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Literacy Crisis in the Information Age

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 10 months ago

 


Literacy Crisis in the Information Age?

 

(and where does information literacy fit into it?)

 

Katie Day

katie.appleton.day@gmail.com

 

Charles Sturt University

June 2005

 

 

A little learning is a dang’rous thing.

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

-- Alexander Pope

 

The word ‘literacy’ is typically associated with the school subject of English, i.e., reading and writing in their simplest forms, that of de/coding alphabetic text (Christie & Misson 1998). This lay perspective, typified in the meaning of the word as deployed in the popular press when proclaiming a ‘literacy crisis’, suggests a desirable set of functional skills for an individual to possess and for an educational system to deliver to its citizens. Thus, newspaper accounts of literacy tend to focus on national arguments about how to best teach reading, test for reading ability, and reform policy relating to the teaching of reading (Davenport & Jones 2005).

 

Explorations of the broader meanings of literacy occur elsewhere – in academia – where literacy is associated with the construction of meaning as the basis of learning, where the relationship between language and reality is accepted as unstable, language always being socially and politically situated and both creating and reflecting reality (Luke & Freebody 1999; Antsey & Bull 2004a; Christie & Misson 1998).

 

A range of levels from high to low or, rather, a widening focus from micro-operational in the individual to the macro-philosophical in society, is implicit in academic discussions of the concept of literacy. Wells (1988 cited in Anstey & Bull 2004a) suggests four models of literacy: performative (encoding/decoding), functional (everyday survival), informational (finding information), and epistemic (literacy in social contexts). Another prominent model is the Four Resources one, developed by Luke & Freebody (1999) in 1990, which posits the roles of literacy as code breaker, meaning maker, text user, and text critic.

 

This highest conception of literacy – that of ‘epistemic text critic’, to combine terms from the two models – is sometimes referred to as ‘proper’ literacy (Lankshear & Lawler 1987 cited in Antsey & Bull 2004a) or critical literacy or, most explicitly, social critical literacy (Kapitzke 2005).

 

Critical literacy is a higher order of questioning or learning that applies to all social and political interaction, seeking to ask the who, what, why, and how behind texts in terms of power relationships. It is concerned with access to discourses and practices within society rather than just cognitive processes within an individual (Antsey & Bull 2004a, 2004b). Literacy must be about reading the world as well as the word, as Freire famously said (Freire & Macedo 1987 cited in Christie & Misson 1998).

 

Individuals may belong to multiple ‘lifeworlds’ or communities, each with their own discourse; critical literacy then becomes the means of negotiating these multiple discourses (Anstey & Bull 2004b).

 

Subject-Specific Literacies… and the New Literacies

 

Recognizing the existence of different discourses raises the issue of what it means to be literate in academic disciplines besides the default subject of English. Numeracy could be viewed as mathematical literacy, with other school subject-specific literacies including scientific, historical, geographical, musical, artistic, etc.

 

Each discipline has preferred uses of language in order to construct meaning and reason with it, as well as genres or text types prevalent in their discourse (Christie & Misson 1998). Educationally, it is therefore important for teachers to help their students appreciate the peculiarities and ways of reading and thinking within their discipline in order to gain access to it (Schoenbach et al. 2003).

 

Improving subject-specific literacies can only empower students in the academic game. This is becoming increasingly recognized in the U.S. where the International Reading Association (2005) has just issued new draft guidelines for subject-specific ‘literacy coaches’ to work with teachers of English, math, social studies, and science, with the goal of improving reading achievement of students. Other initiatives, such as the Reading Apprentice program (Schoenbach et al 2003), aim for broader objectives more in line with critical literacy, e.g., ‘tapping and extending knowledge of content, text, and discourse’.

 

New types of literacies have also emerged into the educational arena, originating more organically in the changing digital environment of the internet and other information and communication technologies. These new literacies – or multiliteracies – are as concerned with form as content and conceptually refer to ‘meaningful action with any text, irrespective of technology, media, form, or structure’ (Healy 2003), e.g., visual literacy, media literacy, video literacy. They can be viewed as multiple dimensions of literacy practies (Unsworth 2002) and are examples of changing social and cultural contexts creating new social practices and hence new literacies, which build upon the foundation of existing literacy practices, rather than supplanting them (Leu et al. 2004; Christie & Misson 1998). Ten years ago Kaplan (1995) coined the term ‘e-literacies/elite-racies’ to represent the implications of these literacies metaphorically allowing people to both ‘make a mark’ and ‘make one’s mark’ in society.

