New Critical Framework

Hello. I'm Janet Eldred, and together with Peter Mortensen, we want to thank you for joining us for this presentation on "Rereading Literacy Narratives." Preview [Slide 2: Preview] We'll start with some dreaded words. This presentation is from a longer article in progress. Two articles, actually. Rest assured, we know it's not possible to condense that work into a twenty-minute presentation, so we won't try. Instead, we'll begin with an introduction that (1st) presents an exemplary literacy narrative, (2nd) sketches out a new path for reading literacy narratives, and (3rd) foregrounds sources in writing studies-and literary studies-that establish the theoretical context for our work. After this introduction, we will elaborate on our main point: a kaleidoscopic move that shifts the framework for reading literacy narratives. Our aim is to persuade you that this shift in perspective is significant, a necessary broadening of our field's understanding of what literacy narratives are, and what, as a rhetorical force, they can do.

Watson Conference on Rhetoric and Composition , 2006

The "literacy narrative" genre moved quickly from academic journals and books into the classroom, where it has been thoroughly naturalized into first-year college composition classes, courses in the English major or Honors curriculum, preparation for peer tutors, courses for prospective K-12 teachers, and graduate seminars for new teachers of college composition. But even a cursory glance at relevant course material shows that the practice of assigning literacy narratives is very far removed from scholarly inquiry on the subject, and that the result of this distance is likely a re-inscribing of what Harvey Graff calls the “literacy myth,” the verbal rags to riches story.

Interactive Educational Multimedia, 2004

In order to better grasp the complexity of (mediation of) culture the concept of literacy is taken as a starting point. To grasp the concept of literacy is very complex, because the concept has received different meanings through time and space, as well as different accents from various perspectives, disciplines and contexts. One of the ways to give meaning to the concept is by starting from the recent debate around the crisis of literacy. After all, since that crisis-in the eighties of the last century-a proliferation of books and conferences with the word literacy in their captions can be noticed. Literacy received ample publicity as well, and usually in terms of 'the decline of cultural literacy': youngsters were no longer able to write properly, they would not know their classics any longer, let alone possess any historic knowledge or insight. In short, the attention was inspired by disquieting announcements about waning or otherwise reading and writing skills with pupils and adults and a fear for a constantly diminishing reading behaviour and the impact this might have on the written and literary intellectual culture (Soetaert & Top 1996). Through this double concern one can recognize the two extremes in between which the concept of literacy is defined: from 'the basic skill of reading and writing' to 'reading and assimilating of higher culture'.

2003

Assumptions are interesting, not just for what they reveal about our thinking, but also for the insights they can provide into why we think as we do. Within literacy studies, assumptions that underlie "the literacy thesis" or "the great divide," for example, influence among other things how people define oral language in relation to the printed word, how they measure cognitive development or interpret social progress, and how they make policies that affect children's learning and identity as literate beings. In Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power, and Identity, James Collins and Richard Blot present a comprehensive account of the durability of such assumptions despite vigorous challenges from socioculturalists and ethnographers of the New Literacy Studies. Perhaps more importantly, however, they offer a pathway for thinking beyond the virtual impasse that exists between those who view the literate tradition as being universally deterministic across culture and time, and those who take exception to that view. Collins and Blot argue (along with others, such as Brandt & Clinton, 2002) that socioculturalists and ethnographers, in trying to correct for an earlier conception of literacy as a deterministic force in social evolution (Goody, 1986), have relied too heavily on localized, or contextualized, accounts of literacy practices. They point out that although revisionist historical research and situated ethnographic studies of people's multiple literacies have largely discredited an autonomous view of literacy-a view that argues for the cognitive and social consequences of literacy and assumes a spoken/written dichotomy-the fact remains that scholars of the New Literacy Studies have yet to account for the tenacity of these key aspects of the autonomous model. It is toward such an accounting that this book is aimed. Specifically, Collins and Blot's stated goal-"to argue for a way out of the universalist/particularist impasse by attending closely to issues of text, power, and identity" (p. 5)-is what makes their book important. The degree to which the authors achieve their goal, in terms of the approach they take, is the focus of this review. As an organizing tool (and in keeping with the book's organizational structure), I address issues related to text, power, and identity in that order, though in reality they overlap throughout and come full circle in the last two chapters of the book. The question "What is a text?" receives much attention, and rightly so, inasmuch as Collins and Blot's goal of moving beyond the universalist/particularist impasse requires a fresh foray into pervasive and long held assumptions about the superiority of a written-text tradition. Although the works they trace in support of this tradition are well known from earlier debates surrounding "the literacy thesis" and its emphasis on distinguishing between

