Rachel Heydon's research while affiliated with The University of Western Ontario and other places
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Publications (59)
Intergenerational learning programs that invite children and adults of their grandparents’ age or older to learn together can offer exceptional opportunities for expanding the literacy and identity options of young and old. Many such opportunities come from the relationships that are formed in and through these programs. At question, however, is wh...
Drawing from a multiple-case study of professional learning in literacy, this article presents vignettes from a Grade 1 classroom where the professional learning focused on multimodal literacy pedagogies that combined digital and print-based resources to expand children’s meaning-making. Linking children’s opportunities for expansive literacy optio...
This ethnographic case study focused on a transnational education programme in an inner city in Mainland China that used both Chinese high school curriculum and Canadian provincial curriculum from New Brunswick. The goal of the study was to capture the desires and power relations that shaped literacy and identity options in the school's hybrid curr...
This pilot study uses ‘day in the life’ methodology to observe the everyday literacy practices of a self‐identified thriving elder. Through the case of one nonagenarian female residing in an assisted living community in the United States, we identified the multimodal, posthuman nature of this elder's literacies, exploring how they were connected to...
Literacy instruction in Canadian classrooms is entangled in neoliberal discourses that can limit teachers’ professional learning opportunities, pedagogical options, and children’s literacy options. And yet, there is hope. This chapter provides illustrations from one first grade classroom that participated in a multiple-case study of professional le...
Introduction
This chapter provides narrative illustrations from Ontario, Canada, of a case study of professional learning to support early primary teachers (that is, teachers of children aged 3.8– 8 years) in designing and implementing multimodal pedagogies. We offer these illustrations as a resource for hope (Williams, 1966), or a way of thinking...
Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies
Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies
Reading aloud to children is a ubiquitous practice in early childhood settings. While there are many recommendations for how educators should conduct these experiences, little research in the past decade has examined how read-alouds are actually accomplished. Using anthropological and sociological theories of learning, literacy and research, our an...
![Figure 4. Gladys watches children sing school songs]](profile/Lori-Mckee/publication/321131562/figure/fig2/AS:647302737842177@1531340407556/Gladys-watches-children-sing-school-songs_Q320.jpg)
![Figure 4. Gladys watches children sing school songs]](profile/Lori-Mckee/publication/321131562/figure/fig3/AS:647302737825793@1531340407398/Gladys-watches-children-sing-school-songs_Q320.jpg)
This exploratory case study examined the affordances of singing as a multimodal literacy practice within ensembles that featured art, singing and digital media produced in an intergenerational programme that served a class of kindergarten children and community elders. The programme that was set up by the study in collaboration with a rural school...
Against the backdrops of decolonization and globalization, Hong Kong education has witnessed intense local-global interactions in the last decades. In this chapter, we use this context to contribute specific insights on how education systems and schools from diverse points on the globe can prepare students to meet the challenges of globalization in...
Illustrated through ethnographic data drawn from a case study of a fullday kindergarten in Ontario, Canada, this chapter argues for an approach to inclusive curriculum that places the ethical relation at the center and promotes children's rights through opportunities for multimodal communication. Theoretically, this case drew on multimodal literacy...
This exploratory case study integrated digital media into an intergenerational art class. Its goals were to generate knowledge of how to bring young children and elders together to expand their opportunities for meaning-making and seeing themselves in affirming ways so as to generate transferable understanding of digitally enhanced multimodal curri...
This chapter explores the affordances of multimodal curricula and pedagogy within intergenerational learning programs. The aim is to provide an understanding of how semiotic possibilities can be promoted within children’s meaning making and the reciprocity of intergenerational relationships. Drawing on findings from our intergenerational multimodal...
Visual methods are increasingly being developed and used
in early childhood research. The literature strongly suggests
the affordances of visual methods; still, such methods are
not unproblematic. Through a critical reading of literature
pertinent to visual methods in early childhood research (i.e.,
involving children from birth to age 8), includin...
This case study of a grade six classroom literacy curriculum in Ontario, Canada was designed to produce new knowledge of how curricula can promote multimodal literacy learning opportunities for students. With a focus on constraints and enablers, the study found few opportunities for multimodal literacy learning due to standardised assessments, an o...
This chapter focuses on the curriculum-making of the singing-infused intergenerational multimodal program. Why Multimodal Literacy Matters is designed to make a contribution to knowledge and understanding in relation to multimodal literacy, wellbeing, and singing. Given the socio-cultural approach to literacy in the book, the situation in which we...
In the opening of this book, we motion towards the visceral, social, and special (read unique) nature of intergenerational singing in the multimodal curriculum: The singing fills the space in the body and the room with something that is weighted and certain; it is an embrace in the here and now—a warm glowing that resonates the word, together.
In this third chapter we offer descriptions of the specific lessons in the program in the hopes of providing concrete curricular materials for people interested in designing similar curricula as well as for providing the basis for understanding what actually happened in the program such that we can later forward an understanding of why multimodal l...
