Funding provided by:
The National Academy of Education
The Spencer Foundation
Baylor University
Literacy Education in a Platform Society
An inquiry into the the place, purpose, limits, and possibilities of literacy education in a world mediated by platform technologies. This includes attention to (1) the interests and imperatives that drive connective media, and their implications for equitable literacy education; (2) how datafication and algorithmic reasoning are remaking popular understandings of “literacy” — and what this means for schools; and (3) what alternate orientations for literacy pedagogy might be of use for understanding, analyzing, and intervening in the challenges wrought by platform technologies.
BOOKS
Nichols, T.P., & Garcia, A. (Eds).(in preparation) Literacies for the Platform Society: Histories, Pedagogies, Possibilities.
JOURNAL ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS
Nichols, T.P. (forthcoming). Data literacies. In M. Winn & L. Winn (Eds.), Bloomsbury handbook of social justice in education. Bloomsbury Academic.
Stornaiuolo, A., Higgs, J., Nichols, T.P., LeBlanc, R.J., & de Roock, R. (2024). The platformization of writing: Educational equity in new edtech ecologies. Review of Research in Education, 47(1), 311-359.
Nichols, T.P. , Thrall, A., Quiros, J., & Dixon-Román, E. (2024). Speculative capture: Literacy after platformization. Reading Research Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.535.
Thrall, A., Nichols, T.P., Magill, K.R. (2024). Speculative frictions: Writing civic futures after AI. English Teaching: Practice and Critique. http://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-08-2023-0095.
Nichols, T.P., & Dixon-Román, E. (2024). Platform governance and education policy: Power and politics in emerging edtech ecologies. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737231202469.
Pleasants, J., Krutka, D., & Nichols, T.P. (2023). What relationships do we want with technology? Toward technoskepticism in schools. Harvard Educational Review, 93(4), 486–515.
Kerssens, N., Nichols, T.P., & Pangrazio, L. (2023). Googlization(s) of education: Intermediary work brokering platform dependence in three national school systems. Learning, Media, & Technology. 10.1080/17439884.2023.2258339.
Krutka, D., Pleasants, J., & Nichols, T.P. (2023). Talking the technology talk. Phi Delta Kappan, 104(6), 42-46.
Nichols, T.P., LeBlanc, R.J., & Garcia, A. (2023). After digital literacy: Media pedagogy for platform ecologies. In B. Williamson, J. Komljenovic, & K. Gulson (Eds.), 2024 World Yearbook of Education: Digitalization of education in the era of algorithms, automation, and artificial intelligence (pp. 212-226). Routledge.
Nichols, T.P., & Monea, A. (2022). De-escalating dataveillance in schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 104(4), 23-27.
Nichols, T.P., & Garcia, A. (2022). Platform studies in education. Harvard Educational Review, 92(2), 209-230.
Pangrazio, L., Stornaiuolo, A., Nichols, T.P., Garcia, A., & Philip, T. (2022). Datafication meets platformization: Materializing data processes in teaching and learning. Harvard Educational Review, 92(2), 257-283.
Nichols, T.P., LeBlanc, R.J., & Slomp, D. (2021). Writing machines: Formative assessment in the age of Big Data. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 64(6), 712-719.
Nichols, T.P., Smith, A., Stornaiuolo, A., & Bulfin, S. (2021). Critical literacy, digital platforms, and datafication. In Pandya, J.Z., Mora, R., de Roock, R., & Golden, N.A. (Eds.), International Handbook of Critical Literacy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Nichols, T.P., & LeBlanc, R.J. (2021). Media education and the limits of ‘literacy’: Ecological orientations to performative platforms. Curriculum Inquiry, 51(4), 389-412.
Garcia, A., & Nichols, T.P. (2021). Digital platforms aren’t mere tools — they’re complex environments. Phi Delta Kappan, 102(6), 14-19.
Nichols, T.P., & Johnston, K. (2020). Rethinking ‘availability’ in multimodal composing: Frictions in digital design. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 64(3), 259-270)
Nichols, T.P., & LeBlanc, R.J. (2020). Beyond apps: Digital literacies in a platform society. The Reading Teacher, 74(1), 103-109.
