Reimagining Isolated Literacy Classrooms as Interdependent Networks: Tracing Rituals, Repetitions, and Technologies

Abstract

Recent literacy scholarship increasingly seeks to center and value the literacies of systematically marginalized youth in response to deficit-oriented narratives that locate oppressed communities as incompetent or delayed. Often, this reframing leans on a contextualization of literacies as culturally, historically, and socially situated acts that people do. Located alongside recent literacy research combatting racism, homophobia, transphobia, linguicism, xenophobia, and the invisibilizing of indigenous peoples, this piece reimagines the active and rich literacies produced in an isolated (i.e., self-contained) special education literacy classroom. While theoretically utilizing situated literacies, this article also directly responds to critiques of situated literacies as too human-centric, an especially relevant criticism for classrooms with students who have complex support needs. Actor-network theory, as a theoretical and methodological lens, provides entry into the analysis of human and nonhuman actors collectively producing intricate literacy events during a curricular exploration of inclusive picturebooks (i.e., texts featuring main characters with lived dis/ability experiences). Findings presented trace two literacy events animated by actors such as students, technologies, rituals, and repetitions. Implications for this research argue for future theoretical and pedagogical framings of literacies as inherently interdependent productions, not just in isolated special education classrooms but all literacy classrooms. This shift moves away from illusive discourses of independence and autonomy and toward understandings of all literacies as interdependently shaped by endless network actors.