Reclaiming the rural: Essays on literacy, rhetoric, and pedagogy
Abstract
In Reclaiming the Rural: Essays on Literacy, Rhetoric,and Pedagogy, editors Kim Donehower, Charlotte Hogg, and Eileen E. Schell bring together a diverse collection of essays that consider literacy, rhetoric, and pedagogy in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The essays move beyond the typical arguments for preserving, abandoning, or modernizing by analyzing how rural communities sustain themselves through literate action. The contributors explore the rhetorics of water disputes in the western United States, the histories and influences of religious rhetorics in Mexico, agricultural and rural literacy curricula, the literacies of organizations such as 4-H and Academia de la Nueva Raza, and neoliberal rhetorics. Central to these examinations are the rural populations themselves, which include indigenous peoples in the rural United States, Canada, and Mexico, as well as those of European or other backgrounds. The strength of the anthology lies in its multiple perspectives, various research sites, and the range of methodologies employed, including rhetorical analyses of economies and environments, media, and public spaces; classroom-based research; historical analysis and archival work; and qualitative research. The researchers engage the duality between the practices of everyday life in rural communities and the practices of reflecting on and making meaning. Reclaiming the Rural reflects the continually changing, nuanced, context-dependent realities of rural life while acknowledging the complex histories, power struggles, and governmental actions that have affected and continue to affect the lives of rural citizens. This thought-provoking collection demonstrates the value in reclaiming the rural for scholarly and pedagogical analysis. Copyright © 2012 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University. All rights reserved.
... Persuasive speaking and writing are inescapable parts of all democratic societies, as every citizen will inevitably use this kind of language and have it used against them (Corbett & Connors, 1999). The teaching of persuasive writing in schools has been described as a 'democracy sustaining approach to education' (Hess, 2009, p. 5), as increased literacy achievement in this area affords civic activism (Donehower, Hogg & Schell, 2011;Green & Corbett, 2013). Such teaching empowers young people to clearly and purposefully articulate their views on any matter (Corbett & Connors, 1999). ...
This paper makes visible particular persuasive language choices made by the highest scoring Tasmanian primary and secondary school students who completed the 2011 NAPLAN writing test. Specifically, it draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to consider how these students used different forms of nominalisation to persuade readers about the 2011 writing prompt: that too much money is being spent on toys and games. The paper explores how the use of nominalisation differed across the primary and secondary school years and draws links to the Australian Curriculum: English which introduces the nominalisation in Year 8. Recommendations are made for primary and secondary school teachers who wish to equip students with the language resources to deal with the demands of NAPLAN testing, but also to write persuasively in more authentic educational and social contexts.
... Escuelas y profesores también pueden jugar un papel muy relevante en la construcción de una fuerte identidad local y apego con el pueblo (Donehower et al., 2012;Edmondson, 2003), hasta el punto no tanto de frenar la emigración al término de la educación secundaria, sino de favorecer proyectos de retorno futuro de los jóvenes que tienen un mayor grado de apego con sus localidades (Farmer et al., 2006). ...
This thesis focuses on intangible but essential aspects of the social and economic development of any territory, using as a frame of reference the human development approach originally proposed by the economist Amartya Sen, while claiming the role of innovation in rural development processes in accordance with the classical conceptualisation of Joseph Schumpeter. In this thesis a critical analysis is made of the evolution of the LEADER programme, the most emblematic rural development policy in Spain and the European Union, over the last three decades. Based on evidence available in the academic literature on the strengths and weaknesses of LEADER, alternative orientations and experiences are identified that can serve as a guideline for updating rural development policies and initiatives in a socio-political context in which the demographic dimension of development has acquired greater visibility. In accordance with these premises and with the postulates of the human development approach, a methodology for the elaboration of local development strategies is proposed, describing aims, instruments and actors with the capacity to stop or at least mitigate the cycle of decline of a rural area. Among these actors, the relevance that universities and educational centres could have in the dynamics of transformation of rural territories that remain on the margins of a globalised and knowledge-based economy is justified. Based on this proposal, the result of its application in the design of the development strategy for the period 2014-2020 of a territory included within the diffuse limits of the so-called Empty Spain, the Altiplano of Granada, is described. In this same area, we investigate how different endowments of human capital and social capital at individual, family and municipal level influence the future expectations, perception of their environment, migration intentions and entrepreneurial vocation of young rural people. The results have