Dixon-Román, E., Nichols, T.P., & Nyame-Mensah, A. (2019). The racializing forces of/in AI educational technologies. Learning, Media, and Technology, 45(3), 236-250.
Nichols, T.P., & Stornaiuolo, A. (2019). Assembling “digital literacy”: Contingent pasts, possible futures. Media and Communication, 7(2), 14-24.
Stornaiuolo, A., & Nichols, T.P. (2019). Cosmopolitanism and education. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.252
Nichols, T.P., & Campano, G. (2017). Post-humanism and literacy studies. Language Arts, 94(4), 245—251.
Scott, J., & Nichols, T.P. (2017). Learning analytics as assemblage: Criticality and contingency in online learning. Research in Education, 98(1), 1—23.
POLICY BRIEFS / OP-EDS / PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Pleasants, J., Krutka, D., & Nichols, T.P. (forthcoming). Technoskeptical teaching across the content areas. Harvard Educational Review Voices in Education Blog.
Garcia, A., Logan, C., & Nichols, T.P. (2024). Inspiration from the Luddites: On Brian Merchant’s “Blood in the Machine.” Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved from: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/inspiration-from-the-luddites-on-brian-merchants-blood-in-the-machine/.
Pleasants, J., Krutka, D., & Nichols, T.P. (2024). What relationships do we want with technology? Civics of Technology Blog. Retrieved from: https://www.civicsoftechnology.org/blog/new-publication-preview-of-what-relationships-do-we-want-with-technology.
Nichols, T.P. (2023). The limits of ‘digital literacy.’ Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. Retrieved from: https://www.digitalchild.org.au/blog/international-perspectives-the-limits-of-digital-literacy/.
LeBlanc, R., Aguilera, E., Burriss, S., de Roock, R., Fassbender, W., Monea, B., Nichols, T.P., Pandya, J.Z., Robinson, B., Smith, A., & Stornaiuolo, A. (2023). Digital platforms and literacy education. Urbana, IL: National Council for Teachers of English.
Nichols, T.P., & Garcia, A. (2022). Platform studies in education. Harvard Educational Review Voices in Education Blog. Retrieved from: https://www.hepg.org/blog/platform-studies-in-education.
Nichols, T.P., & Garcia, A. (2022). Twitter sale shows us why educational technologies should be accountable to schools. EdSource. Retrieved from: https://edsource.org/2022/twitter- sale-shows-us-why-education-technology-companies-should-be-accountable-to- schools/671731
Garcia, A. & Nichols, T.P. (2022). Why ‘delete Spotify’ should not be the main lesson for digital citizenship education. EdSource. Retrieved from: https://edsource.org/2022/why-delete- spotify- should-not-be-the-main-lesson-for-digital-civics-education/667700.
Nichols, T.P. (2013). Spreading literacy, spreading internet. The Atlantic. Retrieved from: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/spreading-literacy-spreading- internet/278007/.
Funding provided by:
The National Academy of Education
The Spencer Foundation
Making “Innovation”: Literacy and Technoscience in Urban Public School Reform
A social history of "innovation" in urban public school reform - and its impacts on literacy education. Pairing archival and ethnographic research, the study traces changing meanings of "innovation" - from its rise in Cold War science and political economy to its present associations with STEM and entrepreneurship - and maps how these shifts inflect the spatial, technological, and instructional order of "innovative" learning design. I ground this history in Philadelphia public schools, from the founding of a district Innovation Office in the mid-1960s to the present, where I conducted a 9-month ethnography of The Innovation School - a non-selective high school organized around making and design thinking. Following the school's first cohort as it navigated the asynchronous, project-based literacy curriculum, the study shows how the braided histories of "innovation" exert competing pressures when grafted onto formal learning environments, and explores how students and teachers reconciled these demands with their own purposes for literacy learning. In this way, the study wrests "innovation" from elite experts and policymakers and relocates it in the lived dynamics of classroom praxis.
