THESIS PROPOSAL

Sandbox Pedagogy: Discerning the Literate Capacities

of a “Digital” Generation

Submitted by: Jonathan Lashley

Clemson University
801 Strode Tower
Clemson, SC 29634
jzeller@clemson.edu

Submitted to: Cynthia Haynes

Department of English
Clemson University
806 Strode Tower
Clemson, SC 29634

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I. INTRODUCTION

Maturing alongside the Internet and personal computing, a new generation of

students continually redefines definitions for composition and literacy, independent of

classroom settings. While student writing in social networks like Twitter or Facebook

often seem no greater than “narcissistic blabbering,” composition scholars suggest

they are composing more prolifically and with a seemingly greater sense of audience

than earlier generations (Thompson). Andrea Lunsford boldly claims that,

“Technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy

in bold new directions” (Thompson). In turn, steady pedagogical shifts from conflict

driven writing to process mindful pedagogy admit that student writing has become far

more critical and dynamic through new technological processes. Unfortunately, it is

difficult to say that composition pedagogues have gotten any better at whitnessing

these digital literacies in their students’ work. Because most scholarship comes from

older generations and their reflective in-class experience with student apathy, I

propose value in an interdisciplinary study of the self-published artifacts and texts that

a “Digital” generation produces outside of class. By deciphering the rhetorical,

cultural, and interdisciplinary values that motivate regular play with creative

expression, I seek to devise a pedagogical understanding that better engages the

compositional practices of my generation, and those to come.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

Beyond its role in honing basic writing practices, educators value the first-year

composition classroom as an interdisciplinary environment for cultivating the

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analytical thinking skills necessary for higher education. An up and coming generation

of college students, however, will have exercised dazzling fluencies over social issues

and expressions long before they enter their first-year writing classes. This group’s

early maturity alongside the Internet and other digital technologies has unlocked a

wealth discursive fluency under their day-to-day participation in online networks

(Ulmer). Furthermore, liberal opportunity to self-author writing, images, and music

has positioned users as authors and critics at increasingly younger ages. Indeed, this

“Digital Generation” shares knowledge and culture on a peer-to-peer level that well

transcends the cultural and geographical limitations of the past (Urbanski, “Burring”).

As young people flood the web with creative expression and reception, the literate

capacities of modern students set an increasingly ambitious precedent regarding what

compositional practices may look like (Urbanski, “Meeting;” Mitchell). Unfortunately,

many students have retained the same apathetic “for school only” attitude that has

frustrated composition educators for decades (Graff 2003). The critical literacies that

these students employ at home simply do not follow them to class.

The Conflict Conflicts

The inability or even refusal of students in critically engaging their

argumentative writing assignments characterizes a situation that has likely existed as

long as the liberal classroom–a space where student opinion is increasingly

authoritative (Edmundson). Because such environments encourage student to negotiate

their independent thoughts with others, some pedagogues blame the expressive

shortcomings of written discourse as something that discourages student effort. As

David Olson suggests, "While writing provides a reasonable model for what the

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speaker said, it does not provide much of a model for what the speaker meant by it"

(122). In other words, written literacy and clear communication are not always related

in a classroom setting. Where modern students may effectively author for a receptive

or implied audience online, they find difficulty in clearly communicating with

classmates because their abstract views are not immediately generalizeable to those on

hand (Berthoff). Accordingly, when students perceive an assault on their “home”

discourses, self-prescribed limitations on access or interest may arise regarding the

perspectives of others (Borkowski, Szwed, Akinnaso, Olson and Worsham). As

students confront the differing values of their peers and instructor(s), such discursive

insecurity seems a common occurence.

Meanwhile, instructors may unwittingly mediate the cultural values of a

classroom by suggesting discursive allegiance to their own marginalized discourse

(Baker), to the idiosyncratic texts that they “love” (Vendler), or to what they love

about others’ marginalized discourses (Bérubé). While African American film

(DeGenaro), subversive literature (Bérubé), or rap music (Baker, Sirc), may critically

circumvent mainstream conceptions of history and culture, this does not mean that

students are any more inclined to invest in unfamiliar value systems when a grade is

on the line (Graff 2003, DeGenaro, Delpit, Bartholomae). Rather than critically

engage the topics that may discursively excite them, students will opt for a passing

knowledge of the topics that their professor seems to favor (Bartholomae, Lazere).

