- Departments/Offices:
- Center for Research on Learning and Technology; Curriculum and Instruction; Instructional Systems Technology
- Academic Programs:
- Early Childhood Education; Learning Sciences; Literacy, Culture, and Language Education
- Research Areas:
- Play, Early Literacies, Digital Literacies, Children's Media
- Room:
- ED 3056
- Email:
- kwohlwen@indiana.edu
- Phone:
- (812) 856-8275
- Website:
- http://www.karenwohlwend.com/
- Resume/CV
About Me
My research reconceptualizes young children’s play as an embodied literacy that produces action texts made with moving bodies or animation rather than print on a page or screen. Taking a critical sociocultural perspective, I study play in playrooms, classrooms, museums, and makerspaces, looking at how players interact with toys, popular media, video games, YouTube, Twitter, and other social networks.
Websites:
Current research projects include:
- Literacy Playshop: Critical media literacy through toyhacking and digital media in PK-16 classrooms
- Literacy and STEM learning in a Doc McStuffins museum exhibit (with Dr. Adam Maltese)
- Design Playshop: Embodied literacies in makerspaces (with Dr. Kylie Peppler)
Books include:
- Literacies that Move and Matter: Nexus Analysis for Contemporary Childhoods
- Playing Their Way into Literacies: Reading, Writing, and Belonging in the Early Childhood Classroom
- Literacy Playshop: New Literacies, Popular Media, and Play in the Early Childhood Classroom
- Literacy, Play, and Globalization: Converging Imaginaries in Children’s Critical and Cultural Performances (with Dr. Carmen Medina)
My Books

Playful Methods: Engaging the Unexpected in Literacy Research
CARMEN LILIANA MEDINA, MIA PERRY, KAREN WOHLWEND