allowed us to identify the feeling of personal attachment to the place as one of the variables with the greatest weight when it comes to encouraging young people's intention to remain in their villages in the future, an intention that only 3 out of 10 respondents would have. Given the absolute importance of increasing the human and social capital of young people for their own benefit, this thesis argues that emigration for training and work experience does not devitalize the territory; on the contrary, it is a necessary condition for future development, but for this to happen, it must be accompanied by measures that facilitate the creation of attachment to the place during childhood and adolescence, an academic and employment orientation in secondary schools that links students with the needs, resources and potential of their municipalities, as well as actions that later facilitate the eventual return to their localities. The research has identified significant gender disparities among young people in the Altiplano, thus justifying the adoption of differentiated measures by schools, associations, local and regional governments. Where there are no significant gender differences is in the entrepreneurial intentions of young people. The research has made it possible to validate in a rural context the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) about the entrepreneurial intention of secondary school students, finding, in a novel way, a lower interest in entrepreneurship on the part of young people who have parents who are already entrepreneurs, contrary to what is common in the literature. This result would be the consequence of a negative perception of young people regarding the functioning, viability or effort involved in the creation and management of a business in a rural area in decline. The thesis also addresses, from a human development approach, an exploratory analysis of the business fabric of the Altiplano of Granada, in which the low capacity of absorption of innovation of entrepreneurs and their limited social capital, which slows down the potential socio-economic improvement of the area, are evidenced. The thesis concludes with a compendium of conclusions and recommendations for decision-makers in rural areas, as well as an epilogue in which nine stories of entrepreneurs, institutions, and associations from the Altiplano de Granada are recounted, which exemplify in practice many of the central ideas defended in this thesis.
... Persuasive speaking and writing are inescapable parts of all democratic societies, as every citizen will inevitably use this kind of language and have it used against them (Corbett & Connors, 1999). The teaching of persuasive writing in schools has been described as a 'democracy sustaining approach to education' (Hess, 2009, p. 5), as increased literacy achievement in this area affords civic activism (Donehower, Hogg & Schell, 2011;Green & Corbett, 2013). Such teaching empowers young people to clearly and purposefully articulate their views on any matter (Corbett & Connors, 1999). ...
This paper makes visible particular persuasive language choices made by the highest scoring Tasmanian primary and secondary school students who completed the 2011 NAPLAN writing test. Specifically, it draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to consider how these students used different forms of nominalisation to persuade readers about the 2011 writing prompt: that too much money is being spent on toys and games. The paper explores how the use of nominalisation differed across the primary and secondary school years and draws links to the Australian Curriculum: English which introduces the nominalisation in Year 8. Recommendations are made for primary and secondary school teachers who wish to equip students with the language resources to deal with the demands of NAPLAN testing, but also to write persuasively in more authentic educational and social contexts.
... Although some research in the literature indicated smaller schools and class sizes may be challenges, these factors are observed as benefits to the community in this study (Azano & Stewart, 2016). Additional advantages of rural communities include agriculture production of food and other natural resources for consumption and distribution to all parts of the world (Corbett, 2007;Donehower, Hogg, & Schell, 2012;Theobald & Nachtigal, 1995). The numerous resource-rich offerings and potential services offered in rural communities are advantages to a community's viability. ...
Understanding the nuances of the two individually specialized fields of rural education and gifted education is challenging for practitioners and education researchers. However, the combined field of rural gifted education has even more complexities. An examination of context and content in rural gifted education holds potential to elucidate facets of this specialized convergent field for advances in practice and research. This literature review systematically explores complexities in the individual fields of rural education and gifted education as they relate to the unique aspects of rural gifted education. This review provides an understanding of rurality as a context for gifted education; examines rural-specific questions about curricula content, particularly place-based curricula in gifted education; and identifies successes, challenges, and gaps in rural gifted education. The review can serve as the foundation for research exploring potential influences of place and achievement on what it means to be both rural and gifted.
... In the Afterword of Reclaiming the Rural (Donehower, Hogg, & Schell, 2012), Paul Theobald argues that "What Americans don't fully understand is that an urban locus of power has not always been the way of the world" (p. 240). ...