 

The many possible literacies, both subject-specific and new, prompted one article to ask, ‘what does it mean to be X literate?’ (Shambaugh 2000). Indeed, can the word ‘literacy’ be tacked on to any activity, e.g., how about ‘entrepreneurial literacy’ (Manzo 2003)?

 

Moulthrop (2004) votes for ‘no more literacies’, complaining about the ‘promiscuous extension’ of the term – and commenting that it’s worse than a dead metaphor, it’s ‘an undead metaphor, or a kind of intellectual monster’. He longs for a genuine, singular literacy to talk about what people do with text now that we’ve expanded beyond print culture (Moulthrop 2004).

 

Information Literacy

 

My subject area of teacher librarianship, like English, has always had an association with base-line literacy, given its traditional curriculum focused on books and bibliographic instruction. However, with the advent and challenge of the age of digital information the profession has reformulated its main subject area into ‘information literacy’ (Wilder 2005; Eisenberg, Lowe & Spitzer 2004), a phrase which neatly combines the new and the old: information, as in the modern ‘information age’, and literacy, strongly associated with the print-based culture of books.

 

A general purpose definition is that information literacy is about learning how to learn (ASLA & ALIA 2001), and emerging standards can be found on the various national library association websites, with the American one the most frequently cited: ‘to be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information’ (ALA 1989; see also Australia and New Zealand (Bundy 2004) and the UK (CILIP 2004)). The concept may be hitting the mainstream, as evidenced by the appearance of two articles in the New York Times earlier this year devoted to the subject – in contrast to only two mentions of the term in the previous nine years (Nunberg 2005; Zeller 2005).

 

As information is the currency in all areas of learning and can be conveyed in multiple forms, new literacies such as visual, media, computer, digital, and network are claimed to be implicit in information literacy (Eisenberg, Lowe & Spitzer 2004). The image of information literacy as an umbrella incorporating all the other new literacies is promoted by Breivik (2005), a leading information literacy advocate, in her article on 21st century learning and information literacy, which includes a diagram of ‘The Information Literacy Umbrella’ consisting of panels labeled ‘computer literacy’, ‘library literacy’, ‘media literacy’, ‘network literacy’, ‘visual literacy’, and a blank one (obviously meant to mean ‘etc.’), with the words ‘critical thinking skills’ covering all like waterproofing.

 

The argument that information literacy is worthy of being both a subject-specific literacy and a new literacy applicable to all subjects has led to a strong advocacy of the need for teacher/librarians to collaborate with teachers and to become leaders of the learning community in an information literate school community (Henri 2005). The similarities between critical literacy and information literacy are used as evidence that teacher/librarians should be natural leaders of new literacies in the overall school literacy curriculum (Asselin 2004).

 

There is some dissent in the ranks, however. Wilder (2005), for one, rails against information literacy considered as a separate subject and argues that the main role of librarians is to support the academic disciplines and their literacies.

 

The frameworks of most information literacy educational programs consist of tasks packaged as steps to information problem-solving (see, for example, the popular Big6 model (Eisenberg 2005) and Learning for the Future (ASLA & ALIA 2001). Unfortunately these do not necessarily encourage literacy practices of the ‘epistemic text critic’ (to re-use the composite term coined earlier).

 

Kapitzke (2001, 2003a, 2003b), in particular, makes a strong case that libraries, librarians, and information literacy remain mired in a supposedly neutral-value, print-based culture, content to focus on ‘extracting’ information assumed to be sitting there like a treasure trove, and that much of its literature ignores the need to teach students to examine the economic and political implications of texts. For her the holy grail is something called hyperliteracy, or literacy about literacies (Kapitzke 2005).

 

Pedgagogical Implications for Information Literacy

 

Assuming the goal is to expose students to the broadest and/or highest form of literacy – whether called information literacy, social critical literacy, or hyperliteracy – what are some pedagogical strategies a teacher/librarian might use to highlight the socially and politically situated nature of texts?

