Embodied Participation
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Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2017:47 Johan Hjulstad Johan Hjulstad Embodied Participation In the Semiotic Ecology of a Visually- Doctoral thesis Doctoral Oriented Virtual Classroom ISBN 978-82-326-2166-8 (printed ver.) ISBN 978-82-326-2167-5 (electronic ver.) ISSN 1503-8181 Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2017:47 Doctoral NTNU Philosophiae Doctor Philosophiae Faculty of Humanities Faculty Thesis for the Degree of the Degree Thesis for Department of Language and Literature Norwegian University of Science and Technology of Science University Norwegian Johan Hjulstad Embodied Participation In the Semiotic Ecology of a Visually-Oriented Virtual Classroom Thesis for the Degree of Philosophiae Doctor Trondheim, March 2017 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Humanities Department of Language and Literature NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology Thesis for the Degree of Philosophiae Doctor Faculty of Humanities Department of Language and Literature © Johan Hjulstad ISBN 978-82-326-2166-8 (printed ver.) ISBN 978-82-326-2167-5 (electronic ver.) ISSN 1503-8181 Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2017:47 Printed by NTNU Grafisk senter 1 2 Content Summary Acknowledgements Part I 1. Introduction 1.1. The thesis aims and research questions 1.2. Thesis overview 2. Summary of the included papers 2.1. Identity negotiations in a visually-oriented virtual classroom 2.2. Orchestrating student attention in a visually-oriented virtual classroom 2.3. Practices of organizing built space in videoconference-mediated interactions 3. Embodied practices in deaf education 3.1. Personal background 3.2. Discussing terms 3.3. The context of distance education within deaf education 3.3.1. The competence problem 3.3.2. The distance problem 3.3.3. The level of deafness problem 3.4. Present day deaf education in Norway 4. Theorizing embodied participation 4.1. What was I looking for? 4.2. Looking, using video 4.3. The process of asking questions: Bringing it together 4.3.1. Connecting issues in the practical field of deaf education 4.3.2. Selecting issues to pursue 4.3.3. The selected issues 4.4. (Re)visiting Identity: First question 4.4.1. Academic discourses on identity 4.4.2. An empirical contribution to academic discourses on identity 4.5. Professional practice: Second question 4.5.1. Academic discourses on professional practice 4.5.2. An empirical contribution to academic discourses on professional practice 4.6. Orders of mediated interaction: Third question 4.6.1. Academic discourses on orders of interaction in mediated settings 4.6.2. An empirical contribution to discourses on interactional order in mediated settings 3 5. Discussions of previous research 5.1. Deaf Education 5.2. Norwegian review studies 5.3. Non-Norwegian review studies 5.4. Norwegian research on deaf education 5.5. Norwegian doctoral works 5.6. Exploring signed language interaction with a strict microanalytic and sequential approach 5.7. Micro-ethnographies or ethnographies 5.8. Research on identity within deaf education 5.9. Review of video (technology)-mediated communication 6. A virtual space for participation 6.1. A virtual space for negotiating deaf identity 6.1.1. Learning from identity negotiations 6.2. Orchestrating visual attention in a virtual space 6.2.1. Learning from professional practice 6.3. An interactionally built virtual space 6.3.1. Learning from a practice of interactionally built space 6.4. The work to make it work 7. Conducting microethnographic research 7.1. Selecting a research site and methodology 7.2. Collecting data 7.3. Analyzing the video data 7.4. Transcribing key moments of signed interaction 7.5. Describing and reporting the research findings 8. Conclusion References Part II 9. Identity Negotiations in a Visually-Oriented Virtual Classroom 9.1. Introduction 9.1.1. Ethnographic Background 9.1.1.1. Deaf Identity in New Educational Settings 9.1.1.2. Deaf Students Struggle in Mainstream Settings 9.1.2. Theoretical Background: Researching Identity in New Settings 9.2. Methodology and Data 9.3. Findings 9.3.1. A Story of Success 9.3.1.1. Extract from Evaluation 9.3.1.2. Extracts from Teachers’ Interviews 9.3.2. Stabilizing Designs, Templates, and Teaching Formats 9.3.3. Doing Identity Negotiations 9.3.3.1. Designing Participation Frameworks 4 9.3.3.2. Managing Possible De-stabilization of Participation 9.3.3.3. Securing Balanced Participation for each Category of Participants 9.3.3.4. Introducing Friends in Visually-Oriented Virtual Space 9.3.3.5. Telling a Shared Narrative 9.3.3.6. Technology-Positioned Relation 9.3.3.7. What Will They Learn? 