Other students simply do not see “the point” jeopardizing a grade by arguing against

popular opinions or “truths" (Graff 2003, Thelin). Ultimately, controversial subject

matter no longer provokes critical responses from students like it did a generation ago.

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Of course, when “Digital” students are accustomed to freely communicating their

ideological stances online through multimodal expression, perhaps this lack of critical

interest is predictable.

After Conflict

As Internet access increasing disseminates identity as the commonplace subject

of modern social networking, the controversy that once empowered conflict pedagogy

no longer seems as poignant. In turn, pedagogues have redirected focus away from

analysis of public controversy with the intention of helping students better express

their private observations through digital mediums (Sirc; Urbanski, “Blurring;”

Ulmer). Working in favor of Anne Wysocki’s suggestion that "writing is one of many

operations by which we compose and understand our selves and our identities and our

abilities to live and work with others," these educators emphasize critical and applied

processes over finished products in student writing (2). This pedagogical shift

inevitably signals educator awareness of student authorship outside of class, as they

incorporate similar digital “inventing” and “collecting” practices into curriculum

(Ulmer, Sirc). But when assignments ask students to employ the same technologies

they use daily and on their own accord, why would students exert any more critical

effort than what is necessary for a passing grade? Considering these same students

might be far more literate in multimedia production than their instructor, it seems

problematic to blindly assent every literate multimodal gesture as the fruit of critical

analysis (Urbanski, “Meeting;” Fromme). While it is important to pursue the new

technologies of student expression, a multimodal curriculum may only excite student

literacies so much.

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 After Process

An ongoing assessment of modern student literacies seems vital if educators

wish to understand the cultural “world view[s]” reflected in student expressions

(Geertz). I propose that the skills needed for such research are no less interdisciplinary

than they are traditional in Humanities education. In short, textual analyses maintain

importance for their strength in theorizing the motives, values, situations, and social

forces that inform the “imagination” and “applied reasoning” behind an expression

(Ulmer). Today, students compose, explore, and create in an environment that acts

much like a sandbox–a space that facilitates gaming and play with little stake in

concepts like reality or utility. By studying the discursive, cultural, and rhetorical

values that motivate the composing processes of students under such sandbox

literacies, I propose that educators may devise a theoretical understanding that both

challenges and empowers the literate abilities of modern students. Furthermore,

because composition pedagogues are often members of a generation that socialized

and matured amidst a notably different media culture than that of modern students,

scholars in my age group stand to reckon new and different insight as we analyze our

roles as older "ambassadors” for the “Digital” generation (Urbanski, “Meeting;”

Fromme).

III. METHODOLOGY

Sandbox literacy is not merely the fruit of digital fluency or “electracy” (Ulmer).

The sandbox term is indicative of the behavioral practices of a modern generation that

has so internalized digital communication, that they liberally employ the same

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explorative practices in physical reality. Rather than honor the definitions and

expectations dictated by social traditions, digital existence has revised this

generation’s ways of seeing the world through active practice in questioning the status

quo values, meanings, and conventions that earlier generations set in place. Growing

up socially with Internet technology, the “Digital” generation is one that finds

unmitigated access to an education in how to animate, program, edit, and sample

digital media for “new” expressive reality. Not only is the “Digital” generation

communicatively literate, but they also compose frequently and through various

communicative mediums. While these works may or may not be influenced by formal

education, they surely derive from the various values and ideologies of an author. If

composition study in higher education is to remain relevant, educators must seek a

revisable means to classifying the social significance of these communicative

expressions. Kenneth Burke suggests, “Classifications are heuristic by reason of the

fact that through processes of abstraction and analogy, they dictate new groupings,

hence new discoveries” (Burke P&C 103). In turn and despite the suggested authority

of more traditional composition theory, sandbox pedagogy must utilize the same

exploratory and irreverent practices of the younger generations that embody it. Social

standards are no longer as intergenerational as they once were. By determining

cultural, rhetorical, and discursive, significance of a “Digital” generations expression,

I look to describe a set of pedagogical practices that better utilizes and challenges

these values in a composition classroom.

