The sociocultural role of imagination in critical digital literacy

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the role of play and imagination in three urban settings: an ELA classroom, a community organization grounded in civic participation, and a digital learning lab in a library setting. We draw on sociocultural theories of imagination to show that all of the affordances and constraints of the settings contribute to what could be imagined. All three settings were found to share the following overarching dimensions of engagement grounded in play and imagination: social actors have agency to act and transform signs and relationships as well as modify contexts in ways that change the problem space and their positions as meaning-makers; moreover, the emergence of unexpected meaning is developed in interactions of people, tools, and artifacts. The settings also point to differences in the nature of play and imagination related to other conditions of the setting. To determine these conditions, we developed an Activity System Observation Protocol that allowed us to analyze activity components such as objects, norms for action and interaction, tool use, distribution of labor, and the organization of community. We found that the object or purpose of each setting was integrally related to how play and imagination functioned in each.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital literacy
• critical literacy
• imagination
• play
• sociocultural
• activity theory

Acknowledgments

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the William T. Grant Foundation [Grant #183038].

Notes on contributors

Cynthia Lewis

Cynthia Lewis is Professor and Chair of Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on the sociocultural and sociopolitical dimensions of literacy learning in and out of school, with a special focus on critical literacy and critical media analysis and production. She has published over 60 articles and book chapters on these topics as well as two award-winning books and is co-editor (with Jennifer Rowsell and Carmen Medina) of the Routledge book series Expanding Literacies in Education.

Anne Crampton

Anne Crampton is the academic program director for the Teacher Education Outreach Program for Inclusive Environments at Western Washington University. Research interests include critical, digital, and multimodal literacies, and how the emotional and affective aspects of learning are related to educational equity. Her publications address topics such as the potential of art to provoke complex dialogue about racial identities, the need for culturally relevant social-emotional learning, the development of a literacy of “armed,” radical love, and critical digital production and engagement.

Cassandra Scharber

Cassandra Scharber is an Associate Professor of Learning Technologies at the University of Minnesota. She is committed to community-engaged projects and scholarship, and serves as a lead for CSforAll-MN, Minnesota’ s chapter of the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) alliance that supports K12 computer science education. Her research spans the areas of technology integration, digital literacies, and computational thinking. Scharber has published in journals including Gender and Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.