9.3.4. The Successful Lesson 9.4. Summary 9.5. Conclusion References 10. Orchestrating Attention in Visually-Oriented Virtual Classrooms 10.1. Introduction 10.2. Analytical approach: visual orientation in professional practices 10.3. Methodology and data 10.4. Findings 10.4.1. Adaptations concerning an interaction space for a focused encounter 10.4.1.1. Practices for establishing and sustaining mutual visibility: the practice of waving 10.4.1.2. Establishing and sustaining a working consensus of bodily posture 10.4.2. Adaptations concerning the continually shifting locus of attention 10.4.2.1. Enforcing hand raising 10.4.2.2. Use of name signs for addressing and allocating turns 10.4.2.3. Use of turn-initial waves, allowing time for shifts in focus 10.4.2.4. Use of turn-final holds to signal expected response 10.4.2.5. Enforcing visible recipient behavior 10.5. Conclusions References 11. Practices of Organizing Built Space in Videoconference-Mediated Interactions 11.1. Introduction 11.2. Signed language interactions in multi-participant VMEs 11.3. Methodology and data 11.4. Orders of signed interaction in VME 11.4.1. Simultaneity and sign-spatial mapping 11.4.2. The teacher’s actions and conjoined participation 11.4.3. Providing a solution to a fractured ecology 11.5. Discussion Appendix References Appendix 1: List of figures Appendix 2:Documentation of permission Appendix 3: Information and consent Appendix 4: Interview guide students Appendix 5:Interview guide local teachers 5 Summary New developments and use of participation technologies allow people to create new kinds of built spaces in ways that affect actions, collaborations, perceptions, and the production of meaning—and, consequently, the way in which such spaces afford learning. This thesis reports a microethnographic study of a distance education setting in which advanced videoconferencing technologies were set up in order to create a virtual classroom in which remote, separately located students could learn signed language in the company of other students. The data was gathered in the context of deaf education in Norway; thus, within a sociocultural tradition of visually-oriented communicative practices. The thesis consists of two parts: a compilation of introductory chapters (chapters 1 to 8) and three empirical works (chapters 9 to 11). The three empirical works consist of one peer-reviewed book chapter and two journal articles. The main data of this microethnography consists of recorded footage of the videoconference-mediated synchronous (video) images of weekly multiparty lessons—in which participants could see each other at all times, but no sound was transmitted. The teachers and students collaborated to visually coordinate and organize the activities, primarily through (sign) languaging in the virtual classroom. This implies that they contingently adapted their practices and strategies to the semiotic ecology of the setting, thus providing important insight into what it is like to participate, learn, and form identities in a new educational setting. The study took an embodied (and multimodal) interaction analytic approach to the data, and explored the way in which the teachers and students organized their own and interpreted others’ bodily movements; that is, it examined the way in which they employed multimodal resources (e.g., signed language, gesture, gaze, head movements, facial expressions, body postures, object manipulation, and technology) when interacting with one another. The 6 introductory chapters: summarize the three empirical contributions (Chapter 2); provide background for the ethnographic field in which the data was collected (Chapter 3); provide an exposition of the theoretical frameworks this microethnography aligned with (Chapter 4); discuss previous research with an emphasis on research in deaf education (Chapter 5); present results from the three empirical works to show the benefits of collecting the papers in a single volume (Chapter six); clarify the methodology and data (Chapter 7); and conclude (Chapter 8). The peer-reviewed book chapter (Chapter 9) explores the possible role of the environment in the students’ identity negotiations and explicates their (identity) work to stabilize an identity space—blurring the boundaries of inclusive and segregated education. The first journal article (Chapter 10) focuses on the way in which teachers’ professional practice of orchestrating students’ attention became a critical skill when adapting practices and strategies in this particular environment, suggesting that knowing what the interlocutors see is critical for successful communication. The final journal article (Chapter 11) explores the practices of one teacher, who exploited sign language conventions in new ways to consistently build an interactional space in which he could use