Materialities, multiliteracies, and makerspaces: Design-based experiments in teacher/researcher collaborations

Abstract

In a world of increasing digitisation and multimodality, writing, or more broadly text production, is a key element of what it means to be literate. Everyday practices now include interactions between children and young people and print and digital texts, tools and resources. Drawing on a sociomaterial perspective, we consider how children learn to be literate for current times and thinking. We analyse data from a study of how children learn to write and produce texts in their early school years. As one part of the larger study, teachers and researchers worked together to reform pedagogical practice within a design-based research framework. Data analysed in this chapter was collected as part of one design-based project where teachers and researchers worked together to plan and implement a series of lessons with the aim of encouraging more positive engagement with writing for children in this year 1 classroom. The design-based project began with opportunities for children to engage in makerspace activities, before moving to produce texts in other modes. We are particularly interested in the materiality of these activities and how they shifted the roles of children and adults in the classroom space.