Procrastadabbler

I’ve been really discouraged about my research/writing recently and really hating my teaching as well (not all of it, just parts). I can’t give up my teaching (it pays the bills), but I stepped away from the writing to see if it would make me feel better – not so stretched. I have writing projects due which is stressing me out, but I’ll deal.

Anyway, after than strange twisted intro, I wanted to share some thinking that bubbled up today.
Part of what I’ve been struggling with is the “so what.” and “what’s new” to what I’m offering. In 620 we read a tiny bit about cultural modeling (in Kucer’s chapter about sociocultural dimension of literacy – far under developed, but not going there right now). But it got me thinking about cultural modeling and funds of knowledge.

Lee’s work and Moll’s work is geared toward AFrican American and Latino families/youth/children. All fine and dandy, but it leaves out the fact that whites have cultural models and that the cultural knowledge of the white working class is different from that of the white middle class (that aspect of Heath’s work often gets ignored too as people focus on Trackton and forget about Roadville). Anyway, I was thinking about how do we draw on the cultural models of the white working class (or just working class for that matter – but we don’t want to essentialize) in teaching. And I was making the connections to multiliteracies.

I interviewed three working class young men (one urban, one suburban, one rural) and their multiliteracies. I’ve got data. So to analyze that data in terms of the cultural models being enacted in those multiliteracies and how we can then draw on that in teaching. It’s not about the technology (although the cultural models are mediated by the technology) it’s about the cultural practices that are instantiated in the literacy practices (both new literacies and traditional literacies).

This is totally undeveloped. This is my raw thinking. But I wanted to capture it and see if anybody thinks there’s anything there.