The Specialist in Athenian Written Rhetoric During the Classical Period: A Reconsideration of Technical Rhetoric and Rhetorical Iconography

This essay argues that technical rhetoric in ancient Athens is neither well nor fully understood in its present historical characterization but rather is best realized as occupying a position on a spectrum of literate skills ranging from an art to a craft. The dismissive views of technical writing advanced by Plato and Aristotle should be reconsidered and specialized literate practices be recognized as an important feature of rhetoric in Athens’ classical period. A review of discursive and material (archaeological) evidence reveals that technical writing was evolving into a craft-skill in Athens as early as the archaic period and, by the classical period, would be regarded as a respected “rhetorical” profession of artistic expression. This essay urges readers to reconsider the restrictive characterization of rhetoric advanced by some historians of rhetoric and include the specialist craft-skills of writing as a manifestation of technical rhetoric that both illustrates, and more accurately represents, the range of classical rhetoric in ancient Athens.

Toward a pedagogy of Black livingness: Black students’ creative multimodal renderings of resistance to anti-Blackness

Purpose Historically, literacy education and research have been dominated by white supremacist narratives that marginalize and deficitize the literate practices of Black students. As anti-Blackness proliferates in US schools, Black youth suffer social, psychological, intellectual, and physical traumas. Despite relentless attacks of anti-Blackness, Black youth fight valiantly through a range of creative outlets, including multimodal compositions, that enable them to move beyond negative stereotypes, maintain their creativity, and manifest the present and future lives they desire and so deeply deserve. Design/methodology/approach This study aims to answer the question “How do Black students' multimodal renderings demonstrate creativity and love in ways that disrupt anti-Blackness?” The authors critically examine four multimodal compositions created by Black elementary and middle school students to understand how Black youth author a more racially just society and envision self-determined, joyful futures. The authors take up Black Livingness as a theoretical framework and use visual methodologies to analyze themes of Black life, love and hope in the young people’s multimodal renderings. Findings The findings suggest that Black youth creatively compose multimodal renderings that are humanizing, allowing their thoughts, feelings and experiences to guide their critiques of the present world and envision new personal and societal futures. The authors conclude with a theorization of a Black Livingness Pedagogy that centers care for Black youth. Originality/value Recognizing that “the creation and use of images [is] a practice of decolonizing methodology” (Brown, 2013, loc. 2323), the authors examine Black student-created multimodal compositional practices to understand how Black youth author a more racially just society and envision self-determined, joyful futures.

It’s a Wonderful Life: William H. Teale’s Contributions to Early and Emergent Literacy

We highlight in this essay the significant career contributions of William H. Teale to the field of literacy research, policy, and practice in recognition of his receipt of the 2020 Oscar S. Causey Award. First, we contextualize Professor Teale’s scholarship through personal descriptions of our decades-long collegial relationships with him. We then trace Teale’s early work to the career defining scholarship that led to paradigmatic shifts in early literacy research and practice. We highlight explicitly his consequential coauthored volume Emergent Literacy (Teale & Sulzby, 1986), which redefined literate practice and unlinked it from its conventional print-based onset to instead focus on the emergent literate practices that form the foundation of children’s meaningful engagement as literate beings. In the second half of our essay, we amplify the voices of colleagues across the world who provide testimonials that evidence the far-reaching and indelible impact of Professor Teale’s lifelong scholarship, which examined how to improve children’s literacy experiences through (a) the quality of literature they read, (b) teachers’ access to and interactions with models of high-quality instruction, and (c) school leadership development.

Learning Music

As the eighteenth century witnessed an expansion of educational opportunities, learning to read and write music imbued amateurs with erudition and discipline. Printed instructional volumes utilized archaic abstract visualizations that encouraged a cerebral approach to learning music, and singing school classes relied on rote memorization of the “rules of music.” The potential drudgery of this approach was mitigated by the sociability of the schools. By the end of the century, volumes of instruction for instruments were increasingly available to American amateurs; these, too, relied on charts that abstracted musical knowledge. The expansion of secular instrumental instruction shifted the emphasis of education from piety (for sacred singing) to refinement. Even as printed instructions pushed toward standardized “rules,” manuscript music books reveal that amateurs embraced a wide range of literate practices, from quite rudimentary to highly advanced. Manuscripts also reveal individuals’ gradual improvement in the technical ability, aural skill, and knowledge of musical vocabulary.

