationsand the logic of image in relation to that of the nar-rative. When asked what.she saw as most importantin the stories-pictures or text, Lauren describedhow she understood the relationship between thetwo. "Both of them are important because withwriting sometimes it can get the wrong thing goingwith the person that's reading it, but pictures canhelp them understand the way it's supposed to be"

Although the students may not have writtena great deal or branched out beyond their storiesto connect intertextually, they did begin to talkand think about images and their role in con-tributing meaning to a text. Working within thedigital medium, they could combine image andprint more interactively than before, and, formany students, this experience broadened theirpossibilities of meaning making in the classroom.

Our approach to teaching digital literacy,while it served to highlight clearly what the stu-dents did not yet understand, also allowed a levelof engagement with the wiki that facilitated someimportant learning. Through the teaching prac-tices we used, students were engaged in processesdesigned to encourage connectivity, intertextual-ity, and the group skills necessary to understandand work within a network of learning. Over anextended time with these processes, the teacherandI felt the,students would make further gainsin digital literacy.

Moving from contentto processIn a reexamination of how metacognition influ-enced her teaching, Iftody (2004) noted that it isnot enough to teach strategies for learning thatstudents will then apply to other situations. Whileresearch has shown that teaching metacognitivestrategies may improve performance on certaintasks, such knowledge may not influence thelearner beyond the present context. For thinkingskills and strategies to be adopted, they must be-come part of one's personal framework beforethey can be transferable to other contexts. Newstrategies, as Pressley (1995) noted, compete withold, deeply engrained practices and concepts.Arecently learned strategy requires more effort andconscious awareness so that there will be less mo-tivation to adopt it when more familiar approach-es are available. "Learning how to carry out aprocedure does not engender knowledge abouthowto adopt the procedure, andwide use of theprocedure requires extensive adaptation to cir-cumstances" (Pressley, 1995, p. 209). Neither doeslearning the characteristics about particular textstransfer into engaged meaning making in whichone experiences the challenges of such texts.

Our focus on content as we told studentsabout and pointed out Radical Change characteris-tics revealed our emphasis on trying to control theresearch conditions and the student awareness ofthe phenomena under consideration. Fortunately,we also created conditions in which students couldengage in the processes of reading and writingsuch texts and thereby learn something about therelationship between image and word. As Iftody(2004) advised, "It is my contention that instruc-tion in language-based metacognitive skills shouldbe balanced by opportunities to practice 'otherways of knowing"' (p. 67).

I have come to understand that RadicalChange is a useful global term for identifying therelationship among particular qualities emerging inyoung adult literature, but it is not, in itself, asalient idea that students can understand and adapt

JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 51:3 NOVEIMIBER 2007220

to their experiences of reading and writingo-atleast not initially. Students need extended experi-ence with the many dimensions of RadicalChange-such as the role of image and graphics-to develop a way of engaging with the print anddigital texts that is more about a "strategy of orien-tation" rather than a checklist of skills (Iftody, 2004,p. 66).

In revisiting our activities in that sixth-grade classroom, I identified four practices-fo-cusing events, interacting in groups, enablingconstraints, and playing opportunities-that de-veloped such a strategy of orientation. In dis-cussing them individually in what follows, I am

not meaning them to be understood as discreteprocesses, but rather as the various dimensions ofour approach in the classroom.

Focusing events

Every teacher knows the importance of engagingstudent attention before learning can take place andthat notion is certainly part of what is meant by thispractice. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasizethat I am, talking about more than just garneringattention. Focusing events go beyond the identifica-tion of concepts and the fragmentation of learninginto discrete curriculum bytes. A focusing event isone in which activities and specific objects are or-ganized to gather learners' attention toward a rich,sensory opportunity where' multiple ways of engag-ing are possible (Davis, Sumara, & Luce-Kapler,2000). As neuroscience has noted, each of us has aunique history of cognitive development and cul-tural experience (cf. Donald, 2001; Edelman, 2004).To learn we must be able to connect'new experi-ences with what we already know. A focused, richactivity will direct our attention and offer manypoints of connection.

Organizing activities around picture bookswas a key element for the students. As we invitedthem to notice what was happening in the pic-tures, there were many opportunities for them tomake connections to what was familiar and torecognize different experiences in that spe6ific

and sensory-rich environment. We encouragedthe students to make sense of how they were.ex-periencing the texts. With the wild writing, be-cause using images was so easy, they were able toconnect their experience of interpreting the im-ages in the books to their own writing.

The students gave only passing attention toour explanations of Radical Change characteris-tics, but they engaged deeply and meaningfullywith the texts we brought to their attention.

Interacting in groups

Although individuals have unique learning histo-ries, this does not mean that this learning has beena result of discrete activities designed for one per-son. A critical catalyst for knowing and under-standing are intersubjective experiences. We greatlyenhance our capacity for learning when part of adistributed cognitive,network (Donald, 2001). Inkeeping with the idea that focusing events allow forconnections to be made-ones that cannot-be pre-planned--so t6o does the group offer opportuni-ties for learning that cannot be prestated orplanned for; instead, understandings and interpre-tations emerge through shared projects (Davis,2004).