 

Students can be encouraged to engage in metacognitive conversations about the process of becoming literate, whether face-to-face in small groups or online, e.g., utilizing new communication technologies such as weblogs, which are increasingly being perceived as a positive literacy practice for young people (Garrod 2004; Twist 2004).

 

One way to scaffolding students’ ability to participate in high-level literacy practices would be to introduce theoretical constructs, and their corresponding meta-language terms, to facilitate ‘talking back’ to texts when evaluating sources of information, e.g., utilizing Lohrey’s (1998 cited in Kapitzke 2005) seven contexts (situation, form, author, voice, genre, rhetorical strategies, and worldview), or Halliday’s SFL (systemic functional linguistics) with its analysis of language choice with respect to ideational, interpersonal and/or textual metafunctions (Christie & Misson 1998; Unsworth 2002).

 

An interesting place to start might be with encyclopedias – both print and online versions. This standard library fare is usually considered quite a straightforward and reliable source, however, a look at the politics explicit in Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/), the free encyclopedia (Weiss 2005), might make them go back and search more carefully for implicit politics in supposedly staid ones like the Encyclopedia Britannica (Pawley 2003).

 

Genre analysis can be particularly fruitful. Luke (2000) outlines a possible critical discourse analysis exercise with students focusing on the genre of textbooks. Similarly, Kapitzke (2005) gives the example of having students deconstruct the homepage of the online magazine, National Geographic Kids (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/kids/), in terms of the genres of ‘infotainment’ and ‘edutainment’. She recommends the use of the Four Resources (Luke & Freebody 1999) approach to get students to think about silences and gaps in texts and makes the point that teacher/librarians must be prepared to speak out and reveal their own positionality and ideologies when dealing with students (Kapitzke 2005).

 

National “Literacy Crises”

 

As literacy is ultimately concerned with critiquing power relations, the idea of national – i.e., government-sponsored – literacy education can be considered an oxymoron (Luke 2000). There is also the danger that (partial) literacy can become a tool for ideological domination rather than liberation (Christie & Misson 1998).

 

When governments focus on (the lack of) basic reading skills, e.g., the recent National Inquiry into Reading Skills in Australia (Australian Government Department of Education, Science, and Training 2005), it in effect commodifies literacy and creates moral panic (Luke & Freebody 1999). Instead literacy education should be concerned with institutional access and inclusion.

 

Having said that, Australia can be considered fortunate in that its critical literacy path in the past has been more explicit (i.e., better developed, recognized and acted upon) than in other countries. The assumption that reading and writing are directly related to social power has been accepted – even if not fully implemented – for several years in Australia (Luke 2000).

 

This is in contrast to the U.S., where literacy education has remained at a more individual skills level of public discourse. Indeed, a recent article – emanating from an American conservative think-tank and summarizing the movement of literacy from an educational concern to a national political issue – neatly dismisses the impact of multiple literacies and cultural literacy ‘housed in the ivory towers of American universities’ on the national politics and policy of literacy (Davenport & Jones 2005).

 

Goodman (2005), a founding father of the whole language movement, which continues to be a political target for conservative, free-market-oriented governments, argues that repeated proclamations of a national literacy crisis in the U.S., focusing on a limited and instrumental concept of literacy, are designed to make public schools appear to be failing in order to encourage privatization. Note that the whole language method is currently under attack in Australia (Milburn 2005), with neglect of phonics being blamed for the ‘child literacy problem’ (de Lemos 2005).

 

By default, the term ‘national literacy crisis’ refers to the subject-specific literacy of the English department, charged with functional reading and writing, though other subject-specific crises may also be highlighted. The promotion of literacy coaches for specific subjects by the US-based International Reading Association (2005) is presented in the context of an ‘adolescent literacy crisis’.

 

These ‘national crises’ usually cite multiliteracies only in a negative way, as part of a fear campaign that new technologies – and hence new literacies – are eroding traditional levels of literacy. For example, does a penchant for writing concise SMS text messages destroy a child’s ability to write full sentences in school (Ward 2004)? – and does multitasking of media affect a child’s ability to concentrate on a textbook (Ryan 2005)?

 

This public discourse is a case of not seeing the forest for the trees, where the forest is the whole body politic and the trees are individual humans with sets of individual skills in individual disciplines. The subliminal message of these ‘national literacy crises’ is: read the word, not the world – focus on the trees, not the forest. As Luke (2000) says, ‘For as long as we locate literacy within human subjects, we will invariably find lack and deficit’.

