Reconceptualizing literacy

By Patricia A. Edwards

This year the president's columns are organized around six critical issues that I believe educators must rethink for the 21st century. As we strive to maintain a relevance within the changing landscapes in today's schools, these key issues will help educators teach children and work with families in new and different ways. My first column focuses on reconceptualizing literacy.

Shifting demographics

The first U.S. census, in 1790, recorded 4 million Americans. By 2000, this number had grown to 281 million. It is expected to reach 310 million in 2010 and 439 million by 2050.

Consequently, it is not surprising that the face of the nation is changing, and nowhere is the change more evident than in public school classrooms. Shifting demographics bring transformations in the nation's social fabric and economy, and public schools are in the vanguard of change. Like the rest of society, public schools must continually reinvent themselves.

Compared with the last century, we are an increasingly aging and multi–hued society. More and more of us were born in other nations, speak different languages, and carry different cultural traditions with us, even though our teaching population continues to consist primarily of white, middle class females. Our challenge as educators will be to meet the needs of a culturally and linguistically diverse student population.

Many public school educators have come to recognize that one out seven of today's students speak a language other than English at home. Learning a new language is challenging in itself, but having to also learn new ways of thinking and communicating adds a whole other dimension to becoming literate.

Many culturally and linguistically diverse students will enter our classrooms without having experienced supportive or culturally relevant learning environments. The reasons for their low performance are complex, but stem in part from a misalignment between educational practices and the students' needs.

In her book Other People's Words, Victoria Purcell–Gates noted that "low–income, minority, differently–literate communities will experience greater difficulties learning to read and write in schools…." Therefore, I would argue that one way educators can address the needs of our increasingly diverse student population is to expand our definitions of literacy.

Take a fresh look at literacy

Since the beginning of recorded history, the concept of "literacy" meant having the skill to interpret signs and symbols which, when put together, formed messages that conveyed meaning. Today, information about the world comes to us not only through words printed on a piece of paper but more and more through the powerful images and sounds of our multimedia culture.

In Intelligence Reframed, Howard Gardner explains that "literacies, skills, and disciplines ought to be pursued as tools that allow us to enhance our understanding of important questions, topics, and themes." Students analyze, compare, evaluate, and interpret multiple representations from a variety of disciplines and subjects, including texts, photographs, artwork, and data. The reader, the audience, and the medium create perspective, and students need to recognize these components.

Today's readers become literate by learning to read words and symbols that represent our rich and complicated history. These textual features help students modify their own understandings of the world based on the rhetorical situation.

As a result, today's classroom teachers must endeavor to keep their definitions of literacy current. Teachers must continue to absorb present–day experiences and knowledge with visual and digital literacy as it proliferates. This requires taking risks and surrendering ourselves to being connected to change, as well as students' knowledge. We must be willing to adapt our instructional approaches and resources to the curriculum in new and imaginative ways. Ultimately, this requires that we transform our teaching styles to be inclusive of different ways of knowing and styles of learning.

New dimensions of literacy

The transformation of our culture from an Industrial Age to an Information Age is why a new kind of literacy, coupled with a new way of learning, is critical for today's classroom teacher. Over the last few years, different researchers have used a wide range of terms when referring to new kinds of literacies. Some include: 21st century literacies, Internet literacies, digital literacies, new media literacies, multiliteracies, information literacy, ICT literacies, and computer literacy.

Within these new literacies, most educators recognize that there are many emerging ways to communicate and create images across time and space. Some of these include blogging, personal websites, sharing music and movies, digital storytelling, e-mail, podcasts, online discussions, wikis, and online social networking spaces.

Not only do 21st–century teachers need to be culturally responsive to our diverse learning population, but they need to do it in a way that keeps them connected to new forms of literacy. The networked teacher diagram on this page, conceived by Alec Couros, shows teachers within a personal and professional web of new literacies. It makes clear that teachers have to reconceptualize their definitions of literacy.

Visual literacy

Perhaps one of the first steps for expanding our views of literacy learning would be to start with visual literacy. Visual literacy stems from the notion of images and symbols that can be read. Meaning is communicated through image more readily than print, which makes visual literacy a powerful teaching tool. Instructional approaches that make use of visual and digital media will better prepare students for their futures in a rapidly changing world.

Most would agree that our world is becoming an increasingly visual world, with an increase in graphics on the Internet, television, as well as in printed texts. As Carey Jewitt and Rumiko Oyama point out in their chapter in the Handbook of Visual Analysis, teachers who understand the importance of a broadened definition of literacy will support students as they learn to critically engage with these messages as they use and interpret new information. Therefore, we must expand our notion of literacy beyond reading and writing printed text to include interpreting visual and digital texts.

Visual literacy has been a successful starting point for teaching English language learners. Helping diverse learners effectively interact with and understand new dimensions of visual and digital literacies means facilitating their ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in many different forms. Teachers will help students empower themselves with the necessary tools to thrive in increasingly media–varied environments.

The definition of literacy as decoding print is outdated, and our new definitions must account for not only changing demographics but also the challenge of a technologically evolving landscape. If students are to successfully meet the social, political, and economic demands of their futures, they must be able to adapt and reinvent the ways that they read and write the world. Teachers are an integral part of this change process. In my opinion, reconceptualizing our views of literacy is a step in the right direction.

In order to move further in this direction, reflect on these questions with your colleagues:

• What are the many different kinds of literacies that make up your practice?
• Where are you and your colleagues on the continuum of the networked teacher?
• How are your students involved in these conversations?

References

Couros, A.V. (2006). Examining the open movement: Possibilities and implications for education. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Regina). Retrieved from www.scribd.com/doc/3363/Dissertation-Couros-FINAL-06-Web Version.

Gardner, H. (2000). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York: Basic Books.

Jewitt, C., & Oyama, R. (2001). Visual meaning: A social semiotic approach. In T. van Leeuwen & C. Jewitt (Eds.), Handbook of visual analysis (pp. 134-156). London: Sage.

Purcell-Gates, V. (1995). Other people's words: The low cycle of literacy, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

IRA President Patricia A. Edwards is a Distinguished Professor of Language & Literacy and a Senior University Outreach fellow at Michigan State University.

Reconceptualizing literacy. (June 2010). Reading Today, 27(6), 22.