Browsing by Author "Campbell, Harrison Michael"

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    Literacy Through The Arts: A Phenomenological Inquiry into What it is Like to Experience Literacy within a Theatrical Space
    (2019-07-05) Campbell, Harrison Michael; Towers, Jo; Alonso-Yañez, Gabriela; Burwell, Catherine; Lenters, Kimberly A.
    Literacy, according to Lindquist and Seitz (2009), “is one of those words, like love, that people use commonly and confidently, as if its meaning were transparent and stable” (p. 8). Literacy in classrooms, however, is inherently complex and the experiences that surround it, especially from the student’s perspective, are often lost. This thesis examines how literacy came to be defined within a specialized arts immersion junior high school in Western Canada and how the unique approach to curriculum was better able to encourage student agency, authorship, and identity within literacy's definition. This research is inspired by the work of the New London Group, which spoke to expanding the scope of literacy pedagogy through a proposed framework of multiliteracies embracing multimodality and contextual responsiveness to the learning environment. (New London Group, 1994). In response to this it was seen that students needed to have spaces in which they can play the role of code breakers, text users and text analysts. Artistic inquiry is a means to create such a space which in addition to teaching applied roles, also allow students to strengthen their social and cultural wellbeing (Wells & Sandretto, 2017). Over the course of a semester eight students created a theatrical space in which they communicated their experiences of literacy with data being collected through interviewing, journaling, monologue writing, and performance. Through the use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis students, who were recruited using homogeneous sampling, had their data coded in a way that created a double hermeneutic around literacy as the researcher and students engaged in dialogue and performance as a means of making meaning. This phenomenological process allowed for the development of a flexible open-ended inquiry. The study's findings showed that students within this unique learning environment connected their literacy experiences directly into the fine and performing arts. Students experienced literacy both in a traditional sense and a performative sense, citing that their work within school productions was a way of building upon their literacy skills. For these students, literacy was not a single experience but an interconnected web of experiences that enriched their learning and increased their engagement.