Mary Mcvee

University at Buffalo, The State University of New York | SUNY Buffalo · Department of Learning and Instruction

This article examined the intersection and interaction among positioning, communication modes, and culture by taking positioning theory as a theoretical framework. Data were collected from a WeChat discussion group where three Chinese international students engaged in a community of English as a second language (L2) literacies. A multimodal discour...

Throughout this chapter, our purpose is to consider how productive communication pertains to OfL, in general, and, in particular, to consider how the construct of productive communication encapsulates dialogic and active learning within an OfL framework (Brock et al., this volume). In particular, we will foreground the role that multiple modes (e.g...

At the final session of the 2022 Literacy Research Association Conference, Catherine Compton-Lilly, Marcus Croom, Mary McVee, and Allison Skerrett presented critical work related to equity, representation, and race in literacy scholarship. Panelists shared concerns and pursued a shared goal. Specifically, as literacy scholars, they recognized that...

This article provides an overview of multiliteracies in relation to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Terms such as New Literacy Studies, new literacies, and multimodality are defined. To exemplify the interpretive power of multiliteracies, the authors introduce elementary students (ages 9–10) participating in the engineerin...

Situated in an elementary afterschool Engineering Literacies Club framed around multiliteracies and the engineering design process, this article explores engineering habits of mind and disciplinary literacies. Disciplinary literacies encourage students to read, write, think, and act like historians, mathematicians, scientists, or engineers by engag...

This chapter explores positioning through the perspectives of posthumanism and Positioning Theory to consider their potential synergies as analytic and exploratory theories. A very brief introduction to posthumanism and Positioning Theory is provided with particular attention to scholars such as Foucault, Hollway, and Harré who have influenced work...

This exploratory case study uses multimodal positioning analysis to determine and describe how a purposefully crafted emergent artifact comes to influence and/or manipulate social dynamics, structure, and positionings of one design team comprised of five third-graders in an afterschool elementary engineering and literacy club. In addition to social...

The work of Rom Harré was groundbreaking in attention to the dynamics of social episodes as discursively produced. In particular, Positioning Theory, as introduced and explicated by Harré and colleagues, focused on the examination of speech and other acts to consider positions and storylines. Positioning theorists also considered the shifting patte...

This forum reviews a mix of resources to inform pedagogy and related educational practices that foreground representations of youth and their literacy practices within and outside of school.

Research has shown that international students experience challenges in the United States. This study explored how ten Chinese students drew upon their funds of knowledge to deal with challenges within higher education and analyzed how these students studying abroad positioned themselves within their experiences in the United States. Theoretical pe...

This qualitative telling case study was situated within a broader project, which explored how the research participants modified their teaching after having completed their master’s program. We investigated reflective stance of a teacher-practitioner who was a graduate of a Master’s Literacy Specialist program, which promoted reflective teaching pr...

This qualitative telling case study was situated within a broader project, which explored how the research participants modified their teaching after having completed their master’s program. We investigated reflective stance of a teacher-practitioner who was a graduate of a Master’s Literacy Specialist program, which promoted reflective teaching pr...

Many immigrants and refugees in the United States must confront different linguistic and cultural contexts in their everyday life. As part of a larger ethnographic study related to refugee families and literacy, this qualitative study explores how adult English as a second language (ESL) students help their classmate Htoo Eh find ways to deal with...

This year-long telling case study followed a pre-service teacher into the field as a novice kindergarten teacher. We sought theoretical explanation for the development of the participant's reflective stance in both settings. Four scenarios revealed that variation in the participant's depth of reflection can be explained by how foci, scaffolds, and...

Researchers have demonstrated that tutoring is an effective instructional model that relies upon the relationships among the tutor, the tutee, and the curriculum and not merely instructional skills or strategies. In our microethnographic case study, we investigated interactional patterns of two tutors who were pre-service literacy teachers working...

This article describes findings across two separate teacher education studies that analyse pre-service and in-service teachers’ explorations of literacy and diversity through literature discussion and peer interaction. Using the notion of “storylines” in positioning theory, the authors analyse particular storylines they construct within, and across...

Purpose – Introduces the beginning, acting, telling (BAT) model, designed for use in the elementary school classroom and based on the findings of research into information-seeking behavior and information literacy. The BAT model, by its use of visual cues and mnemonic to present stages and actions of the research process helps students to better co...

This department column explores digital and disciplinary literacies across learning contexts and disciplines within and outside of school. Digital enhancements will encourage readers to post questions, comments, and connections.

This article the learning of girls who were in a co-ed after school engineering club related to the project: Designing Vital Engineering and Literacy Practices for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math for Elementary Teachers and Children (DeVELOP STEM ETC). While few girls grow up to become engineers in the US, recently more attention has foc...

This chapter uses Positioning Theory to explore the positions that teachers may take up in response to video analysis using ethnographic video viewing within the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model. Using examples from a classroom event with video in teacher education course, McVee and her colleagues consider how video analysis may require atte...

This article analyzes a political advertisement known as ‘The Chinese Professor’ and related artifacts from popular culture and news media. This advertisement aired in the midst of the worst economic downturn the US had experienced since the 1930s. The advertisement is set 20 years in the future and uses a fictional Chinese professor to deliver a l...

