Restorying in the Discourses and Literacies of Military-Connected Students

Abstract

This dissertation project explores the lived experiences and literacies of seven adolescent (13 to 18-year-old) military kids from the suburbs of a midwestern city with a large air force base. All seven participants had spent a majority of their lives with one or both parents in the military, all of them had relocated at least four times, and all of them had experienced at least one parental deployment (three students had experienced five deployments). This research builds on conversations in literacy studies about the links between adolescents’ literacy practices and their identities, as well as research in the social sciences about the psychological and socioemotional effects of military life on service members’ families. Starting with questions about how military-connected students talk about their experiences, what kinds of literacies they engage in, and how they use those literacies to shape their perspectives on their experiences, this work presents findings from an analysis of students’ discourses as well as their literacies. Drawing upon a series interviews, an archive of student writing, and the texts that students discussed reading, there were six primary narrative patterns that students adopted in their discourses about military life (three positive narratives and three negative narratives), and four primary ways that students used literacy to influence how they thought about the events of their lives. Students used literacies both in and out of school to escape challenging circumstances, to connect with loved ones across space and time, and to process their experiences directly through reflection and indirectly through refraction. While analysis of students’ discourses revealed how they viewed events such as relocation and deployment, analysis of students’ literacies illuminated students’ acts of restorying: the ways that they were agentively using reading and writing to shape their perspectives. This work also highlights ways that these military-connected students used literacy to engage in agentive acts of restorying, and it points to the power of literacy to shape how people view the world and themselves. This research has implications for communities providing support to military children, as it provides insight into the ways that these military-connected students discussed their experiences and used literacies to shape their perspectives. For teachers, parents, and other community members providing support to military families, it provides key questions to ask and things to look for among military-connected students. It also suggests directions for future research regarding how teachers might leverage the literacies these students are bringing to the classroom. Additionally, this research points to the need for new kinds of work to be done among children of immigrants and refugees whose experiences may include frequent relocation, interaction with large bureaucratic institutions, trauma, and parental separation.