BOOKS
Nichols, T.P. (2022). Building the Innovation School: Infrastructures for equity in today’s classrooms. Teachers College Press.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Nichols, T.P., Maton, R., & Simon, E. (2023). Opposing innovations: Race and reform in the West Philadelphia Community Free School, 1970-1977. History of Education Quarterly.
Ferguson, D.E., & Nichols, T.P. (2021). Schools sites and the haunting of history: Unmasking the past in field-based research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2021.1942301.
Nichols, T.P. (2021). Innovating from the ground up. Educational Leadership, 33-37.
Stornaiuolo, A., & Nichols, T.P. (2020). Makerspaces in K-12 schools: Six key tensions. In J. Rowsell, & C. McLean (Eds.), Making futures: Maker literacies and maker identities in the digital age. New York: Routledge.
Nichols, T.P. (2020). Innovation from below: Infrastructure, design, and equity in literacy classroom makerspaces. Research in the Teaching of English, 55(1), 56-81.
Salisbury, K., & Nichols, T.P. (2020). School makerspaces: Beyond the hype. Phi Delta Kappan, 101(8), 49-53.
Nichols, T.P., & Coleman, J.J. (2020). Feeling classroom worlds: Affective imaginaries and the making of “democratic” literacy classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly. DOI: 10/1002/rrq.305.
Maton, R., & Nichols, T.P. (2020). Mobilizing public alternative schools for post-neoliberal futures: Legacies of critical hope in Philadelphia and Toronto. Policy Futures in Education, 18(1), 159-178.
Nichols, T.P., & O’Sullivan, B. (2020). A cosmopolitics for the English classroom. In K. Lenters & M. McDermott (Eds.)., Affect, embodiment, and place in critical literacy: Assembling theory and practice. New York: Routledge.
Nichols, T.P., McGeehan, C^., & Reed III, S.A^. (2019). Composing proximity: Teaching strategic distance to high school writers English Journal, 108(3), 67-73.
Nichols, T.P., & Lui, D. (2019). Learning by doing: The tenuous alliance of the Maker Movement and education reform. In J. Huntsinger, & A. Schrock (Eds.), Making our world: The hacker and maker movements in context. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Stornaiuolo, A., & Nichols, T.P., & Vasudevan, V. (2018). Mapping the emergence of a literacy makerspace. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 17(4), 357-370.
Stornaiuolo, A., & Nichols, T.P. (2018). Making publics: Mobilizing audiences in high school makerspaces. Teachers College Record, 120(8), 1-38.
Maton, R., & Nichols, T.P. (2017). Tracing tensions in humanization and market-based ideals: Philadelphia alternative education in past and present. In N. Bascia, M. Levin, & E. Fine (Eds.), Alternative schooling and student engagement: Democracy within bureaucracy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Nichols, T.P., Maton, R., & Simon, E. (2023). Opposing innovations: Race and reform in the West Philadelphia Community Free School, 1969-1978. History of Education Quarterly HEQ&A Podcast. Retrieved from: https://soundcloud.com/heqanda/opposing-innovations.
Nichols, T.P. (2021). We don’t need no “innovation.” Logic Magazine. www.logicmag.io.
Nichols, T.P. (2013). Go ahead, mess with Texas Instruments. The Atlantic. Retrieved from: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/go-ahead-mess-with-texas- instruments/278899/
Funding provided by:
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES)
Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL)
The Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL) examines how college- and career-readiness standards are being implemented within and across states and districts - and what innovations in instruction, technology, and data-use are supporting teachers, administrators, and officials in meeting the needs of diverse learners. Goals of the larger study include: comparing standards implementation in English language arts and math across states; tracing diverse approaches to implementation in states, districts, schools, and classrooms; examining shifts in policies for English language learners and students with disability within the present wave of standards-based reform; and engaging policymakers, researchers, and practitioners in local and national discussions about the Center's work and findings. For the first two years of the study, Phil oversaw the project's partnership with Massachusetts; conducted interviews related to state and district protocols for assessment, professional development, curriculum, communication, and outreach; and contributed to cross-state analysis and report writing. He remains an affiliated researcher with the project, studying how policies related to technology, data, and English language arts circulate within and across states, districts, and schools.