 

The danger is a literacy stripped of its transformational power. Conscious change comes from changed consciousness. It is the responsibility of teachers in these changing times to help students open their eyes and learn the practices of critical literacy as well as the multiple literacies that it is inherently composed of – to understand that both the forest and the trees are important.

 

 

References

 

ALA. See American Library Association.

 

American Library Association 1989, Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final report, 10 January 1989, viewed 15 March 2005,

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=infolitb&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35792

 

ALIA. See Australian Library and Information Association.

 

ASLA. See Australian School Library Association.

 

Asselin, M 2004, ‘New literacies: towards a renewed role of school libraries’, Teacher Librarian, June 2004, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 52-53, viewed 27 February 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

Australian School Library Association & Australian Library and Information Association 2001, Learning for the future: developing information services in schools, 2nd ed., The Curriculum Corporation, Carlton, South Victoria.


Anstey, M & Bull, G 2004a, ‘Chapter 2: Theories of languages and literacy’, in The Literacy Labyrinth, 2nd ed., Pearson Education, Frenchs Forest, NSW, Australia, pp. 31-55, viewed 1 May 2005, retrieved via electronic reserve from CSU library.

 

Anstey, M & Bull, G 2004b, ‘Chapter 3: Literacy as social practice’, in The Literacy Labyrinth, 2nd ed., Pearson Education, Frenchs Forest, NSW, Australia, pp. 56-73, viewed 1 May 2005, retrieved via electronic reserve from CSU library.

 

Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training 2005, National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, last updated 2 March 2005, viewed 3 May 2005, http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_education/policy_initiatives_reviews/key_issues/literacy_numeracy/national_inquiry/default.htm

 

Breivik, PS 2005, ‘21st century learning and information literacy’, Change, March/April 2005, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 20-28, viewed 20 April 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

Bundy, A (ed.) 2004, Australian and New Zealand information literacy framework, 2nd ed., Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy, Adelaide, viewed 14 January 2005, www.anziil.org/resources/Info%20lit%202nd%20edition.pdf

 

Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals 2004b, Information literacy: definition, last updated 21 December 2004, viewed 15 March 2005,

http://www.cilip.org.uk/professionalguidance/informationliteracy/definition

 

CILIP. See Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

 

Christie, F & Misson, R 1998, ‘Framing the issues’, in Literacy and schooling, F. Christie & R Misson (eds.), Routledge, London.

 

Davenport, D & Jones, J 2005, ‘The politics of literacy’, Policy Review, April/May 2005, no. 130, pp. 45-58, viewed 21 May 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

de Lemos, M 2005, ‘Does Australia have a child literacy problem?’, On Line Opinion, 28 February 2005, viewed 3 May 2005, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3076

 

Eisenberg, MB 2005, ‘The Big6 overview’, Big6 Associates, LLC, copyright 2001-2005, viewed 29 May 2005, http://www.big6.com/showcategory.php?cid=6

 

Eisenberg, MB, Lowe, CA, & Spitzer, KL 2004, Information literacy: essential skills for the information age, Libraries Unlimited, Westport, CT, USA.

 

Garrod, P 2004, ‘Weblogs: do they belong in libraries?’, Ariadne, July 2004, vol. 40, viewed 7 May 2005, http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue40/public-libraries/intro.html

 

Goodman, K 2005, ‘Making sense of written language: a lifelong journey’, Journal of Literacy Research, Spring 2005, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 1-25, viewed 21 May 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

Healy, A 2003, ‘Multiliteracies: teachers and students at work in new ways with literacy’, in Literacies and learners, 2nd ed., Green & Campbell (eds.), Pearson Education, Frenchs Forest, NSW, Australia, pp.153-169.

 

Henri, J 2005, ‘Understanding the information literate school community’, in The information literate school community 2: issues of leadership, J Henri & M Asselin (eds.), Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW.

 

International Reading Association 2005, Standards for middle and high school literacy coaches and subject matter teachers, last updated March 2005, viewed 15 May 2005, http://www.reading.org/downloads/resources/draft_coach_standards_0305.pdf

 

Kapitzke, C 2001, ‘Information literacy: The changing library’, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, February 2001, vol. 44, no. 5, viewed 5 March 2005, retrieved via the ProQuest database.

