Karen E Wohlwend
Biographic Data
| ID | 767371 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen E Wohlwend |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen E |
| FAMILY NAME | Wohlwend |
| SIGNATURE | WOHLWEND K E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indiana University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4590-5551 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 44 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Mediated Discourse and Nexus Analysis
Nexus analysis is an action-oriented approach to critical discourse analysis that examines materials and modes, rather than turns of talk, lines of print, or ethnographic events. The focus is on mediated discourse: the interactions among people, materials, and modes within a place as people embody the expected social practices that make up ways of belonging within global discourses circulating in local communities. Nexus analysis makes visible th…
Playrevolution: Engaging Equity through the Power of Play
This special issue continues a two-year conversation about a #playrevolution in literacies research, theory, and practice. The juxtaposition of play and revolution is intentional, highlighting the tension between play's prosocial benefits and collaborative production and the rapid change, uncertainty, and violence in today's schools, where we desperately need more humanizing elements that build people's connections to one another. The #playrevolu…
Bringing Joy to School: Engaging K–16 Learners through Maker Literacies and Playshops
Background For too many youths, school has become a place for students to withstand and kill time until they can leave and learn about things that matter to them. Instead, schools should be inviting and exciting places to learn but also nurturing spaces where all students feel they belong. Drawing upon expanded definition of literacies that include play and making, this study examines how the maker literacies—media production where multimodal, di…
One Screen, Many Fingers: Young Children's Collaborative Literacy Play With Digital Puppetry Apps and Touchscreen Technologies
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Theory Into Practice on 30 Jan 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00405841.2015.1010837
Hands On, Hands Off: Gendered Access in Crafting and Electronics Practices
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Mind, Culture, and Activity on 24 Jul 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10749039.2014.939762
New Methods of Literacy Research
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in New Methods of Literacy Research on 22 August 2013, available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203104682
The boys who would be princesses: Playing with gender identity intertexts in Disney Princess transmedia
Using data from a 3-year ethnographic study in US early childhood classrooms, I examine two kindergarten boys’ classroom play with their favourite Disney Princess transmedia to see how they negotiated gender identity layers clustered in the franchise's commercially given storylines and consumer expectations. This analysis contributes necessarily syncretic methods of analysis that enable critical examination of the complexity in children's play in…
Media as nexus of practice: Remaking identities inWhat Not to Wear
In this conceptual piece, we examine media as a nexus of a traditional schooling pedagogy and performance pedagogy to make visible how their overlapping elements produce media's pervasive educative force but also to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of using media in educational contexts. Nexus analysis examines a fashion makeover television program – What Not to Wear (WNTW) – as an embodied lesson that produces identity revision bu…
An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education
Mediated Discourse Analysis: Researching young children’s non-verbal interactions as social practice
Young children often use actions rather than talk as they interact with objects and each other to strategically shape the social, material, and cultural environment. New dynamic research designs and methods are needed to capture the collaborative learning and social positioning achieved through children’s non-verbal interactions. Mediated discourse analysis (MDA), a hybrid ethnographic/sociolinguistic approach rooted in cultural-historical activi…
Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing Identity Texts Through Disney Princess Play
Drawing upon theories that reconceptualize toys and artifacts as identity texts, this study employs mediated discourse analysis to examine children's videotaped writing and play interactions with princess dolls and stories in one kindergarten classroom. The study reported here is part of a three‐year ethnographic study of literacy play in U.S. early childhood classrooms. The specific focus here is on young girls who are avid Disney Princess fans …
From “What Did I Write?” to “Is this Right?”: Intention, Convention, and Accountability in Early Literacy
When children enter public kindergartens in the current atmosphere of high-stakes testing, they often encounter an emphasis on correctness that casts doubt on the integrity of their personally invented messages, prompting them to ask not “What did I write?” but “Is this right?” This ethnographic case study examines early writing by 23 kindergarten children within the context of their free-writing time and their teacher's plan to restore intention…
Kindergarten as Nexus of Practice: A Mediated Discourse Analysis of Reading, Writing, Play, and Design in an Early Literacy Apprenticeship
How does “playing school, ” an ordinary child-hood pastime, shape children’s reading abili-ties, classroom identities, and relative social positioning? This ethnographic study of kindergarten literacy play situates children’s combinations of play, reading, writing, and design within a nexus of practice (Scollon, 2001), the web of seemingly natural combi-nations of ways of interacting shared by an embodied community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 199…
Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing Identity Texts Through Disney Princess Play
Drawing upon theories that reconceptualize toys and artifacts as identity texts, this study employs mediated discourse analysis to examine children's videotaped writing and play interactions with princess dolls and stories in one kindergarten classroom. The study reported here is part of a three‐year ethnographic study of literacy play in U.S. early childhood classrooms. The specific focus here is on young girls who are avid Disney Princess fans …
The boys who would be princesses: Playing with gender identity intertexts in Disney Princess transmedia
Using data from a 3-year ethnographic study in US early childhood classrooms, I examine two kindergarten boys’ classroom play with their favourite Disney Princess transmedia to see how they negotiated gender identity layers clustered in the franchise's commercially given storylines and consumer expectations. This analysis contributes necessarily syncretic methods of analysis that enable critical examination of the complexity in children's play in…
One Screen, Many Fingers: Young Children's Collaborative Literacy Play With Digital Puppetry Apps and Touchscreen Technologies
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Theory Into Practice on 30 Jan 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00405841.2015.1010837
From “What Did I Write?” to “Is this Right?”: Intention, Convention, and Accountability in Early Literacy
When children enter public kindergartens in the current atmosphere of high-stakes testing, they often encounter an emphasis on correctness that casts doubt on the integrity of their personally invented messages, prompting them to ask not “What did I write?” but “Is this right?” This ethnographic case study examines early writing by 23 kindergarten children within the context of their free-writing time and their teacher's plan to restore intention…