This article highlights various paradoxes and false dichotomies in rural education research. Using Paulo Freire's theories of oppression and critical awareness, the article delineates a theoretical framework designed to explore a reframing of rural education. We propose that this reframing would serve as rural praxis for school leaders and teachers, and we make use of these theories to discuss school leader and teacher preparation programs. This reframing for the field of rural education research proposes a way through contradictions and dispels deficit narratives underlying conceptions of rurality and theoretical constructs in rural education research.
... Despite the long-standing debate on what constitutes rurality, it nevertheless is a variable that is worthy of consideration given the specific region in which this study takes place. Therefore, in agreement with Donehower, Hogg, and Schell (2012) 'the rural' must be defined "not only demographically and geographically but culturally as well" (p. 7). This university campus, as the research site of this study, is located in the tropics and is one of the three main campuses of the university which has higher access rates for students from low socio-economic status backgrounds and for indigenous students who come from regional and remote areas. ...
Despite the amount of information known about how people engage in offline social interactions, there is limited knowledge regarding how such interactions express themselves in the online environment. For social interactions to be consistently harmonious, a level of interpersonal competence and self-efficacy are required. The study aims to determine the relationships andthe predictive capacity of user demographics, self-efficacy and interpersonal competence for online communication preferences using an online survey methodology. The sample consisted of 65 males and 158 females attending a rural Australian university whose ages ranged from 17 to 59 years (M=25.06, SD=10.14). Online communication preferences were operationalized as communication style preferences (synchronous versus asynchronous), context disclosure preferences (one-to-one/one-to-many), and platform preferences (social media involving family and friends versus emails involving colleagues). Age and interpersonal competence were significant predictors for communication style preferences in terms of the timing in conversations and platform preferences. None of the demographics, self-efficacy or the interpersonal competence were found to predict context disclosure preferences. The findings extend knowledge in the field of online social interaction research.
... In particular, we need to consider critical literacy, a type of literacy which needs a critical consciousness of the social conditions in which learners find themselves. Finally, literacy is constructed through three ways: adaptation (for real-world survival), power (cultural and economic advancement), and a state of grace (self-knowing) (Donehower, Hogg, & Schell, 2011). ...
This chapter provides a starting point for reflecting on what is important to understand second language (L2) or foreign language (FL) literacy instruction for Chinese speakers. The field of FL/L2 literacy is interdisciplinary in nature and is informed by research covering the fields of second language acquisition, reading research, writing research, bilingual processing, sociocultural factors, language assessment, critical language pedagogies, social semiotics, and language policies. With a focus on current innovative practices, this chapter conceptualizes English FL/L2 literacy development in primary, secondary, and higher education contexts and juxtaposes the similarities and differences in English FL/L2 literacy instruction in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
... Derrida's (1978) concept of difference is useful here because it helps us understand that linguistic categories only make sense in terms of the field of relationships in which they are embedded and employed. The linguistic field around the term "rural" tends to place it in opposition to terms like "urban," "modern," "developed," "diverse," "culture," "cosmopolitan," "multicultural," and "literacy," as the emerging field of rural literacies demonstrates (Donehower, Schell, & Hogg, 2007;Donehower, Hogg, & Schell, 2011;Green & Corbett, 2013). If the urban is understood to be coterminous with modernity, rural is typically positioned as modernity's other. ...
The field of rural education has not been significantly developed in Canada and the marginal status of the rural itself has contributed to this peripheral status. The emergence of geography and spatial thinking generally in social theory and in educational thought represents an opportunity to re-evaluate the importance of space and place in educational theory and policy discourse. Rather than a space formal education leaves behind, or as the location of impoverishment, isolation, and deficit, I argue that rural communities occupy an important place on the Canadian educational landscape. Given the economic, political, and cultural challenges they face, I suggest rural schools may produce higher quality educational outcomes than are generally attributed to them. ©2014 Canadian Society for the Study of Education/ Société canadienne pour l'étude de l'éducation.
Our overriding goal was to understand territorial inequalities regarding secondary school completion by testing which contextual factors and educational resources are associated with their change in high-and low-density Portuguese municipalities. Our analysis covered the time between 2009 and 2018, including both the economic crisis and the economic recovery period. Drawing mostly on publicly available data from 253 municipalities and following a Linear Mixed Model approach , we found that low-density municipalities depicted significantly greater levels of secondary school attainment by 2013 compared to high-density municipalities. Moreover, growing unemployment rates were associated with a reduction in secondary school completion rates across the assessed time points. Contrary to our expectations, higher rates of permanent teachers were associated with worse rates of secondary school completion. In addition, we found a significant increase in the rates of secondary school conclusion at higher levels of preschool enrollment among high-density municipalities. Our discussion counteracts the usual overstating of vulnerable territories' worse educational indicators. We also underline the importance of improving secondary education indicators for reducing structural inequalities in the school-to-work transition in less affluent territories and pinpoint the importance of implementing policies, such as improving access to preschool education in Portuguese high-density municipalities.