 

Kapitzke, C 2003a, ‘Information literacy: a positivist epistemology and a politics of outformation’, Educational Theory, Winter 2003, vol. 53, no. 1, p. 37, viewed 5 March 2005, retrieved from ProQuest database.

 

Kapitzke, C 2003b, ‘Information literacy: a review and poststructural critique’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 53-66, viewed 20 April 2005, retrieved from APAFT database.

 

Kapitzke, C 2005, ‘Whose community? Whose knowledge?’ in The information literate school community 2: issues of leadership, J Henri & M Asselin (eds.), Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW.

 

Kaplan, N 1995, ‘E-literacies: politexts, hypertexts, and other cultural formations in the late age of print’, Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine, 1 March 1995, vol. 2, no. 3, viewed 17 May 2005, http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/mar/kaplan.html

 

Leu, DJ, Kinzer, CK, Coiro, JL, & Cammack, DW 2004, ‘Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the internet and other information and communication technologies’, in Theoretical models and process of reading, 5th ed., R.B. Ruddell & N. Unrau (eds.), International Reading Association, Newark, DE, USA, viewed online 15 May 2005, http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=/newliteracies/leu

 

Luke, A 2000, ‘Critical literacy in Australia: a matter of context and standpoint’, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, February 2000, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 448-462, viewed 15 May 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

Luke, A & Freebody, P 1999, ‘Further notes on the Four Resources Model’, Reading Online, last updated August 1999, viewed 15 May 2005, http://www.readingonline.org/research/lukefreebody.html

 

Manzo, AV 2003, ‘Literacy crisis or Cambrian Period? Theory, practice, and public policy implications’, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, May 2003, vol. 46, no. 8, pp. 654, viewed 21 May 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

Milburn, C 2005, ‘Lend me your ears, young readers’, The Age, 18 April 2005, viewed 21 May 2005, http://www.theage.com.au/news/Education-News/Lend-me-your-ears-young-readers/2005/04/15/1113509921571.html#

 

Moulthrop, S & Kaplan, N 2004, ‘New literacies and old: a dialogue’, Kairos, Fall 2004, vol. 9, no. 1, viewed 17 May 2005, http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/9.1/binder.html?interviews/moulthrop-kaplan

 

Nunberg, G. 2005, ‘Teaching students to swim in the online sea’, New York Times, 13 February 2005, viewed online 17 February 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/weekinreview/13numb.html

 

Pawley, C 2003, ‘Information literacy: a contradictory coupling’, The Library Quarterly, October 2003, vol. 73, no. 4, pp. 422-453, viewed 27 May 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

Schoenbach, R, Braunger, J, Greenleaf, C, & Litman, C 2003, ‘Apprenticing adolescents in reading in subject-area classrooms’, Phi Delta Kappan, October 2003, vol. 85, no. 2, viewed 23 April 2005, http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0310sch.htm

 

Shambaugh, RN 2000, ‘What does it mean to be x literate? Literacy definitions as tools for growth’, Reading Online, vol. 4, no. 2, viewed 15 May 2005, http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/shambaugh/index.html

 

Twist, J 2004, ‘Teenagers reach out via weblogs’, BBC News, 6 June 2004, viewed 3 May 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3774389.stm

 

Unsworth, L 2002, ‘Changing dimensions of school literacies’, The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, February 2002, vol. 25, no. 1, viewed 15 May 2005, retrieved via APAFT database.

 

Ward, L 2004, ‘Texting ‘is no bar to literacy’’, The Guardian, 23 December 2004, viewed 6 March 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5091408-103690,00.html

 

Weiss, A 2005, ‘The unassociated press’, The New York Times, 10 February 2005, viewed online 24 May 2005, http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technology/techreview.html?res=9C05E2DC163AF933A25751C0A9639C8B63

 

Zeller, T. 2005, ‘Measuring literacy in a world gone digital’, The New York Times, 17 January 2005, viewed online 18 January 2005, retrieved via ProQuest.

 
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Produced as part of the coursework for Charles Sturt University EPT 491 Learning and Teaching Practice -- June 1, 2005 -- by Katie Day

 

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