Sandbox Literacies funding sources

Upgrading (Reflecting): Over the course of a “Digital” students life, this

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individual will find himself or herself in an increasingly frequent process of

upgrading. From a technological standpoint, they do not know the value or

utility of holding on to possessions like their parents may have. Instead, the

literate capacities (processing and networking speeds, connectivity, and

unsability) of a devise will both inform a purchase, and modify how the user

interacts with world digitally. By studying how and why a “Digital” generation

appropriates consumer electronics, educators may better determine the perceived

values of technology.

Collecting (Selecting): In every generation, a certain degree of “blind assent”

still exists in the, "absorbed views of the world that our parents and siblings and

others offered us, openly and tacitly" (Booth Symposium 383). The “Digital”

generation complicates the maintenance of these collected values, however, as

they immerse themselves in an endless sea of digital record daily. In turn, the

collections and selections that students make at young ages will have more

intercultural and interdisciplinary depth than those who lived most of their lives

in the same community. Studying how young people valorize and employ the

references, topics, facts, quotes, and avatars may offer a general understanding

of how capably students may argue cultural value.

Looking (Deflecting): With a broad collection of meanings, information, and

technology, the digital generation also has a greater capacity to objectively

analyze social situations. Because information and context are as readily

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 available as they are transnational via multiple sources, this generation has every

potential to form arguments without falling victim to the social traps and

insecurities that xenophobia introduced to earlier generations. Because "effective

communication means listening to what your opponent has to say," studying the

sources of student arguments will develop a clearer sense of how credibly

chimeric sandbox literacy allows students to be (Booth, “Symposium” 378).

Gaming: Besides being the generation that has more openly adopted video game

entertainment in daily life, sandbox literacy dynamically positions the “Digital”

individual as an avid game maker and game player. Gaming and ludology

theory may adequately help educators understand how and to what extent

students play with variables like learning/participating, mentoring/authoring, and

constructing their material reality digitally.

If I can describe, predict, read, and theorize the critical fruits of student

expression outside of class (sandbox literacy), then I may also develop concepts that

utilize, challenge, and channel such capacities in the modern writing class. It is not so

much about engineering a forum to play with new technology, students already live in

that environment. What a sandbox pedagogy ideally accomplishes is the mitigation

and development of applying composition class to life and vice versa.

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IV.CONCLUSION

Modern literacy is evolving far beyond a classroom-based understanding of

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simple reading and writing skills. As students continue to write and think abstractly

via digital mediums, authoring practices become both liberated and socialized without

influence from formal education. Because formal instruction is no longer the sole

arbiter of a student’s knowledge and experience in rhetorical negotiations, it is

imperative that educators develop acute but flexible sensitivity to the “Digital”

generation’s expressive capabilities when composition arises in their own terms.

In the same way that digital media has offered an open playground for student

expression, the Internet houses a wealth of literate artifacts made valuable by the

interests, intentions, and cultures of student compositions. While some purists may

hold these texts or technologies suspect because of their creation via informal play and

experience, a text that has an audience is also a text that communicates value. Because

many of these expressions make some amalgamated use of visual, aural, and textual

elements, students and educators have much to teach one another regarding the

evolution of modern composition and communication. To take direction from Kenneth

Burke, by studying the "particular nomenclature,” media discourse, or “terministic

screen,” that motivates student composition at a particular time, educators may find

more useful understanding of what students demand from a formal composition class

(1342). If students are producing more critically interesting work outside of class,

educators need to move beyond their given classroom or discourse contexts–to the

terms and artifacts that students actually take interest in.

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