Literacy research has focused increasingly on the social, cultural, and material remaking of human communication. Such research has generated new knowledge about the diverse and interconnected modes and media through which people can and do make meaning and opened up definitions of literacy to include image, gaze, gesture, print, speech, and music....
It is a deep Canadian winter morning and the start of the third session since singing was introduced into the intergenerational art program at Picasso Retirement Home. The participants, Picasso elders and preschoolers from an adjacent child care centre, exuberantly share a welcome song. The children taught this song to the adults on day one of the...
This paper concerns an exploratory and interpretive case study of the literacy curricula in a Canadian transnational education programme (Pseudonym: SCS) delivered in China where Ontario secondary school curricula were used at the same time as the Chinese national high school curricula. Using ethnographic tools and actor-network theory, the study s...
This exploratory case study considered the opportunities for print literacy learning within multimodal ensembles that featured art, singing and digital media within the context of an intergenerational programme that brought together 13 kindergarten children (4 and 5 years) with seven elder companions. Study questions concerned how reading and writi...
Within an era of change to early childhood education and care, this case study of kindergarten classroom literacy curricula sought to understand the production and effects of the curriculum within one urban, Canadian full-day kindergarten that included culturally and linguistically diverse children. Central was a concern for the place of children’s...
This paper focuses on the lived curriculum from the vantage of the students in a case study of a Sino-Canada transnational education programme in China. The programme consisted of subject area curricula transplanted from Ontario, Canada, and taught in English, as well as subject area curricula from Mainland China that was taught in Mandarin. The st...
In a bid to identify and gain analytic insight into the make-up and dynamics of kindergarten literacy curricula in an era of early childhood education and care reform, this study was designed to trace how classroom literacy curricula were produced in a kindergarten in a childcare centre in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on actor-network theory’s (ANT) de...
Intergenerational learning programs bring together skipped generations (for instance, elders and young children) to promote expansive communication and identity options for participants, as well as the forging of relationships between generations. More specifically, these programs help foster multimodal literacy for both generations, encouraging ne...
This case study using ethnographic tools was designed to identify and gain analytic insight into the dimensions and dynamics of kindergarten literacy curricula during an era of early childhood education and care reform. Focal questions concerned how literacy curricula were produced and the ways in which children and their linguistic and multi-modal...
With increased attention focused on the economic cache afforded through literacy and numeracy skills, governments around the world have turned their attention to developing the expertise of their teachers. Improving teachers' levels of competency leads to improvement in student achievement. In this qualitative case study, we focus on the Educationa...
Assuming that intergenerational singing curricula can facilitate well-being through the production of expansive learning opportunities and relationship-building between skipped generations, this study aimed to discover the prevalence, form, and characteristics of intergenerational singing programs in a 50 kilometer radius of one urban center in Ont...
This case study of multimodal pedagogies within an intergenerational (IG) art class addresses questions about the learning opportunities that were created therein and what the fixing of participants’ ideas within a semiotic chain said about their facility with communicative modes and media, interests, and identity options. Key findings include: whe...
This paper reports on a case study of teachers’ expressions of their literacy-related professional development needs in a First Nations school located in Ontario, Canada. The paper construes the work of the teachers as “border work” and argues that their literacy teaching work was complex and tied to an ongoing legacy of colonialism. Four interrela...
This case study mapped candidates' responses to a pre-service literacy course designed to relocate teacher candidates' literacy histories and beliefs from a personal to political frame with the intent of promoting critical reflection and complex understandings of literacy, teaching, and learning. As part of a broader qualitative case study includin...
From the vantages of a teacher who has been researched and an educational researcher who has researched teachers, this inquiry constructs a knitted narrative from journals, letters, and stories written about my time teaching English studies in a remote First Nations’ community and articles written about me when I was a research participant in a stu...
This paper reports on a case study of a “lead literacy teacher” initiative in one Canadian province. This initiative is related to a “minority world” trend in teacher in-service that seeks to develop “experts” in a field with the intent that such experts can help other teachers to raise student achievement for the betterment of the economy. Using a...
Educators have become increasingly interested in the diverse learning environments of young children and the ways in which children and childhood are positioned within those environments. The documentation and analysis of processes of pathologization and de-pathologization in early childhood may provide scholars with the understanding needed to dev...
This naturalistic study reports the language and literacy-learning opportunities, and the conditions necessary to bring them about, in the art component of an innovative intergenerational programme. The focus is on the children in the programme (median age 4), their interaction with adult participants (median age 85) and facilitators, and the ways...
Based on a naturalistic study of an intergenerational art program at a colocated child and long-term care facility, the purpose of this article is to discuss the implications of the program’s learning opportunities, primarily for young children, in light of current conceptualizations of childhood, aging and disability. Through a critical, postmoder...