Mediated Discourse Analysis: Researching young children’s non-verbal interactions as social practice
Young children often use actions rather than talk as they interact with objects and each other to strategically shape the social, material, and cultural environment. New dynamic research designs and methods are needed to capture the collaborative learning and social positioning achieved through children’s non-verbal interactions. Mediated discourse analysis (MDA), a hybrid ethnographic/sociolinguistic approach rooted in cultural-historical activi…
Media as nexus of practice: Remaking identities inWhat Not to Wear
In this conceptual piece, we examine media as a nexus of a traditional schooling pedagogy and performance pedagogy to make visible how their overlapping elements produce media's pervasive educative force but also to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of using media in educational contexts. Nexus analysis examines a fashion makeover television program – What Not to Wear (WNTW) – as an embodied lesson that produces identity revision bu…
Kindergarten as Nexus of Practice: A Mediated Discourse Analysis of Reading, Writing, Play, and Design in an Early Literacy Apprenticeship
How does “playing school, ” an ordinary child-hood pastime, shape children’s reading abili-ties, classroom identities, and relative social positioning? This ethnographic study of kindergarten literacy play situates children’s combinations of play, reading, writing, and design within a nexus of practice (Scollon, 2001), the web of seemingly natural combi-nations of ways of interacting shared by an embodied community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 199…
From “What Did I Write?” to “Is this Right?”: Intention, Convention, and Accountability in Early Literacy
When children enter public kindergartens in the current atmosphere of high-stakes testing, they often encounter an emphasis on correctness that casts doubt on the integrity of their personally invented messages, prompting them to ask not “What did I write?” but “Is this right?” This ethnographic case study examines early writing by 23 kindergarten children within the context of their free-writing time and their teacher's plan to restore intention…
Kindergarten as Nexus of Practice: A Mediated Discourse Analysis of Reading, Writing, Play, and Design in an Early Literacy Apprenticeship
How does “playing school, ” an ordinary child-hood pastime, shape children’s reading abili-ties, classroom identities, and relative social positioning? This ethnographic study of kindergarten literacy play situates children’s combinations of play, reading, writing, and design within a nexus of practice (Scollon, 2001), the web of seemingly natural combi-nations of ways of interacting shared by an embodied community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 199…
Mediated Discourse Analysis: Researching young children’s non-verbal interactions as social practice
Young children often use actions rather than talk as they interact with objects and each other to strategically shape the social, material, and cultural environment. New dynamic research designs and methods are needed to capture the collaborative learning and social positioning achieved through children’s non-verbal interactions. Mediated discourse analysis (MDA), a hybrid ethnographic/sociolinguistic approach rooted in cultural-historical activi…
Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing Identity Texts Through Disney Princess Play
Drawing upon theories that reconceptualize toys and artifacts as identity texts, this study employs mediated discourse analysis to examine children's videotaped writing and play interactions with princess dolls and stories in one kindergarten classroom. The study reported here is part of a three‐year ethnographic study of literacy play in U.S. early childhood classrooms. The specific focus here is on young girls who are avid Disney Princess fans …
An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education
The boys who would be princesses: Playing with gender identity intertexts in Disney Princess transmedia
Using data from a 3-year ethnographic study in US early childhood classrooms, I examine two kindergarten boys’ classroom play with their favourite Disney Princess transmedia to see how they negotiated gender identity layers clustered in the franchise's commercially given storylines and consumer expectations. This analysis contributes necessarily syncretic methods of analysis that enable critical examination of the complexity in children's play in…
Media as nexus of practice: Remaking identities inWhat Not to Wear
In this conceptual piece, we examine media as a nexus of a traditional schooling pedagogy and performance pedagogy to make visible how their overlapping elements produce media's pervasive educative force but also to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of using media in educational contexts. Nexus analysis examines a fashion makeover television program – What Not to Wear (WNTW) – as an embodied lesson that produces identity revision bu…
New Methods of Literacy Research
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in New Methods of Literacy Research on 22 August 2013, available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203104682
Hands On, Hands Off: Gendered Access in Crafting and Electronics Practices
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Mind, Culture, and Activity on 24 Jul 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10749039.2014.939762
One Screen, Many Fingers: Young Children's Collaborative Literacy Play With Digital Puppetry Apps and Touchscreen Technologies
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Theory Into Practice on 30 Jan 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00405841.2015.1010837
Playrevolution: Engaging Equity through the Power of Play
This special issue continues a two-year conversation about a #playrevolution in literacies research, theory, and practice. The juxtaposition of play and revolution is intentional, highlighting the tension between play's prosocial benefits and collaborative production and the rapid change, uncertainty, and violence in today's schools, where we desperately need more humanizing elements that build people's connections to one another. The #playrevolu…
Bringing Joy to School: Engaging K–16 Learners through Maker Literacies and Playshops
Background For too many youths, school has become a place for students to withstand and kill time until they can leave and learn about things that matter to them. Instead, schools should be inviting and exciting places to learn but also nurturing spaces where all students feel they belong. Drawing upon expanded definition of literacies that include play and making, this study examines how the maker literacies—media production where multimodal, di…
Mediated Discourse and Nexus Analysis
Nexus analysis is an action-oriented approach to critical discourse analysis that examines materials and modes, rather than turns of talk, lines of print, or ethnographic events. The focus is on mediated discourse: the interactions among people, materials, and modes within a place as people embody the expected social practices that make up ways of belonging within global discourses circulating in local communities. Nexus analysis makes visible th…
Sociology (11 works) · Pedagogy (9 works) · Literacy, Media, and Education (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Literacy (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Child Development and Digital Technology (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Ethnography (5 works) · Linguistics (4 works)