Game Design as Literacy-First Activity

This chapter explores pedagogical goals and classroom practices for literacy instruction with/in a digital learning environment that extends beyond the classroom. To do this, the authors developed a process for literate practices illustrated through game design. Game design is one example of a disciplinary activity that masks the complexity of writing yet provides teachers with opportunities to make visible the writing practices and genres inherent in all disciplines. Game developers are writers and game development is a ‘literacy-first' activity, a process that underscores the complex and considered choices authors or designers make in specific rhetorical contexts. Pedagogical goals and classroom practices at all levels of literacy education must encourage greater collaboration, privilege informal and situated learning, and promote decision-making, student self-monitoring, and lifelong learning. The chapter concludes by describing a project framework that can be adapted at all educational levels using game design as a model.

Literacy autobiographies in pre-service teacher education: opportunities for therapeutic writing in widening participation contexts

Literacy autobiographies, where learners write about significant events or experiences that have shaped their literate practices and identities, are commonly employed in composition courses as a means of encouraging author reflexivity. Here, we discuss the implementation of a literacy autobiography assignment in a pre-service teacher education course offered at a regional university in Australia. The assignment proved to be innovative, particularly resonating with the large proportion of pre-service teachers from first-in-family and traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in higher education, who often struggle with the literate practices privileged in the academy. Our observations suggest that these pre-service teachers embraced this novel university writing experience as an opportunity to make deeply personal connections with the course content and their own learning journeys. Our intention is to collectively consider important questions emerging from this innovative practice including: what do the deeply personal responses to this assignment suggest about university writing as a tool for making sense of past and present learning experiences; how can personal writing help to unpack the complex, power-laden relationships between literacy, biography and access; and how can autobiographical writing assist learners to reflect on the shifting identities (both literate and otherwise) associated with transitions into and through higher education?

Disciplinarity and Literate Activity in Civil and Environmental Engineering: A Lifeworld Perspective

Too frequently, representations of disciplinary writing foreground static notions of knowledge creation and literate practice in science and engineering. Rooted in discourse community theory, such representations present normative tropes of scientific practice that background notions of disciplinarity and obscure people’s lived experience and practice. Drawing on a case study of one woman, a civil and environmental engineer, this article argues for a lifeworld perspective of disciplinary becoming: a perspective that foregrounds notions of disciplinarity, lived experience, and literate practices as constantly mobile and in flux. The study suggests, specifically, that the woman’s work as an engineer cannot be separated from the people with whom she works, or has worked, and that her development as a writer extends beyond typical accounts of disciplinary enculturation. The author concludes by offering implications of this research for studies of disciplinarity and school science.

Children’s socialisation into literate practices through engaging in translation activities in immersion preschool

In this empirical study, we analyse how five-year-old children are socialised into particular interpretive practices indicative of a literate mind. The data come from translation activities where children with their teacher listen to and then talk about how to understand the lyrics to a popular children’s song. The setting is a Finnish–Swedish immersion programme, where Finnish-speaking children are immersed in Swedish. Three such activities were audio recorded. These are analysed according to the principles of Interaction Analysis, that is, how participants sequentially respond to each other’s communicative actions. Theoretically, the study is informed by a sociocultural perspective, highlighting how intramental function, such as reasoning and problem-solving, are contingent on intermental communication. How participating children are introduced to literate distinctions and concepts of interpreting text is therefore premised to be critical to their emerging literate interpretive skills. The results highlight how the children are constantly challenged and supported by the teacher in a zone of proximal development where their abilities to interpret the lyrics discussed are stretched.

Creating a Context for Girl of Color Ways of Knowing Through Feminist of Color Playwriting

This article investigates how playwriting served three middle school Black girls within a larger practitioner research study seeking to better understand the literate practices of girls of color. It delves into the ways that playwriting provided the girls in an afterschool writing club opportunities to explore both their knowledge and ways of knowing, rooted in their cultural, gendered, and racialized experiences, and, in turn, share these with others, within an academic setting. It points to the necessity for creating writing pedagogies that celebrate experiential, cultural, emotional, and relational knowledge, using playwriting as an example.