The model of rural social space developed by Reid et al. (2010) draws attention to key issues impacting on the professional and social dimensions of living and learning in rural places. This chapter elaborates on the workings of the model by illustrating with examples from a number of large-scale rural research studies. The case examples highlight the complexities and richness of the social, cultural, and environmental histories of specific places and how these impact on the relationships and social structures operating at any given time. In this way, it explicates the value of the model and how it operates as a resource to help understand any place. It is argued that understanding the implications of rural social space can support professional practitioners, policy-makers, and systems to think differently, and more productively, about the potential and possibilities for working and living in particular non-metropolitan settings. By recognising this, the chapter supports the need to challenge deficit models of the rural and other marginalised social categories.
In this chapter I argue that settler societies contain multiple sociocultural creation stories that serve to generate powerful emotional landscapes, or what Raymond Williams called “structures of feeling”. These can be inclusive, respectful and generous, or alternatively narrow, xenophobic, nativist, racist and otherwise exclusionary. Drawing on ideas from the critical sociology of education and contemporary work in rural education, I offer a theoretical approach to rural teacher education that imagines schooling as a relational enterprise where stories connect rather than diverge, supporting a movement of the field of rural education into productive conversation with the culturally responsive pedagogy movement and Indigenous scholarship. This involves, I argue, a careful analysis of the idea of the rural along with its attendant emotional and spatial dimensions.
This chapter takes up several movements in social theory and educational scholarship that offer challenges to curriculum theory. As a rural education specialist, I develop an argument about relations of scale that juxtapose the particular and the general in terms of both knowledge and the idea of place. I suggest that in order to confront current and emerging challenges in settler-capitalist societies it is necessary to address and redress historic and colonial atrocities while at the same time actively ‘staying with the trouble’ (Haraway, 2016) of ecological damage. This involves attention to place, but in the sense that place is necessarily relational and caught up in complex spatial dynamics that transcend any locale.
Understanding changing relationships between literacy practices and social capital in the contemporary global rural world is increasingly important. The relatively recent emergence of rural literacies as a new formation in Literacy Studies, as a scholarly field, has resulted in the shaping of a distinctive, expanded view of literacy as a form of textual practice deeply implicated in the constitution of rurality. This has involved new understandings of the interplay of the material and the discursive, and a growing awareness of the productivity and strategic importance of what is called the rural standpoint – taking on, and taking seriously, the standpoint of the rural at a time of new intensities of globalisation, urbanisation, and environmental pressure. This chapter considers the implications of these new intensities for a variety of institutions that serve as “sponsors of literacy” in rural spaces. Literacies and their sponsors are key components structuring rural relational spaces, especially within what is called “the new mobilities paradigm”, which focuses on mobility as “the new organizing principle for a reconstituted sociology in and for a global age”. The chapter seeks to deepen our understanding of rural literacies as a field of praxis and inquiry.
In this chapter, the author chronicles experiences living and teaching in three rural communities in the Midwest and, consequently, these experiences' impacts on practice. The chapter begins with a discussion on rural sustainability and culturally sustaining pedagogies. Next, themes of community, place, and culture are explored. Pedagogical practices such as place-based education are discussed. Then, authentic experiences from three uniquely diverse settings are shared. Finally, a statement about how these stories and lived experiences shape teacher educator identity and practice is provided.
