What is literacy?

1. What is literacy? Adult Literacy Teacher Education University of South Wales 14 May 2013

2. Learning objectives • Recognise the challenge of digital literacies to traditional approaches to teaching literacy • Compare the “autonomous skills” with the “socially situated” views of literacy • Reflect on and share our own literacy practices • Start to plan for your literacies exhibition

3. Digital literacies • In pairs, consider the differences between digital and traditional (pen and paper) literacies e.g. • physical aspects of reading and writing • the role of the reader and the writer • the kind of texts produced and read • Should literacy skills first be learned in a traditional fashion and then applied to digital texts? • Why/why not?

4. Landmark texts in adult literacy • Examine the extracts you have from: • The Moser Report • “Local Literacies” • Identify • the focus of the two pieces • the style, tone and choice of language • Compare the contrasting approaches to adult literacy demonstrated in each extract

5. The autonomous skills view • a particular set of skills which remain constant regardless of means of acquisition, usage, context • highly transferable skills • standardised, easy to monitor/measure • “[fails] to recognise that literacy skills are neither relevant nor sustainable without a supportive environment in which to use and develop them” Adult literacy working group

6. An alternative perspective… • Some twenty years of research by anthropologists, linguists and educators … have created [a] shift in perspective. Instead of literacy being seen merely as the private cognitive skills of individuals, ideas have come into circulation about it as a sociable and social matter… • Instead of the world being seen as either literate or illiterate … [studies] reveal all kinds of literacy lives being lived in communities and households that had hitherto been ignored by the dominant institutions of media and education Mace (2005:3) extract from “Outside the Classroom”

7. Your own literacy practices 1 • Reflect on your own literacy practices and share your ideas with a partner • Use the questionnaire on p. 34 of the module handbook to guide you

8. A social practice view of literacy (example from Mace 2005:3-8) Key elements in a social practice view: • Texts e.g. a handwritten notice on the launderette wall (see next slide) • Literacy events e.g. writing the poster, including the discussion as to what to say/what to omit • Literacy practices e.g. value placed on texts/events by readers and writers, based on shared cultural assumptions

9. If you LEAVE your Washing unattended IT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK!! We are NOT RESPONSIBLE!

10. Your own literacy practices 2 • Return to the questionnaire you looked at earlier • Choose one area and consider the texts, literacy events and literacy practices which are associated with these • Share with your partner(s) • We will share one or two as a group

11. Group exhibition • With a partner: identify a domain/area on which you will focus • We will present exhibitions on Tuesday 4th June (see examples from last year) • On this day, you will be invited to talk about your exhibition for 10 – 15 minutes - please share out the talk 

12. Bibliography • BARTON, D. & HAMILTON, M. (1998) Local LiteraciesLondon: Routledge • DfEE (1999) Improving Literacy and Numeracy: a fresh start (the Moser Report)London: DfEE • FOWLER, E. & MACE, J. (2005) Outside the classroom: researching literacy with adult learnersLeicester: NIACE • MERCHANT, G. (2007) Writing the future in the digital age Literacy, Vol 41 (3) pp.118-128 • UK Literacy Working Group (2007) Literacy and international development: the next steps [online] available from http://www.balid.org.uk/pdfs/LWG%20 Position%20Paper%20Final%20June07%20CD%20final.doc(accessed 13 May 2013)