Bloomsbury Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning: Multimodality and Governmentality

About the Author Mary Hamilton is Professor of Adult Learning and Literacy in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University, UK. Her most recent book is Literacy and the Politics of Representation (2012).Rachel Heydon is Professor in the Faculty of Education at Western University, Canada. Her most recent book is Learning at the Ends of Life (2013).Kathryn Hibbert is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and Centre Researcher at the Centre for Research Education and Innovation, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University, Canada.Roz Stooke is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Western University, Canada, where she teaches courses in Curriculum Studies, Literacy and Children’s Literature. Product Description This volume addresses two strong currents that are sweeping through the contemporary educational field. The first is the opening up of possibilities for multimodal communication as a result of developments in digital technologies and the sensitivity to multiliteracies. The second is the increasing governing of their teaching and the imposition of inappropriate testing regimes, with the resulting narrowing of opportunities for diverse expressions of literacy; curricular and pedagogical practices are being pulled out of alignment with the everyday informal practices and the interests of teachers and learners within education. Review "Deeply political and richly illustrated across different populations and varied settings, Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning is an engaging collection that features cutting-edge research by international scholars. By pushing and expanding fields in literacy studies like multimodality, the editors and chapter authors couple multimodal theory with theoretical frameworks like actor network theory to complicate the contemporary field of literacy education. Read this edited book and you will appreciate how much the field of multimodality and multiliteracies has moved on." --Jennifer Rowsell, Canada Research Chair, Brock University, Canada"In Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning an all-star cast discusses the tensions between liberation and control in the digital age. This is the deepest discussion of multimodality and multiliteracies to date." --James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies and Regents' Professor, Arizona State University, USA"This thought-provoking book draws together a diverse group of international scholars who explore, question, critique and challenge thinking and practices relating to multimodality and governmentality. In foregrounding contradictory discourses, Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning encourages readers to move beyond accepting the taken-for-granted, and offers multiple ways of thinking otherwise about literacy education. It prompts deep thinking and challenges readers to think about literacy futures." --Robyn Henderson, Associate Professor of Literacies Education, University of Southern Queensland, Australia"Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning is an original book that investigates the intersection of technologies of literacies, education, and the self. Fully engaged with the pressures and struggles of education, and the ways in which its regulatory gaze is unfolding across an international landscape of education, the authors combine governmentality and multimodal theories in exciting ways to point to the potentials of expanding communicational repertoires, identity options and literacy for action in an increasingly constrained environment." --Carey Jewitt, Professor of Technology and Learning, Institute of Education, University College London, UK"Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning is a refreshing analysis of an 'unholy alliance': the learning potential of digital communication and the restrictive nature of educational institutions. The chapters in this edited book explore the tension between multimodality and governance. Contra