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
JOURNAL ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS
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.
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.
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.
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.
Making “Innovation”
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
JOURNAL ARTICLES
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.
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Nichols, T.P. (2021). We don’t need no “innovation.” Logic Magazine. www.logicmag.io.
Funding provided by:
The National Academy of Education
The Spencer Foundation
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.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Funding provided by:
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES)