My research interests are clustered around issues of technology and literacy, with a special emphasis on computer code as a kind of writing. Current trends in new media literacies are enabled by the code running the programs supporting them; while I teach with, pay close attention to, and publish on these exciting sites of digital composition, my primary research takes a broader view on the technological, legal, and social factors that shape these digital composition environments. My projects are diverse in terms of study sites and methods, but they form a coherent agenda under this focus.
current research projects
My dissertation focuses on the interaction between the intersecting technological and social factors of computer code writing as a literacy—a practice I call proceduracy. My literacy framework is built from the perspective of New Literacy Studies, including work by James Paul Gee, Brian Street and Deborah Brandt. I contextualize the literacy of writing computer code (i.e., computer programming) with the longer history of textual literacy, beginning with the transition of text into the infrastructure of English society in the 11th – 13th centuries and continuing through the push for mass textual literacy in the 18th – 20th centuries. To perform this comparative historical analysis, I rely on scholarship from historians of texts and literacy such as Michael Clanchy, Brian Stock, Jack Goody, Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Harvey Graff. Framing the literacy of writing computer code with the knowledge we have about the history and the rich set of practices surrounding textual literacy allows us to better understand the current practices and trends in code writing. These trends, in turn, determine the shape of our digital composition environments.
future research projects
Framing computer programming as proceduracy, I am eager to explore the various contexts in which proceduracy is acquired. Much research is done on how students learn programming within formal, computer science - based education. However, if proceduracy is a literacy, it cannot be “owned” or completely subsumed under the field of computer science. In support of this idea, there is copious evidence of individuals learning proceduracy outside of formal contexts. In particular, many of my interviewees from my dissertation research have described the way they “picked up” programming through the World Wide Web or through open source software development. My next major research project will explore these new, informal contexts for proceduracy-learning. This project could provide concrete contributions to programming pedagogy as well as a greater understanding of the current, often online, contexts for literacy-learning.
The research potential of computer code as a literacy is wide, and I find myself generating more interesting questions than I answer as I move through my dissertation and other scholarly projects. I see proceduracy as operating within a longer history of literacy. Therefore, I wonder: What does it mean that textual literacy has come so far in terms of access and equity, but proceduracy is still so far behind? How do these disparities play out in the digital composition environments accessible to end users? My overall research agenda seeks places for literacy studies to critically intervene in the development and diffusion of the new literacy of proceduracy.
For more details about my current and future research, please contact me at avee@wisc.edu.