A Case Study of PN Charter School Conditions For Multiliteracies
Abstract
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.