Browsing by Author "Doerr-Stevens, Candance"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Making the Body Visible through Dramatic/Creative Play: Critical Literacy in Neighborhood Bridges
    (Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2010-11) Lewis, Cynthia; Doerr-Stevens, Candance; Ingram, Debra
    This report describes and examines the meaning and use of critical literacy in The Children’s Theatre Company’s Neighborhood Bridges (Bridges) program. Critical literacy is an orientation to reading that includes an understanding of how texts (oral stories, books, media) position readers (listeners/viewers), how readers position texts, and how texts are positioned within social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. Critical literacy is central to the philosophy of Bridges, which involves elementary and middle school students in storytelling and creative drama. An important goal of the program is to develop in children the capacity to analyze and challenge dominant social and cultural storylines as they create new storylines through imaginative retellings and reenactments. Of particular interest in this report is how critical literacy is facilitated via various opportunities for drama/creative play and Teacher Artist interactions with students during the four phases of a typical Neighborhood Bridges session.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Struggle for social position in digital media composition
    (2013-06) Doerr-Stevens, Candance
    This study investigates the processes and products of multimodal and multi-authored digital media composition. Using ethnographic case study and Mediated Discourse Analysis (Norris & Jones, 2005), this study focuses specifically on the digital media composition of radio and film documentaries, examining struggle among students, media, and technology as vehicles for knowledge construction and social position. (Erstad & Silseth, 2008; Holland, Skinner, Lachiotte, & Cain, 1998). Drawing on the work of Bakhtin (1981, 1986) and Nelson and Hull (2008), struggle is theorized as a diverse "heteroglossia" or "many-voiced-ness," inherent in all acts of communication, in particular digital media texts. Conducted in an diverse, urban high school, data was collected from a variety of sources including field notes, class work, final media projects, and several hours of audio and video footage of students' collaborative process. Findings reveal intense engagement in the digital media composition process, often fueled by struggle surrounding media selections. Analysis of both the collaborative production process and final media products reveals a series of multimodal struggles in which students appropriate certain modes of communication within the documentary (e.g. sound, video, interviews, or voice over) in order to express nuanced views on the issue that may or may not be shared by the whole group. In gaining a deeper understanding of the struggles involved in the process of collaborative digital media composition, it becomes clear that literacy practices involve a continual negotiation among the various people, technology, and media involved. Such nuanced depictions of literacy provide theoretical infrastructure and frameworks both for researchers, who seek to impact policy related to literacy instruction, and teachers who continually guide students in their search and appropriation of a media voice.