The authors describe the ways in which, as preservice and inservice teacher educators, they conceptualize balanced literacy within an educational climate that values quick fixes, standardized curricula, and high-stakes testing. They proffer a professionalized version of the work of teachers in the classroom that values, fosters, and supports teache...
Through a case study of a key Canadian early childhood education program, The Kindergarten Program (Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 1998a), we explore the relationship between curricular paradigms and early childhood education (ECE) models, and the opportunities that each creates for enacting ethical teaching and learning relationships....
Citations
... Whereas "most theories in literacies education are human centered, even if they discuss materials and texts (nonhumans)" (Kuby, Spector, & Thiel, 2018, p. 4), posthumanist theories recognize literacies, pedagogies, and learning as produced through human, nonhuman, and more-than-human 2 entanglements (Heydon et al., 2021). The term entanglement comes from Barad's (2007) theorizing, using quantum physics to describe the ways that "entities" (Kuby, Thiel, & Spector, 2018, p. 69) such as waves and particles intra-act with one another. ...
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... Several studies emphasize as possible learning opportunities the development of intercultural competencies, knowledge and core academic skills that also help to improve career prospects (Manning, 2021;Pieper & Beall, 2014), as well as the psychological and social benefits of intercultural engagement. Zhang et al. (2020) describe this as the opportunity for "expanding cultural and linguistic knowledge", which is also a transformative experience (Williamson & Heinz, 2021). ...
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... Intergenerational learning research has shown that intergenerational curricula can create abundant opportunities for participants when their structures are predictable, scheduled, and designed to become a normal part of people's routines in contrast to simple activities that are one-time drop ins or visits (DeVore et al., 2016). Still, all curricular structures must be sufficiently plastic to allow for spontaneous intergenerational interactions (DeVore et al., 2016), surprise, and depth of emotion (Heydon & Davies, 2019). All curricula should further emphasize relationship-building (Cartmel et al., 2018), and shared artistic practice is a prime vehicle for this type of emphasis (e.g., . ...
... • Inviter l'enfant à participer à l'histoire par la répétition de phrases ou de mots particuliers ou par des effets sonores (4,37). • Combiner la chanson, les gestes et les mouvements pour favoriser une communication expressive et ludique (45)(46)(47)(48). ...
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... Researchers need to be considering this when determining methods of communication, as some groups have more access than others. Additionally, researchers must balance allowing children to have a voice while also acknowledging that they are not able to fully consent in the ways that adults are able to consent (Heydon et al., 2016). Thus, researchers must be knowledgeable about both children and research methods in order to effectively and ethically work with them and select appropriate methodologies (Heydon et al., 2016;Robinson, 2021). ...
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... However, when the program is located at a shared site care program, participants' perspectives are typically represented by proxy reporters (Galbraith et al., 2015). For example, a researcher who observed children and older adults during an intergenerational art class (Heydon et al., 2017) instead of including older adults and children's direct reports of their perceptions. ...
... Within the curriculum, elders and children created shared meanings by drawing on multiple modes of expression of which singing was integral. Herein, following in the vein of Heydon and O'Neill (2016), we focus on singing as a literacy practice, a way of communicating forged through social relationships and shaped by social structures (e.g., Barton and Hamilton, 2000) within the multimodal ensembles of the program. ...
... Creating opportunities for skipped generations (persons separated by at least one generation, such grandparents and grandchildren) to live with each other in ways that are meaningful to them and their communities is the backbone of intergenerational programs that defy naïve pragmatism; that is, what complexifies and situates what these programs generate, for whom, with what affordances and constraints, as well as what "assumptions, theories, and metatheories" (Skrtic, 1995, p. 69) these programs are founded upon (Heydon & O'Neill, 2016). The call for intergenerational programs of this ilk has been put out in a time when occasions for informal, organic, communal, and/or familial intergenerational learning are uneven. ...
... Research has taught that mothers in every corner of the globe sing to their infants during routine care, with the practice optimizing attachment, memory, emotional understanding, in addition to helping form individual, social, and cultural identities (Trevarthen, 2002). Intergenerational singing of this type has also been found as fundamental to enculturating children (Trehub, 2006) and supporting how they acquire communicative practices such as language and literacy (e.g., Heydon & O'Neil, 2014;Zhang & Heydon, 2014). Intergenerational singing involving skipped generations and multigenerations is less well understood, as is formal and/or ceremonial intergenerational singing. ...
... IDCs foster learning opportunities for both generations and increase social engagement among older adults and children who need not be family [8]. Intergenerational programs produce advancement in sensory stimulation; enhancement of self-esteem; increased positive socialization, and intellectual development for both older adults and children [9,19]. Intergenerational programs provide older adults with opportunities to use their life experience and expertise to develop and share activities such as cooking, science, and storytelling [20], to be childcare provider or partners in programs such as intergenerational theater [21]. ...
