Digital Literacies

Street has talked about autonomous literacy, associating it with traditional academic practices. This term describes the ways in which people (typically those in positions of power) think of literacy as being something to be taught; something to be aspired to; something to be earned. In a way it is not ‘of the people’ – but owned by powerful people who set the rules of engagement.

There are assessment criteria available which can measure people on a scale (that those in power have decided upon)  and compare aspiring writers and readers to each other. This model of literacy sees it as being about following rules set by others and the closer one can get to the norms, the higher the assessment. Ithe aim is to try and join those at the top – but you have to agree to their rules. The system is based on what is valued by the elite in educated circles; it is all about belonging to a club that sets rules for its members. Street has talked about this as autonomous literacy because it is about the individual and it does not recognise the social aspect of literacy.

Conversely, (and it is no surprise that Street is an anthropologist), there is another way of looking at literacy; it sees literacy ‘as a social practice’; as opposed to ‘autonomous’ literacy, Street describes this second type as ‘ideological literacy’. Of course it is not the case that autonomous literacy lacks in ideology; far from it. But it is presented as if neutral, as if it were the bare bones, the tools, with which to perform literacy tasks. Conceptualised as ‘ideological literacy’ , the other way of viewing literacy, is that it is absolutely about social and cultural values and practices. In such  amodel, I think we also see literacy as something which evolves by participation – in the same way as spoken language.  For me the analogy is spoken language; that it is something that has developed through community and that what gets developed is what is valued by the speakers. That  is to say, spoken language changes over time with new words being added, new phrases s adopted and even new ways of intonation or grammatical twists. The ideological view of literacy focuses attention on the nature and function of literacy in a social system. Literacy is an integral feature of the social system. Literacy is understood and used in myriad ways in the function of the social system. Literacy is a measure of social position, a metric of job eligibility, a tool for job performance, a device for exercising influence, and a medium for interpreting the world.
I think that in this sense we see that a move towards this newer conceptualisation of literacy is a move towards a more honest and open approach. It is seen to be as inherently GOOD. There is a moral stance being taken (I think) which is that the ideological model represents a view that is seen to be less judgemental, more accepting and even ‘kind’.
Brian Streets’ work fits well within the paradigm of the New Literacy Studies. Work has been developed, sitting on the shoulders of an argument first put forward by the New London Group whicjh proposes a new way of educating. The New London Group proposes that a new way of teaching literacy is required for the new kinds of texts being produced through digital technologies (etc); such new texts are multimodal and the fact that they are produced in different ways to those of a bygone era changes the meanings of those texts in all kinds of complex, subtle(and not so subtle ) ways.

Lankshear and Knobel’s (or Knobel and Lankshear’s) work is rooted within such a paradigm of new literacy studies and multiliteracies; they have developed the concept of New Literacies. In this concept they talk about ways in which people are producing new kinds of text; that they are involved in new kinds of literacy practice – because of the development of new technologies. New Technologies and all the affordances they have, allow us to communicate in new ways, with greater numbers of people and much more quickly than before. Crucially, we are able to collaborate on the production of new texts, we can change the texts produced by others, (see all the YouTube memes) we can have texts that change very quickly, that kaleidoscopically fit inside each other (eg through the use of hyperlinks) – we do not have to read in linear ways. All these things are NEW.

However, as a point of fact, I would like to say that more traditional literacy practices are not bad; nor are they likely to become obsolete. To conflate new literacy studies with new literacy practices is obviously an easy thing to do. However it is important to me, that I keep separate the ideas, since the new literacy studies is seen to be a theoretical move ahead. It takes a different moral stance to what Street has conceptualised as ‘autonomous’ literacy. However, older practices in themselves are not inherently ‘bad’ in the New Literacy Studies. We need to remember that in rejecting autonomous models we were also rejecting the idea of condemning the practices of others. All too often I see work which berates those who do not ‘properly’ adopt new practices. Whilst I would argue that we need, as teachers, to help as many people as possible to participate in what is possible with new technologies, we should not let this mean that we also condemn those who continue to value other types of text production and consumption practices. To do so, would be to play the elitist game and fall into the trap I outlined at the top of the post.

Street, Brian V. 1985.Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Lankshear and Knobel  (2006) New Literaies: changing Knowledge in the Classroom. OUP.

Anyhow… here is an interesting example of a literacy practice – this was taken in Chinatown NYC. What aspects of this reflect new practices? And what are conventional practices?