Visualizing mapping as pedagogy for literacy futures

In this article, the authors explore mapping as a pedagogical approach. Drawn from two literacy classrooms, the authors report on five empirical examples of mapping, elucidating the ways in which mapping activities were sites of dynamic meaning-making through processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). In both cases of mapping pedagogy, participants used mapping to interrogate texts, reflect on experiences, express identity, and locate emotions as language learners and readers. Employing visual analysis to ‘think with theory,’ the authors provide a coordinate plane to map the pedagogical dimensions of mapping across the five empirical examples. The authors illustrate the ways students gravitated across a continuum of literal to metaphorical visual depictions of their learning and life experiences. This inquiry offers new ways of theorizing thematic mapping of learning and experience for classroom practice.