Anna Smith

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Illinois State University

This article introduces a transliteracies framework to conceptually account for the contingency and instability of literacy practices on the move and to offer a set of methodological tools for investigating these mobilities. Taking the paradox of mobility—the simultaneous restricting or regulation of movement that accompanies mobility—as its centra...

Another first for the 7th edition of Theoretical Models and Processes of Literacy (TMPL7) is Anna Smith's chapter on the history of writing instruction. In Chapter 3, Smith describes theory building in writing instruction as waves of four key, interacting dimensions. Smith's dimensions include a products dimension, a cognitive & stage processes dim...

This editorial introducing the special issue, “Writing across: Tracing transliteracies as becoming across time, space, and settings,” argues that research and theories on writing have too often focused on writing in, whether writing in particular physical locations (writing in a classroom, in a workplace) or writing in more metaphorical or virtual...

Building from the concept ‘sponsors of literacy’, the authors revisit three empirical studies to argue for mobilising notions of sponsorship beyond fixed conceptions of individual sponsors and literacy to lifewide perspectives that take into account sponsoring relations across the broader learning lives of youth. The authors take up the theoretical...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to re-center playfulness as a humanizing approach in teacher education. As teachers navigate the current moment of heightened control, surveillance, and systemic inequity, these proposed moves in teacher education can be transgressive. Rather than play as relegated to childhood or infancy, what does it look like...

This article provides a comparative case study of two connected learning experiences in teacher education that vary in scope, participants, time, and design to consider the questions: 1) What characterizes humanizing engagement across varied experiences of connected learning in teacher education? and 2) What repertoires of practice become shared th...

In this manuscript, we explore sites of struggle in the inclusion of critical digital literacies (CDL) in teacher preparation programs. Our worked examples explore two authors’ teacher-preparation classrooms and the ways in which each attempts to teach about CDL, in the scope of each class, across varying scales. Through a scalar approach, we explo...

In this article, we take a close look at the authoritative discourses of digital writing development communicated through the US Common Core State Standards, inclusive of its marketing materials (e.g., website, supplemental documents, and videos). Digital writing is largely missing from the CCSS and its limited inclusion is predominantly in the ser...

In this article, the authors explore mapping as a pedagogical approach. Drawn from two literacy classrooms, the authors report on five empirical examples of mapping, elucidating the ways in which mapping activities were sites of dynamic meaning-making through processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). In...

Examining two longitudinal cases of writing development, we argue for a Flat CHAT (cultural-historical activity theory) perspective on transliteracies development that focuses attention on laminated assemblage—how times, spaces, artifacts, and people converge in complex and unfolding trajectories of becoming. The first case focuses on Nora, a post-...

To better understand the impacts of participatory design in English language arts teacher education, this critical case study focuses on the National Writing Project’s Connected Learning Massive, Open, Online Collaboration (CLMOOC) that engaged educators in playing with the connected learning framework. The authors draw from 5 years of interaction...

In an effort to draw attention to the mobile dimensions of meaning making, this article proposes a pedagogy of transliteracies, supporting educators and learners in critically reflecting on how people, media, and things are connected across space and time. Expanding on the New London Group’s (1996) multiliteracies vision of communicative and ideolo...

In this discussion with educational researchers and New London Group conveners, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, we discuss the origins, life, and future of the New London Group‘s multiliteracies framework. We reflect on the initial goals the group had over 20 years ago for more equitable schooling opportunities, and what is yet to be done to reach th...

At the forefront of current digital literacy studies in education, this Handbook uniquely systematizes emerging interdisciplinary themes, new knowledge, and insightful theoretical contributions to the field. The chapter topics-identified through academic conference networks, rigorous analysis, and database searches of trending themes-are organized...

The study focuses on adolescents’ responses to their 8th grade, language arts/social studies teacher’s attempts to infuse instruction with networked, digital technology. Drawn from third space theory (Bhabha, 1994), we identify three stances that students took up—accepting, leveraging, and repurposing. Students often expressed an accepting stance t...

The Connected Learning Massive Open Online Collaboration (CLMOOC) is an online professional development experience designed as an openly networked, production-centered, participatory learning collaboration for educators. Addressing the paucity of research that investigates learning processes in MOOC experiences, this paper examines the situated lit...

Drawing from the research methods of three distinct literacy studies, in this piece, we highlight the visualisation approaches integral to our enquiry processes as researchers working to make sense of literacy and learning. We aim to encourage, provoke even, a conversation about visualisation processes in literacy research by sharing the individual...

This column seeks to explore the experiences of National Writing Project teachers as writers, teachers of writing, and educational leaders.