Standpoints: Researching and Teaching English in the Digital Dimension.

In its most general sense, space can be defined as an almost infinite, three-di mensional expanse in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction based on the series of contexts they inhabit. When researchers and educators speak of pedagogical space, they are generally referring to "the social forums" (i.e., relative positions/directions) that feature instructional activities and interactional processes that promote individual knowledge production (Gutier rez & Rogoff, 2003; Kirkland, 2007a, 2008b; Rogoff, 2003; Schultz, 2002). Such conceptions of pedagogical space when discussed in literacy scholarship tend to ride one of two waves, either set apart through binary oppositions (Doucet, 2005; Dyson, 2008; Fisher, 2008; Grote, 2006) or woven seamlessly together through the coalescing threads of hybridity (Dyson, 1999; Gutierrez, 2008; Jocson, 2006; Kirkland, 2007b, 2008a, 2008c; Morrell & Duncan-Andrade, 2004). While these waves have been helpful in describing and pushing classroom borders, they alone are no longer sufficient for describing pedagogical space in the digital moment. I have come to this conclusion based on my most current research, which examines literacies in the lives of urban youth in online social communities. The youth who participated in my study seemed to have occupied spaces within spaces and spaces beyond spaces?that is, space in its most dynamic and pluralistic extent. In thinking about the digital contexts in which these youth practiced literacy, I have been hard pressed to find theories of space that fully measure the breadth, depth, and uniqueness of being and behaving in their digital dimensions. Notwithstanding, the theorizing of pedagogical space?the "overlapping and mutually informing but seemingly exclusive places where teacher and students reside and interact" (Gutierrez 8c Stone, 2000, p. 156)?has become foundational to the evolution of a particular variety of research and classroom practice (Bron fenbrenner, 1999; Dyson, 2003; Gutierrez, 2008; Hull & Schultz, 2002; Mahiri, 2004; Mahiri & Sablo, 1996; Miller, Beliveau, Kirkland, Rice, & Destigter, 2008; Morrell