Activity 1: Discuss: How are literacy standards created, who do they serve and how are they assessed for cultural bias?
Activity 2: 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 3: Read: “Ethnography of Literacy” by John Szwed and annotate the reading. This is a chapter from Crossovers: Essays on Race, Music, and American Culture, 2006.
Please note: I have requested this chapter via the Interlibrary Loan. I also created this slide presentation that captures some of the key points of the Szwed chapter, and that should qualify under the “fair use” copyright law.
Activity 4: Post Conversation 2.
Suggested reading:
Chapter 1 of The New Literacies: Multiple Perspectives on Research and Practice, edited by Elizabeth Baker.
