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In this paper, we follow the co-constitutive material-participant relationships that propel action in escape room play, particularly how they open and close paths for learning. We focus on how learning is organized in one escape room game, The Author’s Enigma, as intertwined with conversations on play and learning to consider the relational values and ideologies that appear through more-than-human encounters. We contribute a critical (new) materialist draw toward material-participant intra-actions to notice the production of narrowed messages, as well as openings that lead toward multiplicity. Thinking-with-theory; we take up Ahmed’s (2006) concepts of orientation and disorientation to consider objects’ arrivals and their not-yet-presence. We also move with Barad’s (2003) concept of intra-action, perceiving more-than-human actors as ‘matter-in-the-process-of-becoming’. Following a conch shell as a vibrant material in the ecology of escape, we trace participants and the shell through moments of intra-action across escape play. We detail the communicative forms produced through material intra-actions as both open and closed, while producing resonant logics with players in the room. We discuss implications for: 1) game-based approaches to education; 2) disruption to assimilative lenses for sensing and supporting learning; and 3) valuing particular relational arrangements with materials.

This paper uses sensemaking theory and frame analysis to examine how a non-system actor's framing for advancing LGBT inclusion, what they called "code-switching," was taken up. Drawing on qualitative interview data generated as part of a larger mixed-methods study, this article examines the material and ideological affordances and constraints of elementary educators implementing the Inclusive Curriculum Law in Illinois (House Bill 246), a law promoting LGBT representation in history textbooks and curriculum. Findings highlight how the impetus to code-switch created a disconnect between policy and perceived practice, which in turn complicated organizational efforts to transform inclusive instruction. As our analyses illustrate, problem framing--refracted here through a non-system agent--not only shaped the direction of proposed solutions but also played a critical role in coordinating individual action and sensemaking.

Interested in the semiotic stretches youth employ to navigate (in)equality online, this paper interrogates the seemingly mundane practices of youth writing with new media to read how “collecting” and “curating” were mobilized as facets of youth activism. By focusing on curating and collecting as two forms of remediated communicative practice, this paper interrogates the taking on of what youth in a larger “connective ethnography” (Hine, 2015; 2000; Leander, 2008) called a #socialjusticewarrior stance. Zeroing in and tracing the connective lives Zeke, Camille, and Jack (all names are pseudonyms) led across their networked connections of writing, this paper illuminates how issues of race, gender expression, and queer identities converged to collect a social justice orientation into the larger Kilgore and San Miguels communities. Comparatively, I provide a counter-story from one young person (Ben) whose curated work of self-presentation fostered a more cosmopolitan version of self. I detail how Ben, in comparison to Jack, Zeke, and Camille curated through the acts of digital literacies to far extend his reach of what cultural justice looked like. Reading the ethos of online activism as a folksonomy, this paper works to stretch the imagination in considering what a tap, swipe, and click may do for architecting and building equity for youth and youth communities