In this study, the authors addressed first-year-composition students in an economically depressed, rural area, with their state of residence having a high number, per capita, of service-members and veterans of recent wars. Additionally, some students identified as Native American. The study’s purpose was two-fold: first, more broadly, to investigate within this sociocultural dynamic to what extent students with a military identity, a recent military family history, and/or no military-related personal or family affiliation enjoyed reading about military topics and second, more narrowly, to explore whether the first author’s offering of a Composition II class, based upon an experimental course model formulated to be military-friendly and military-theme-focused, would promote a range of students’ interaction with the curricular design, including both service members/veterans and nonveterans. The article discusses a three-year case study conducted at a comprehensive research university and a regional university in Oklahoma and involves 74 service-members/veterans, 18 military spouses, and 95 nonveterans, with 21 of the nonveterans being the children of parents with military service. As instruments, the authors utilized surveys, interviews, and course papers. The study resulted in several findings. In the larger scope, at both universities, a majority of service-members/veterans reported having a personal and a family military history, and a majority of nonveterans reported having a family military history as factors correlating with their enjoyment or expressed potential enjoyment of reading about military topics. As a subgroup, most students enrolled in the military-friendly, Composition II class perceived that in doing so, they interacted with a cohesive, relevant curriculum as they read and sometimes wrote about military-oriented class materials, as well as the kinds of community service they intended to perform via their careers, with the idea of “serving” becoming a central topic. As additional curricular outcomes, the class’s framework aided service-members/veterans’ college shift, and many students valued opportunities to discuss identity-related issues regarding their personal and/or recent family military history. The study’s results have implications for teaching students, who are service-members/veterans, have a military-affiliated identity, and/or possess a recent military family history, within a military-friendly, first-year-writing classroom featuring military-themed readings. Furthermore, in addressing the call to identify and accommodate student groups and their academic needs specific to their demographic, this article has implications for instructing rural and Native American students of the geographical area.
Many children are living in extreme poverty; barely meeting their daily survival needs. Yet in the more developed world we are spending billions of dollars per year on toys and games. Surely this money is better spent helping to evaluate the problems associated with world poverty? Surely it could be used to help the problems with water? Surely it is better spent on education in undeveloped countries? It is really simple – think before you buy.
How might we go about understanding and researching rural literacies? Is it indeed appropriate to speak of “ rural literacies”? Is it possible or even meaningful to refer to rural literacies, with the adjective in this case being a genuine modifier? What does the adjective “rural” do? How does it add value to either literacy studies or rural education, as scholarly fields? What relationship exists between literacy studies and rural schooling, and between literacy studies and rural education more generally? This chapter seeks to engage and explore questions such as these, in order to open up discussion and debate in this undervalued and misrecognized area.
This is the Introduction to a book co-edited by the authors entitled Rethinking Rural Literacies: Transnational Perspectives (2013). The book explores the relationship between literacy studies and rural education, with contributors from Australia, Canada, the USA, and Finland. Hence, it presents different rural imaginaries, and divergent experiences and histories, despite important commonalities and connections. The paper introduces the territory, drawing on research and scholarship in both literacy studies and rural education, and provides a brief summary-account of the thirteen chapters to follow. It proposes that there is much value, at this particular moment in history, in providing scholarly insight into the role and significance of literacy practice and education for rural life and society.
This qualitative longitudinal study responds to recent conversations in composition studies about the role of first-year writing in the transition to college, and it suggests that writing teachers should consider the linguistic and rhetorical resources, as well as the ideologies that surround those resources, students bring into the writing classroom from their local communities. Rural Southern students are one such population who need this consideration, because of their low persistence to graduation, and the fact that many of these students are speakers of a non-standard dialect of English that is strongly associated with ideologies of low intelligence and limited education.
This dissertation project offers a new perspective on the presence and (re)production of linguistic and rhetorical ideologies in the first-year writing classroom and suggests that not only are these ideologies salient for students, they are more complex than the current body of research might suggest. These ???first generation??? college students use the set of persistent ideologies associated with their home dialect to differentiate themselves from their peers they attended high school with and their family ???back home??? who did not attend college, and to set up a hierarchy of dialects as a means of distinguishing social class. The nine students in this study, all of whom came from a single high school in South Carolina, used language ideologies to distinguish themselves in their new social environments at college and attempted to leverage their understandings about what is rhetorically effective in academic writing in their first-year composition courses.
These students??? voices and experiences are not well-represented in the present body of work about their transitions into college writing. Their perspectives could prove particularly useful for researchers trying to address the challenges that rural Southern students face as they leave the local high school and the linguistic and rhetorical capital valued there, especially as they make the transition into the context of the post-secondary writing classroom, which values a different kind of linguistic and rhetorical practice.
