Content area
Abstract
I. This report is a dissertation focused on a case study of PN Charter School (a pseudonym for a charter K-7 school in the Pacific Northwest) and the implementation of its Vision Statement through Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound (ELOB) curriculum, with special emphasis on descriptions of nine conditions that allowed multiliteracies to emerge. It begins with an introduction (Chapter I) of the research project and an overview of the study. It continues with a review of the multiliteracies literature (Chapter II), and a discussion of methodology and procedures follows (Chapter III), where predetermined descriptive categories of multiliteracies, established from my review of the literature, are used in an initial content analysis (Weber, 1990) of two PN Charter School documents (The PN Vision Statement and 2003-2004 Accountability Study), followed by an ethnographic content analysis (Altheide, 1987) of the two documents to include emerging categories not predetermined by the review of the literature. A final content analysis (Weber, 1990) of the remaining data was conducted utilizing the nine categories derived from the earlier analyses to provide additional narrative and examples for the findings (Chapter IV) of the analyses. Chapter V concludes with a discussion of PN's implementation of its Vision Statement through ELOB curriculum, with special emphasis on the conditions that resulted in the implementation of multiliteracies elements within the pedagogy of PN Charter School. It describes the conditions that allowed multiliteracies practices to emerge at PN Charter School and challenges researchers to pursue multiliteracies implementation models based on the PN Charter School case study. Several appendices are attached for reference, including the complete preliminary study as Appendix E.
II. This report is a completed preliminary study and the first three chapters of a dissertation focused on nine themes in multiliteracies. It begins with an introduction (Chapter I) of the research project including its methodology, introduces a review of the multiliteracies literature to define multiliteracies (my first research question). A discussion of methodology and procedures follows (Chapter II), where predetermined descriptive categories of multiliteracies, established from my review of the literature, are used in a general content analysis (Weber, 1990) of two PN Charter School (a pseudonym for a charter K-7 school in the Pacific Northwest) documents (The PN Vision Statement and 2003-2004 Accountability Study). Then an ethnographic content analysis (Altheide, 1987) of the two documents is conducted to include emerging categories not predetermined by the review of the literature. The review of the literature and results of the analyses (Chapter III) answer my next two research questions, a description of multiliteracies practices as found in the PN Charter School documents, and a comparison between the review of the literature and PN documents related to multiliteracies. The descriptive category components and practices from the review of the literature and the emerging categories from the analyses represent nine themes of multiliteracies that constitute a framework for multiliteracies implementation. A reflective section at the end of Chapter III introduces my final research question about conditions that resulted in the implementation of multiliteracies elements within the pedagogy of PN Charter School, a topic that will be developed further as Chapter IV of the final dissertation.
