MACMILLAN Virtual Sites as Learning Spaces: Critical Issues on Languaging Research in Changing Eduscapes

This volume fills a gap in the literature between the domains of Communication Studies and Educational Sciences across physical-virtual spaces as they intersect in the 21st century. The chapters focus on “languaging” - communicative practices in the making - and its intersection with analogue and virtual learning spaces, bringing together studies that highlight the constant movement between analogue-virtual dimensions that continuously re-shape participants' identity positionings. Languaging is understood as the deployment of one or more than one language variety, modality, embodiment, etc in human meaning-making across spaces. Languaging activities are explored through a multitude of literary artefacts, genres, media, and modes produced in and across sites. The authors go beyond “best practice” approaches and instead present “how-to-explore” communicative practices for researchers, learners and teachers. This book will be of interest to readers situated in the areas of literacy, literature, bi/multilingualism, multimodality, linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics, and related fields.    Chapters 2, 5, 8 and 12 are open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.  Review “Virtual Sites as Learning Spaces is a fascinating and well-timed volume, unique in the combination of a social science and humanity perspective on learning in the virtual, and in how it allows a radical rupture with old frameworks on learning, language and identity, triggering the reader to imagine entirely new ones.”(Mariëtte de Haan, Professor of Intercultural Education, Utrecht University, Netherlands, and co-editor of Media and Migration - Learning in a Globalized World (2016)) “As distinctions between online and offline contexts become increasingly blurred, our understandings of education and communication need refinement. This volume tackles a range of important questions about the multifaceted nature of language, literacies and learning across a range of digital-analogue contexts – from Facebook to Wikipedia. It is an empirically-rich and theoretically-varied addition to the critical literature on technology and education.” (Neil Selwyn, Monash University, Australia, and author of Is Technology Good for Education? (2016)) “This book is an important contribution to the emergent research tradition on the potential and challenges that digital language practices have for understanding, enabling and investigating learning. It highlights crucial theoretical and methodological questions that scholars need to engage with and problematizes and provides nuanced empirical analyses of digital-analogue practices, illuminating the significance and value of digitality in contemporary education.”(Sirpa Leppänen, Professor, Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland) “The 13 fascinating chapters in this volume address a variety of critical didactic topics that arise with the timely conception of virtual sites as eduscapes. The chapters shed new light on the language, genres, and ideologies at play in contemporary learning. The volume will enlighten educators and learners as well as a broader public interested in learning and new media.” (Sune Auken, Leader of the Centre for Genre Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) From the Back Cover This volume fills a gap in the literature between the domains of Communication Studies and Educational Sciences across physical-virtual spaces as they intersect in the 21st century. The chapters focus on “languaging” - communicative practices in the making - and its intersection with analogue and virtual learning spaces, bringing together studies that highlight the constant movement between analogue-virtual dimensions that continuously re-shape participants' identity positionings. Languaging is understood as the deployment of one or more than one language variety, modality, embodiment, etc in human meaning-making across s