self

literacy is a necessity of modernity, but suffering a crisis – massive failures

shift in the world’s reading habits
in u.s. – novel is in declineplays and poetry at almost zero, non-fic ascending

we do not know what literacy is
what are reading and writing for?

social meaning of literacy
ordinary uses of literacy by ordinary people in ordinary situations

literacy abilities span a wide range of texts and types of literacy
not equally distributed within classes or between classes

deifintions of literacy must include:
-social context
-function

nexus of participant, function, context is glossed over as motivation
motivation itself is varied and complex

literacy cycles – changes in individual literacy based on stage of life, position, interest
not a single spectrum of literacy, but a variety of literacy configurations, plurality of literacies

texts – anything people read and write
street signs, magazines, newspapers, books, graffiti, reader’s digest

available statistics tell nothing about function and context

conventional thinking about literacy uses outdate model of literacy inherited from 19th century upper class europe

Tags: literacy, notes, school, szwed

This entry was posted by iambarr on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 18:39 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.