Week 1 Journal: New Literacies as a Social Practice

"The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives" (Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9).

As a literacy teacher, I convey to my students that when we refer to "texts" in our classes, we refer to a broad range of modalities: film, podcasts, speeches, and articles in addition to the traditional novel and essay. However, this approach only takes into account definitions, leaving out the social/interactive component of literacy; as the prompt suggests, my definitions fall short of "what people do with texts, how they make sense of them..." (emphasis mine). I was struck by the assertion by Gillen and Barton on page 7 of "Digital Literacies" where they explore the implications of school literacy practices that rest on more antiquated approaches to literacy practices/experiences. While the experience of "reading" once meant a more solitary, singular, reflective activity, reading and interacting with information available through our many screens becomes a much more interactive -if disjointed - experience of hypertextuality. At the end of page 7, Gillen and Barton note that "if the school remains (obliged to) adhere to the characteristics of the former semiotic and social world, there will be an increasingly vast gap of practice, understanding, and disposition to knowledge." Immediately, my mind jumped to a picture of my commute to work on the subway; while listen to my beloved podcasts, I toggle through Facebook posts, New York Times articles, emails, and text messages. While I don't necessarily believe these practices are always the most efficient or effective ways for me to ingest or communicate information, they have become comfortable, if not habitual. My high school students have grown up surrounded by digital literacies that abound and evolve with unbelievable speed, and I know their interactions with the digital world mirror my own habits in many ways. And so, I think about the above-mentioned quote, and I wonder: what is my responsibility to my students to construct learning experiences that facilitate a more multi-modal approach to literacy practices - one that perhaps more authentically represents the way they use, approach and interact with text in their lives outside of the classroom? How does this question function next to the idea that we utilize "different literacies in different domains of life" (Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9)? 

When it comes to digital literacy, we find ourselves in a dynamic space. I was struck by how long the work of Lankshear & Knobel's research dates over the past decades, and how much their own approaches to this subject have shifted. Certainly some of their early claims remain true and relevant, even decades later when our access to and use of technology has transformed itself, and the way that we find, communicate, and connect information. The idea of "functional literacy" as this potential for some kind of equalizer is interesting to think about now, when social media and crowd-sourced news, information, and campaigns seem to shift the power dynamics further away still from a top-down, hierarchal model. But even as we curate our own sources of information, do we still live in a similar framework to the one Lankshear and Knobel described - one that is still "in fact functional for those who are materially advantaged by the status quo" (p. 16)? In her article "Beyond 'New' Literacies," Dana Wilber references this idea of "participatory cultures" (Jenkins, 2006, p. 3), noting that our access to and participation in literacies and social media demonstrates one of the most noticeable changes in "new" literacies. I want to believe that participatory cultures are necessarily more humane and democratic - reconciling many voices, priorities, narratives, and modalities. But is access and participation enough? Doesn't this all go back to how we read, understand, and interact with and make meaning of texts? 

References:

Gillen, J. and Barton, D. (2010). Digital Literacies. London Knowledge Lab Institute of Education.  Retrieved from http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/33471/1/DigitalLiteracies.pdf


Lankshear, C & Knobel, M. 2011. Literacies: Social, Cultural and Historical Perspectives. New York. Peter Lang Publishing.

Wilber, D. (2010). Beyond “New” Literacies. Digital Culture and Education.  Retrieved from http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/uncategorized/dce_editorial_vol2_iss1_2010/