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Investment, imagined identities, and

multilingual literacies BONNY NORTON

http://lerc.educ.ubc.ca/fac/norton/

bonny.norton@ubc.ca Department of Language and Literacy Education

University of British Columbia, Canada

Capturing Literacy, August 2011 Ascona, Switzerland

(additional) notes from my biodata

Lessons from ETS (the Educational Testing

Service, Princeton, NJ) Lessons from the classroom: Impact on theory

Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Literacy Research

n  Example from ETS:

n  The construct of reading in the TOEFL reading test and the validity of claims that can be made.

(Norton Peirce, 1992)

Limit and Extent of the Claim Ultimately, if you score well on the TOEFL

reading test, you are a good reader of TOEFL tests (Norton Peirce, 1992)

The challenge for quantitative research is the validity of the construct: criterion for success on TOEFL reading test is determined by success on the test a whole

[consider PISA)

What constructs do we use in our research?

Central Challenges in NLS* n  A key issue at both a methodological and

empirical level, then, is how we can characterize the shift from observing literacy events to conceptualizing literacy practices.

n  How does literacy relate to more general social theory regarding textuality, figured worlds, identity and power.

*Street, 2003, p. 79; 87

Literacy Practices

n  Literacy practices are patterned by social institutions and power relationships, and some literacies are more dominant, visible and influential than others.

Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000

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Main Argument

n The constructs of investment and imagined identities might be able to contribute to conceptualizations of literacy practices

Mai’s resistance: On the absence of literacy practices

I was hoping the course would help me the same as we learnt [in the 6-month ESL course], but some night we only spend time on one man. He came from Europe. He talked about his country: what’s happening and what was happening. And all the time we didn’t learn at all. And tomorrow the Indian man speak something for there. Maybe all week I didn’t write any more on my book. Mai, in Norton, 2000

Analysis

n  Mai was a highly motivated learner who was not invested in the literacy practices of the classroom.

n  Mai’s investments are best understood with reference to her complex (imagined) identities.

Conceptualizing Investment* If learners invest in a language, they do so with the understanding that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources, which will in turn increase the value of their cultural capital and social power.

Symbolic resources: language, education friendship Material resources: capital goods, real estate, money

*inspired by Bourdieu

(Norton Peirce 1995; Norton 2000, 2001, 2010, in press)

Investment and Literacy Practices

If learners invest in a literacy practice, they do so with the understanding that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources, which will in turn increase the value of their cultural capital and social power.

Motivation and Investment

MOTIVATION often assumes

- unitary,- coherent, - ahistorical language learner

INVESTMENTassumes

- complex IDENTITY, - changing across time and space,- reproduced in social

interaction

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Investment and Identity

While motivation can be seen as a primarily psychological construct, investment must be seen within a sociological framework, and seeks to make a meaningful connection between a learner’s desire and commitment to learn a language, and their changing identity. Norton, 2010

Guiding Questions n  What is a learner’s motivation to become literate in the target language? * motivation as character trait; learner personality language as system Primarily psychological construct

n  What is the learner’s investment in the literacy

practices of the language classroom? * investment as construction; learner identity language as social practice Primarily sociological construct

Defining Identity I use the term identity to reference how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is structured across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future. (Norton, 2000, p. 5)

Mai’s Imagined Community

After work today when I was walking by myself on New Street then I met Karl who was go to the same school with me last course… I just told him about my job and the course I am taking. He said to me, “The good thing for you is to go to school then in the future you would have a job to work in the office.”. I hope so. But sometime I’m scared to dream about that.

Imagined Communities & Imagined Identities

An imagined community assumes an imagined identity, and investment in literacy practices must be understood within this context.

Textual Identities

Human subjects use texts to make sense of their world and to construct social actions and relations required in the labor of everyday life. At the same time, texts position and construct individuals, making available various meanings, ideas, and versions of the world.

Luke, 1995, p. 13.  

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Study 1: Archie Comics and Multilingual Literacy Practices

(Interview: Karen and Parry, an English language learner) Karen: When did you come to Canada? Parry: Two years ago. Karen: Did you speak English in Korea? Parry: No. Karen: What has helped you to learn English? Parry: Reading comics. Karen: Seriously? Parry: Yeah, I read a comic every day. I read Calvin and Hobbes and Archies and

adventure things. 20  

Artifactual literacy?

Curricula must also be undergirded by a belief that meaning is found, not in artifacts themselves, but in the social events through which those artifacts are produced and used. Children have agency in the construction of their own imaginations; they appropriate cultural material to participate in and explore their worlds, especially through play and story.

Dyson, 1996, p. 492

Archie Comics & Literacy Practices

n  When I started reading it [Archie comics] when I was reading it I used to always talk about it with my friends who had them and we used to switch and read them.

n  Lots of people in our class, last year they were reading it so I thought it’s good to borrow it from my friends and started reading it.

n  We go to each other's houses like after school time and then, and we sometimes talk about characters, about their personality and stuff.

