''Feeling Like a Different Kind of Smart'': Twitter as Digital Literacy Mediates Learning for Urban Youth and Literacy Specialist Candidates.

This article shares the qualitative research findings of an emerging professional development schools partnership that investigated the way Twitter, as a type of digital literacy, mediated literature discussions of Lois Lowry’s The Giver between urban high school students and master’s degree literacy specialist candidates. The findings were organized into three themes that indicated Twitter’s productive use for literacy engagement among participants: (a) extending time-on-task engagement by encouraging text-specific discussions; (b) organizing cognitive engagement through questions to enhance text comprehension; and (c) facilitating affective engagement by generating enthusiasm and a desire to be part of a broader, more authentic literacy community. Collectively, these findings have implications for designing socially mediated digital literacy activities that lead to theorizing about the potential of adolescent online literacies in classrooms, leveraging 21st century literacy-based technologies for academic learning, and expanding the literacy pedagogy of preservice teachers. This article addresses the following NAPDS Essentials: 1. A comprehensive mission that is broader in its outreach and scope than the mission of any partner and that furthers the education profession and its responsibility to advance equity within schools and, by potential extension, the broader community. 2. A school–university culture committed to the preparation of future educators that embraces their active engagement in the school community. 4. A shared commitment to innovative and reflective practice by all participants. Literacy learning that leverages digital technology continues to have a growing presence across the P-20 education continuum (Gutiérrez, Nixon, & Hunter, 2014; Haddix & Sealey-Ruiz, 2012; Stover, Yearta, & Sease, 2014). For teacher educators who work within the professional development schools (PDS) model, digital technology is a unique opportunity to reorganize instruction and reimagine learning for both preservice teachers and P-12 students (Garas-York, del Prado Hill, Day, Truesdell, & Keller-Mathers, 2018; Hunter, 2018). This article describes how one form of digital technology, Twitter, was used as a tool for literacy learning among master’s degree literacy specialist candidates and high school students. We begin with a vignette to draw the reader into the digital space of Twitter and illustrate how the use of technology mediates literacy learning for both populations. ‘‘Excuse me, Dr. Hunter,’’ said #fry628, ‘‘but I’m not quite sure how to respond to this tweet. ’’ The tweet in question was the start of a conversational exchange between #fry628, a master’s degree literacy specialist candidate, and #LilDipper, a 10th grade student from a high school English language arts (ELA) class, as they discussed aspects of Lois Lowry’s The Giver. The tweet stream began with #LilDipper offering a general observation about life and the unplanned obstacles one encounters. When #fry628 asked #LilDipper if he could relate to one of the challenges Jonas, the protagonist of the text, faced, #LilDipper tweeted back, ‘‘yes it has. it happen to me when i got lock up for 6 months unexpectedly and was away from my family. i had no one come see me. ’’ #fry628 and #LilDipper were participants in a unique project that used Twitter to organize literacy engagement in an ELA class. However, because #fry628 had never worked directly with youth who had been incarcerated, she struggled to make sense of #LilDipper’s experience as it related to the text. Her question to me [the first author] at the beginning of this article reflected her inexperience; however, I pointed out that something more meaningful was occurring and that #LilDipper had made a personal connection with the protagonist of the text. Drawing from her training in previous teacher education courses, #fry628 quickly commented, ‘‘He’s making a text-toself connection. ’’ ‘‘Absolutely,’’ I replied, ‘‘and your next response to him will be crucial because you want to keep him involved with the text, keep him connected. So, how are you going to do it? ’’ #fry628 continued her conversational exchange with #LilDipper by asking him to describe his emotions about 1 Participants used hashtag monikers to address and identify each other. 2 Greenhow and Gleason (2012) defined a tweet stream on Twitter as ‘‘a constantly evolving, co-constructed conversation’’ (p. 471). 36 School—University Partnerships Vol. 11, No. 1 being jailed and relating those feelings to Jonas (see Figure 1). She was successful in her approach as #LilDipper tweeted about a difficult time in his life and the feelings associated with familial isolation—a theme similar to what Jonas experiences and a major plot point within the text. The digital conversational practices that helped to organize the literacy learning in this instance served both the high school student and the literacy specialist candidate productively, as each individual was a learner meeting content-related outcomes. #LilDipper was able to make personal and emotional connections to a text that held the potential for deepening his understanding of the course content, while #fry628 practiced developing a digital literacy pedagogy using a technological medium that was fairly new to her. Social networking sites (SNS) continue to impact the day-today lives of adolescents and young adults as they communicate through them to exchange experiences and ideas (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010). This was seen in two related studies that examined social media usage among teens (Lenhart, 2015) and young adults (Perrin, 2015); the researchers noted these two populations regularly and increasingly participate in and routinely use a range of available SNS. Interacting in these digital spaces should not be surprising. For instance, during a live-streamed event on Twitter from Stanford University, Ladson-Billings (2014) delivered a keynote that addressed the importance of SNS and young people: If you are going to be working with young people and you are not out in the social networks that they are in, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr . then you don’t even know what the conversation is that they are engaging in. Current teacher educators and classroom teachers who focus upon the development of literacy learning and literacy pedagogy should be encouraged by studies on SNS and comments from Ladson-Billings. Indeed, we treat the totality of these discussions on SNS as calls to action for literacy educators to reconsider and reimagine the ways literacy-based, technological resources can be leveraged practically in P-12 classrooms, while working simultaneously to prepare future classroom teachers for literacy instruction. This qualitative investigation shares the outcomes from and insights into the way Twitter, a well-known SNS, was used as a meditational tool to facilitate literature discussions of The Giver between students from two ELA classes in an urban high school and literacy specialist candidates enrolled in a master’s degree program at an urban public comprehensive college. Drawing from a conceptual framework that blended features of sociocultural theory, sociocultural literacies, and scholarship on Twitter as a digital literacy space, this research study illustrates the ways participants used a microblogging technology in situ to extend literacy engagement and rehearse pedagogical practices. The findings of this investigation support asynchronous literacy learning environments and contribute to the body of literature that advocates for the use of technological resources that constitute, in part, the social realities of adolescents and young adults in ways that enhance the academic outcomes for both populations. Conceptual Framework Literacy scholars who draw upon sociocultural theory regularly articulate how learning occurs as a socially mediated activity (Cole, 1996; Gutiérrez, Hunter, & Arzubiaga, 2009; Hunter, 2008; Lee & Smagorinsky, 2000; Pacheco, 2017; Smagorinsky, 2011). This theoretical perspective is further grounded in the work of Vygotsky (1978), as illustrated in his discussion of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD represents the difference between what a child can do on his or her own and what a child can accomplish with assistance (Vygotsky, 1978). In education, the ZPD is often framed as a type of scaffolding a teacher or more expert other provides a student for him or her to complete a task. Although the activity-focused, social emphasis of the ZPD is a compelling feature on which we build, we challenge the unidirectional relationship of learning that is implied, a relationship that suggests instructional movement occurring from the teacher/more expert other to Figure 1. Tweet stream conversational exchange between #LilDipper and #fry628. 3 Both studies used the broader category of social media to include SNS. 4 Greenhow and Gleason (2012) defined microblogging as ‘‘a form of social media that allow authors to create their own online content, tag it, and share it’’ (p. 464). Twitter as Digital Literacy Mediates Learning 37