Journal of Korean Language Education, 2015

Proceedings of the 1996 World Conference on Literacy, 1996

Reviewing the research literature in literacy studies demands patience to deconstruct the multilayered meanings of the concept of literacy. Literacy is a loaded term that is also embedded in myths associated with social and economic progress, political democracy, social and educational mobility, and the development of cognitive skills. Graff (1995) reminds readers that literacy has historically represented and continues to represent different things to people. Scribner (1988) "unpackages literacy" by using the metaphors of "adaptation," "power," and "state of grace"-if students' literacy skills are at level they are in the adaptive mode, below level and they have fallen from grace, and above level they attain power or status. Viewed as an abstract set of decontextualized skills, literacy contributes to the creation of the "deficit" model in educational and social systems. This model has been applied in many remedial reading and writing programs at all educational levels. Ironically, attempts to teach literacy skills in the schools often restricts literacy development because of educators' lack of knowledge and awareness of the interweaving of social, cultural, and oral literacy contexts of language use and identity. Students' language use in other contexts dramatically conflicts with school discourse and many students fail to acquire higher literacy skills. "Multiliteracies" must be studied in many contexts to better understand their role in instruction and curriculum development. There is a pressing need to define and recognize "non-schooled" literacies associated with different mediums and tools, including the technological, visual, and mathematical, and literacies associated with using information technology. (Contains 58 references.) (NKA)

UCLA, 2010

According to the popular discourse, America is facing a tremendous literacy crisis. Poor children and children of color trail their affluent and White counterparts on traditional literacy assessments. Employers complain that workers do not possess requisite literacy skills at a time when changing communications technologies are making old and new literacy skills mandatory for participation in the global economy or even civic life. As all of this happens, urban schools continue to fail to provide access to literacies of power for their students as they also fail to account for the local and popular cultural literacies that their students bring with them into the classroom. The true literacy crisis is that educators and researchers have not figured out how to decrease the literacy achievement gap; a gap that carries with it severe social, economic, and political consequences. Of course, nothing is inevitable, and there have been historic moments when populations have gained access to literacies of power as they also intervened in their conditions of oppression. Even now, literacy educators and scholars possess the potential to create positive, conceptually grounded and empirically tested strategies for transformative literacy education that can not only change classroom practices, but the world itself. This course examines historical, cultural, and critical contexts of literacy theory and research in hopes to produce scholars and educators who are able to theorize, create, and/or investigate these transformational practices. It begins with an examination of the historical legacy of literacy as a vehicle to freedom and empowerment for marginalized populations. Students will read literature covering the Cuba literacy campaign and the struggles of African-Americans in the United States as they consider (and reconsider) the role of literacy education in social transformation. The class will also investigate the major paradigms of literacy theory and research during the past half century examining myths about great divides between oral and literate societies and the transformation from “culturally neutral” theories of literacy to cross cultural and sociocultural theories. The course will also consider the impacts of the revolution in communications technologies on the nature of literacy and on contemporary new media literacy practices. Finally, the course will examine theories of critical literacy education and examples of literacy praxis in classroom and out of school settings.

Philosophical Investigations, 2004

In modern times a gap has appeared between the arts of history and literature, and the sciences of historicism and criticism. Many modern critics, historians, and teachers of literature and history (and even many so-called authors of literature) have welcomed, or at least complied with, the "scientification" of their arts, resulting in widespread illiteracy with regard to literature and history. The solution to this problem lies in a (re-)investigation of how the art of literature teaches us the truth. I maintain that the lifeblood of literature is the set of common joys and griefs, the common blessings and sufferings, of mankind. Without a communication of these passions as passions with the result of a transformation or shaping of the soul-without a mimesis, as the Greeks would say-across the boundaries of tribe, race, gender and era, there is no literature; and no literacy. Using a scene from Solzhenitsyn's First Circle, I argue that these passions are part of the truth (or falsity) of any story involving human beings. So literature and history would both be restored if the writers, readers, and teachers of each developed a deeper concern for the whole truth.

2011

This book presents sixteen essays in the new literacy studies tradition, written during the period 1985-2010. It covers a diverse range of themes with a particular emphasis on topics of cultural, political and historical interest. The collection includes both previously published and unpublished works, and is organized in four sections.