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Towards skills (and ownership of meaning…)

n  They, they use quite easy words that you could learn in school that could help you, and then, as you as you grow older, you can learn um harder words by yourself. (M)

n  Well, they got picture, can help them, colourful pictures to help the readers to understand like how, what is happening, going on. (F)

n  The stuff that I did was that I first looked at the pictures and then I made up my own words. ( F)

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(Interview: Karen and Dylan, an English L1 speaker) Karen: Is popular culture like Archie a good way of bringing

kids together? Dylan: Well, yes because I know that one reason most of

the kids with English problems and kids with good English don't relate is because the English kids seem to think that either they are stupid because they can’t speak English which is totally a misconception or they’re not like them and they’re kind of pushed away by that.

Karen: So that’s what you think, that it’s a good way ‘cause they can talk to each other?

Dylan: ‘Cause it would give them something to realize that these kids like some things that they like, that they are kids who like things that other kids like, which is a way of bringing them together.

But, adult resistance… n  S: ... My mom just doesn’t want me to read

comics anymore. n  I: So why do you think your mom doesn’t like

you to read comics? n  S: She said it’s like I’m wasting my time like I

could do something better, like instead of reading comics, like actually doing homework.

n  I: Now um do you think teachers think the same way about comic books?

n  S: Yeah, probably, but not always but usually they do because they want you to focus on your homework. (Female, L2)

Study 2: Literacy and Learning in Uganda

Bonny Norton, Maureen Kendrick, Margaret Early, Juliet Tembe,

Harriet Mutonyi, Shelley Jones, Lauryn Oates, Sam Andema, Doris Abiria (University of British Columbia)

One (of many) questions

To what extent can Ugandan students’ drawing and photography enhance our understanding of their investments in literacy and their imagined identities?

Investments in the Digital World Map

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The Research Sites Investments in Multimodality

In any communicative mode, language, whether written or spoken, is only partial to the meaning-making process.

(Kress and Jewitt, 2003) Integral to this new agenda is understanding how cultures select from and choose to develop particular multimodal possibilities for communication.

(Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996)

“Growing up in Uganda, the most important way of learning was through storytelling. How the storyteller weaves together all aspects of life in such interesting ways is such a talent. At the end of each story was a session on the underlying lessons of the story. As a listener, you learn to note the key issues through the changes in the tone of voice and gestures the storyteller is using. The storytelling is an elaborate series of dramatization, singing, poetry, symbols, and images that communicate to the listener cultural lessons. These stories are usually embedded in the everyday experiences of the community and sometimes even carry the latest gossip, though done in the most humorous way.”

Harriet Mutonyi Harriet Mutonyi

“When there was an epidemic in the community, the most popular means of communication was through music and drama. The first time there was an epidemic of measles, the elders organized small drama and music sessions to educate the masses on what they should look out for and how to prevent the spread the disease as well as treat the infected child. Environmental images and songs were used to teach the English alphabet. We were taught, for example, that letter D is shaped like the stomach of a pregnant woman. Modeling things using clay was also part of the learning process. We would make homesteads and through that we were taught lessons on the importance of hygiene. The lessons helped make concrete what would be rather abstract lessons.”

Drawings with Grade 6 pupils

n  Draw pictures about about literacy

(reading and writing) in your lives, in school, and in the future.

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Purpose of photography with secondary school girls

n  To view their lives through the lens of a camera, making the familiar strange; the strange familiar (Pahl).

n  To have some access to technology and provide an authentic learning experience through the reading of manuals (Andrea)

n  To use photography as an entry point for discussion, writing, and critique (Snow)

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Photographs

“In this group you gives [us] the camera and we take it in our villages and photo our favourite things… which is very wonderful thing…we have improved our English and learnt very interesting things.”

(Kitengesa student, 2004)

Drawings and Photography

n  Students as the central literacy participant n  Identity of reader/phographer holds considerable

status n  Absence of teachers, parents, and other adults

as mediators of literacy

(Interview: Shelley and Rose, Student, 2005) S: How is learning English through doing a project like

this different from learning English in the classroom?

Rose: In class teachers write on the blackboard and we just listen.

S: In the research project how do you use English? Rose: Communication. S: Do you learn more by studying English or by

communicating in English? Rose: Communicating… S: Why? Rose: Because when you communicate, you think your

own English.

Identities and Investments

Canada: If children have ownership over text, they engage actively in

meaning-making Uganda: Multimodal literacies offer students a range of new identities

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Central Challenges in NLS* n  A key issue at both a methodological and

empirical level, then, is how we can characterize the shift from observing literacy events to conceptualizing literacy practices.

n  How does literacy relate to more general social theory regarding textuality, figured worlds, identity and power.

*Street, 2003, p. 79; 87

Contribution to New Literacy Studies (and more)?

n  Constructs of:

Investment? Imagined identities?

CONCEPTIONS OF IDENTITYTraditional Poststructural

motivated good

confident inhibited

anxious

unmotivated

n  good / badn  motivated /

unmotivatedn  anxious / confidentn  introvert / extrovertn  inhibited /

uninhibited

ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT IDENTITY TRADITIONAL THEORY CRITICAL THEORY

n  unique, essential - multiple, fragmented   n  coherent core - site of struggle   n  fixed, ahistorical - changing   n  inherent - produced   [Language is] the place where our sense of ourselves,

our subjectivity, is constructed. Weedon, 1987, p.21

Literacy Events and Literacy Practices

n  Canada: Popular cultural texts are integrated into peer networks

n  Uganda: Multimodal texts provide access to imaginary worlds