The discussions among the groups as theyread the stories were a good example of the powerof the collective. As one student commented on adetail in a picture, another would pick up on thatidea and offer another interpretation. Still otherswould find the suggestions a motivation to lookmore deeply at the images or to rethink their ownperspectives. The goal was not to come to someconsensus about what the book "means" it was toexplore the multiplicity of possibility within theRadical Change texts. In the wiki writing, the stu-dents were encouraged to makelinks to one an-other's webpages, which they did to a very limitedextent. The group conversations, however, weremore powerful, such as the one in which Marinlearned how to use animated images. Suddenlyeveryone wanted to learn that technique andthere was much discussion and exchange in the

JOUBRAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 51:3 NOVEMBER 2007 221

group. In other instances, the students would ac-cess one another's pages and then use their peers'ideas as a springboard for their own explorations(even though they usually did not make physicallinks to the page).

We organized all of our activities for groupparticipation, and, as a result, not only was studentlearning increased, but we also had the opportu-nity to learn some things about the stories andwiki writing that we had not considered (such asthe wiki animation). By giving up some of the con-trol and allowing ideas to emerge from the group,we had a richer and more interesting experience.

Enabling constraints

As we explained in focusing events, learning ac-tivities that have a variety of opportunities areimportant. But connected to this freedom is theneed for a dearly defined focus. In order to learn;a student needs to know where to turn his or herattention, even while encountering multiple pos-sibilities for exploration. Such is the intention ofenabling constraints-a description for any activ-ity that offers specific guidelines and limitationsto focus student action while still allowingenough openness for a variety of expressions(Davis, 2004; Luce-Kapler, 2004).

In our study, the texts themselves acted as en-abling constraints. The students were encouragedto explore freely but within the boundaries ofthose pages. With the wiki writing, I gave the stu-dents particular tasks that confined their type ofresponse without limiting what they might chooseto say or illustrate. For instance, I began by askingthem to create a link to a page that I had preparedand to write a response on a new wiki page.

As with the other. teaching practices, en-abling constraints reveals a dynamic in learning:There is energy in the interactions between thestudent's learning history and new experiences,between individual and the collective, and be-tween freedom and limitation. In the last prac-tice, we will see how best to activate this dynamicenergy through playfulness.

Playing opportunities

Play is enabling constraints at its best. Whetherwe are involved in an organized game such as tagor an imaginative activity such as playing house,there are boundaries and sometimes quite specif-ic rules that limit the extent of our engagement.At the same time, there is room for a variety ofresponses and actions. Perhaps this is why wegenerally find play so enjoyable-it invites us toengage at a meaningful level.

In school, we tend to relegate play to timesoutside the classroom and reserve a more con-trolled approach for our organized occasions oflearning. In our study, however, while studentssometimes had schooled responses to our activi-ties, for the most part they saw our offerings asunlike their usual fare and seemed to have littlehesitancy in trying out ideas, exploring with fewreservations and engaging with others in learningabout wiki writing. While some might see this asan opportunity for chaos, because we had a spe-cific focus with particular boundaries, the stu-dents were largely attentive to engaging in theprocess. Furthermore, within the groups, the inci-dental sharing of ideas and demonstration of newtechniques among peers, led to learning that wecould not have anticipated.

Engage students in the processMany of what Lankshear and Knobel (2003)called "new literacies" demand engagement withnew modalities (Kress, 2003). In a world wherestudents are learning many of their literaciesthrough popular culture (Johnson, 2005), teach-ers must think carefully about modalities ofteaching. What is known about how people learn?What technologies are emerging and demandingour understanding? What is important abouthow we have envisaged our teaching? What do weneed to change? These questions, among others,suggest that we need to be aware of how the man-ifestations of literacy are broadening and chang-ing. We need to think less about teaching contentand more about engaging our students in the

JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 51:3 NOUEMBER 2007M2

processes. Above all, we need to "not make up ourminds" too quickly by,settling for assessment-driven ideas or succumbing to our own assump-tions about what will unfold in our teaching. AsDavis (2004) reminded us,

Teaching and learning are not about convergence onto apreexistent truth, but about divergence-about broad-ening what is knowable, doable, and beable. The em-.phasis is not on what is, but on what might be broughtforth. Thus learning comes to be understood as a recur-sively elaborative process of opening up new spaces ofpossibility by exploring current spaces. (p. 184)

M•TEI gratefully acknowledge the contribution of thegrade six teacher and his students described inthe article. I am also grateful for the support ofthe Social Sciences and Humanities Council ofCanada that funded this research.

For a related lesson, see "Collaborating, Writing,

Linking: Using Wikis to Tell Stories Online" at

www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson view.asp?id=1087. This lesson by Jane Ann Chin and

Rebecca Luce-Kapler is published on the

ReadWriteThink.org website, a partnership be-tween the International Reading Association and

the National Council of Teachers of English, with

support from the Verizon Foundation.

REFERErWCESDavis, B. (2004). Inventions of teaching: A genealogy.

Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Davis, B., Sumara, D., &Luce-Kapler, R. (2000). Engaging

minds: Learning and teaching in a complex world.Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Dobson, T.M. (2007). Constructing (and deconstructing)reading through hypertext: Literature and the new me-

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. ......... joss: :!I::XXXXii.?.01NThe International Reading Association's website provides resources on 15 focus areas that may be ac-cessed at www.reading.org/resources/issues/focus.htmlL The focus areas include such topics as AdolescentLiteracy, Leadership and Coaching, Technology, and Critical Literacy. These focus areas pull togethermany Association resources in one convenient location. We invite you to take a look at what's new.

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