This conceptual article addresses the question: What are the disciplinary literacy practices surrounding the Engineering Design Process (EDP) at the elementary level? Recent attention has focused on developing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills for U.S. students. In the United States, the Next Generation Science Standards and...

PurposeOur purpose in this chapter is to provide researchers and educators with a model of how the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) can be used with inservice and preservice teachers for professional development when teachers engage in reflective processes through the use of video reflection. Methodology/approachIn this chapter we provide a...

As the fifth volume in the book series, Literacy Research, Practice, and Evaluation, this text serves to contribute to the growing body of research focused on the use of video as a mediational tool for reflection in the field of education. Its chapters are composed of research findings and research-based practices from a wide array of literacy scho...

This study investigated the interactive positions and discourse strategies of participants in a graduate seminar for 18 literacy teachers. Intertextual positions were revealed through written and spoken discourse and demonstrated that participants used a range of discourse strategies for conflict avoidance or avoidance of further examination of ten...

This conceptual article, based on data collected and analyzed within a larger study, considers perspectives on cultural diversity and research in the context of the current politicized educational environment within the United States. Drawing from previous research conducted in a graduate course exploring language, literacy and culture, the author...

In this chapter, the authors present two classroom portraits of a 5th and 9th grade classrooms as activity systems where teachers and learners are engaged in multimodal composing. In their analysis, they are most interested in how principles of design, affordances of modes, and multimodality become internalized as psychological tools that shape lea...

In this chapter, we present two classroom portraits of a 5th and 9th grade classrooms as activity systems where teachers and learners are engaged in multimodal composing. In our analysis we are most interested in how principles of design, affordances of modes, and multimodality become internalized as psychological tools that shape learning in the c...

The rich illustrations of practice encourage both discussion of practical challenges and dilemmas and conceptualization beyond the specific cases. Historically, issues in New Literacy Studies, multimodality, new literacies, and multiliteracies have primarily been addressed theoretically, promoting a shift in educators’ thinking about what constitut...

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the school where Fayezeah and Kelly 1 were working was under a lockdown. The entire staff reported to emergency positions at doorways and in halls during noninstruction periods. The tense atmosphere of the school was compounded by the principal's decision to withhold information of the attack on the World Trade...

This chapter presents an introduction and overview to positioning theory as developed by Rom Harré, Bronwyn Davies, Luk van Langenove, Fathali Moghaddam and others. The chapter explores the educational affordances of positioning theory for educational researchers and particularly for those working with literacy education and teacher education.

While many teachers and teacher educators agree that it is important to integrate new literacies and technologies into their teaching, educators are often perplexed about how to begin thinking about this task. Research reveals that educators use technologies for personal and communicative purposes, but teachers, for the most part, have not yet appl...

Teachers often wonder how to integrate technology in their classroom. The journey toward a new literacies framework can be frustrating. Teachers must be flexible, collaborate with others, and recognize frustration as a sign of growth. Often, they must address issues of design, redesign, and multimodality in relation to technology and literacy teach...

Teachers and students often express an aversion to poetry based on their experiences with printbased poetry texts that typically dominate school curricula. Given this challenge and the potential affordances of new and multimodal technologies, we investigate how preservice and inservice teachers enrolled in a new literacies master's course began to...

During the 1970s, schema theory gained prominence as reading researchers took up early work by cognitive scientists to explore the role of schemas in reading. In the 1980s and ’90s, the field shifted as researchers increasingly used sociocultural theories, particularly the work of L. S. Vygotsky, to frame investigations of literacy. This article pr...

This article proposes that close examination of story retellings, both oral and written, can reveal a narrator's attempts to re-emplot a story in various ways. The retellings presented occurred in the context of a teacher education course where, across the semester, Ellie a white teacher, retold the same story six times. The retellings provided a u...

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of teacher narratives in relation to culture, literacy, self, and other within a masters literacy course in a US context. Within the course, teachers read and responded to autobiographical fiction and nonfiction in book club discussions and by sharing spoken and written personal narratives. Whereas...

This research study uses positioning theory as developed by Harré and colleagues to analyze the learning of 18 preservice and inservice literacy teachers who participated in discussions of social and cultural issues related to education such as race, identity, learning, and position. The article makes a unique contribution to positioning theory stu...

As part of an ongoing research collaboration with university-based researchers, Nancy and her teaching partner, Meredith, implemented a loosely defined sys- tem of portfolios to supplement the other forms of assessment in their class- room. School-based and university-based researchers interviewed children to assess children's perspectives of their...

A study addressed two challenges in American teacher education: (1) the differences in background between a largely Euro-American teaching force and the diverse pupils it serves; and (2) the difficulty of teaching about literacy and culture in responsive ways. Working with a group of teachers, the study used ethnic autobiographies, written by autho...

We have made incredible progress, both conceptually and practically, in the development of literacy assessment tools that appropriately reflect the goals and activities of literature-based reading programs. This progress, however, has not come without obstacles, many of which have not yet been (and may never be) fully negotiated. The purpose of thi...

In this investigation, we explore the nature of language-based social interactions of a Spanish-speaking child (pseudonym Adriana) in her predominately English-speaking classroom. In particular, this study examines ways in which a monolingual English—speaking teacher (the first author) and her research colleagues critically analyzed classroom discu...