School of Education

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:

• karenwohlwend.com
• Nexus Analysis: Methods for Analyzing Actions, Materials, and Places

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)