This week’s guiding questions:
How are our literacy practices shaped by communities of which we are part and in which we are raised?
What insights can be provided by conducting ethnographic research of literacy practices in communities?
How are literacy standards created, who do they serve and and how are they assessed for cultural bias?
Contribute to and/ or check out our class glossary. What are this week’s key terms?
Activity 1: What does the word “ethnography” mean? If you are not sure, google it. Next, write down the definition in your own words.
Activity 2: What does it mean to annotate? Do you annotate when you read? What are the benefits? Here is an example of annotations of the Szwed article you are about to read.
Annotations_example_Ethnography-of-LiteracyActivity 3: Here is some additional information on ethnorgaphy and literacy.
Slide-Week-2Activity 4: Read the attached work by John F. Szwed to learn more about both ethnography and how it can be used to better understand literacy. When you read challenging articles, often the best way to comprehend the information, find engagement in the reading, and allow the reading to be a springboard for future academic work is to annotate. You can use online annotation programs or if you have a printer, you can print the article and write on it (see example above) AND/OR review Prof. Barnes’ slides that capture the key points of this chapter.
Activity 5: Read an excerpt from “What is Literacy? – A Critical Overview of Sociocultural Perspectives” by Kristen Perry, from the Journal of Language and Literacy Education. To read the full article, see here.
Literacy as Social Practice
The theory of literacy as a social practice has been heavily influenced by Street’s (1985) early work in Iran. Grounded in data that described the various ways in which people used reading and writing for different purposes in their everyday lives, Street’s theory contrasted autonomous and ideological models of literacy. The autonomous model – under which most formal literacy instruction operates – conceptualizes literacy in strictly technical terms. That is, literacy is assumed to be a set of neutral, decontextualized skills that can be applied in any situation.
Literacy is something that one either has or does not have; people are either literate or illiterate, and those who are illiterate are deficient. The autonomous model attributes important consequences both to individual cognition and to society through the intrinsic characteristics that literacy is assumed to have. In contrast, the ideological model conceptualizes literacy as a set of practices (as opposed to skills) that are grounded in specific contexts and “inextricably linked to cultural and power structures in society” (p. 433)… As Street (2003) explains, What has come to be termed the “New Literacy Studies” (NLS) (Gee, 1991; Street, 1996) represents a new tradition in considering the nature of literacy, focusing not so much on acquisition of skills, as in dominant approaches, but rather on what it means to think of literacy as a social practice (Street, 1985). This entails the recognition of multiple literacies, varying according to time and space, but also contested in relations of power…and asking “whose literacies” are dominant and whose are marginalized or resistant. (p. 77) In this sense, the term New Literacy Studies is essentially equivalent to literacy as a social practice. What is “new” in this sense? As Lankshear and Knobel (2003) explain, “the New Literacy Studies comprise a new paradigm for looking at literacy, as opposed to the paradigm, based on psychology, that was already well established” (p. 2; emphasis in original). In other words, the New Literacy Studies challenges autonomous paradigms of literacy.
Activity 6: What is orality? Research the term “orality versus literacy” to see what you can find out.
Activity 7: Conversation 2
Activity 7: Your enormous post (minimum 200 words):
1. According to Szwed, what are the 5 elements of literacy? Select one of them and describe it in more detail.
2. What method of studying literacy does Szwed recommend and why?
3. What does Szwed mean when he writes, in reference to ethnography, that “we must come to terms with the lives of people without patronizing them” (427)?
4. Imagine you are a literacy instructor at a high school in the Bronx: if you followed Szwed’s advice, how would you teach literacy?
5. What, according to Perry, are the two models of literacy? How are they different? Which one do you think is better?
6. What did you learn from researching the term “orality versus literacy?”
7. How are our literacy practices shaped by communities of which we are part and in which we are raised (reference at least one of this week’s readings here)?
8. How are literacy standards created, who do they serve and how are they assessed for cultural bias (reference one of this week’s readings here)?
+ Reply to one or more classmates.
Optional reading: Read about the Sociocultural Perspective of Literacy. This excerpt, from Chapter 1 in Elizabeth Baker’s The New Literacies, written by her as well as P. David Pearson and Mary S. Rosendal, introduces the sociocultural perspective of literacy that is a centerpiece of this course – this is similar to the ideological model of literacy that Perry talks about.
