Bubbles of becomings: from located investment to placemaking practices of engagement in the language classroom

Based on data from a ten-year study of literacy and linguistic diversity in the classroom, in this article we examine the intersection of investment and placemaking through an analysis of a student’s emergent engagement practices in a teaching unit about writing blogs. Drawing on recent work on spatiality in literacy studies, we trace the evolving movements in the student’s changing relationship with the classroom as a literacy learning place. Our analysis shows how the shifting relationships between the human beings, the classroom objects and the various semiotic resources create a learning place that allows the student to explore the possibilities for entangling herself in the text-making process through embodied and affective engagements in the text classroom practices. Based on this analysis, we suggest a parallel shift of emphasis from a focus of located investment toward a focus on placemaking practices of engagement in order to capture the unpredictable and affectively loaded bubbles of becomings that are part of all classroom practices.