In this article, I review influential contributions made by writing-studies researchers to the research literature on literacy sponsorship. Through this review, I show how subsequent studies have reiterated three basic assumptions of Deborah Brandt's pioneering oral-history project. However, I also demonstrate that later writing-studies research on literacy sponsorship has tended to narrow Brandt's expansive notion of literacy sponsors to denote people exclusively. I link this trend to subsequent studies' greater reliance on personal narratives as evidence sources. This genre typically concentrates power of influence in human actors. In this way, I propose that the rhetoric of literacy narratives “sponsors,” or enables and constrains, the literacy-related experiences of researchers as well as study participants, and of teachers as well as students. Moreover, I suggest that future literacy-sponsorship studies might attend particularly to the affective force of narrative rhetoric, or literacy narratives' power to fascinate, repel, and otherwise move audiences and recounters. Drawing on important terms in Brandt's work on literacy sponsorship, I outline directions for future research that would examine literacy sponsors as rhetorical “figures,” literacy narratives as “scenes” of literacy sponsorship and literacy sponsorship as “involvement.”
This paper explores persuasive writing and what more might be done to help equip young people with the written literacy tools to be effective participants in civic activism. Firstly, we argue from an Australian (and Tasmanian) context that there may be merit in teachers and students re-visiting some of the advice from classical rhetoric around the discovery of arguments. Secondly, we analyse challenges that 14 year old students face in responding to Australia’s national literacy tests which include a persuasive writing task-and exemplify this section with evidence drawn from a data source of outstanding student responses. We conclude by critically reviewing and augmenting the literacy strategies suggested in a representative citizenship education teaching text, and suggest a tentative stepped model for supporting high quality persuasive writing in the context of active citizenship and democratic engagement.
This paper explores persuasive writing and what more might be done to help equip young people with the written literacy tools to be effective participants in civic activism. Firstly, we argue from an Australian (and Tasmanian) context that there may be merit in teachers and students re-visiting some of the advice from classical rhetoric around the discovery of arguments. Secondly, we analyse challenges that 14 year old students face in responding to Australia?s national literacy tests which include a persuasive writing task ? and exemplify this section with evidence drawn from a data source of outstanding student responses. We conclude by critically reviewing and augmenting the literacy strategies suggested in a representative citizenship education teaching text, and suggest a tentative stepped model for supporting high quality persuasive writing in the context of active citizenship and democratic engagement.
In 1959, C. Wright Mills coined the phrase ‘the sociological imagination’ to offer a critical assessment of a discipline he saw descending into a technical or abstract empiricist practice that he feared would ultimately deepen human alienation and oppression. Mills positioned the sociologist as a careful, critical scholar working in the space between biography and history. In this paper, I offer a meta-ethnographic analysis of several recent critical ethnographies in the rural sociology of education using my own experience as a rural education ethnographer to frame the analysis. I argue that critical ethnographic work is crucial to developing educational analysis that is attuned to the nuances of place and the kind of metrocentric analysis that effectively ‘traps’ rural places in larger structural educational reform narratives.
Communicating risk is vital so that communities can prepare to meet approaching natural hazards. This study examined access to emergency communications and subsequent levels of preparedness in two rural Australian communities, Ingham in Queensland and Beechworth in Victoria. In 2009 these towns experienced a flood and fire disaster respectively. Focus interview data were used to design a survey which was completed by 546 respondents across the two communities. Results showed that preparedness was most strongly predicted when emergency communications were received from neighbourhood and community member sources rather than the media or other organisations. Findings also highlighted that communities are inherently different and need targeted emergency communications, tailored to the disaster type and community composition. In particular, the elderly and the unemployed reported social isolation and less access to mobile phone and internet communications. The findings show that emergency communications need to be two-way so that those at risk in an emergency can access specific advice about their household and what action to take to protect themselves and their property. Neighbourhood influences appear to be important in mobilising preparedness actions in the two communities studied.
One of the central endeavors in contemporary literacy studies is to interrogate traditional definitions of literacy and deconstruct literacy myths. The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN), a publicly accessible online repository for literacy narratives, implicates itself in this effort. This essay examines instantiations of the literacy myth within literacy narratives and the archive itself. An analysis of the content and design of the DALN offers insight into how the archive provides contributors both subversive and traditional frameworks for understanding literacy and literacy narratives. Then an examination of three digital literacy narratives in the DALN demonstrates how a combination of narrative analytics can be directed towards revealing constructions of the literacy myth in the telling and meaning-making of individual lives.
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