New Literacies, New Times: Developments in Literacy Studies
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NEW LITERACIES, NEW TIMES
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NEW LITERACIES, NEW TIMES: DEVELOPMENTS IN LITERACY STUDIES
INTRODUCTION
This chapter attempts to survey briefly some of the new directions evident in literacy studies. I begin with an outline of the current theoretical frameworks in particular work in New Literacy Studies, in multimodality, and in theories of technology and artefact before considering some of the educational responses evident in different countries as they come to terms with the challenges posed by new literacies. I also make some suggestions as to why it is that policy in some countries—notably the USA and UK—seems to be facing in the opposite direction to that which this research base tells us is needed. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S : L I T E R A C I E S A C R O S S C U LT U R A L C O N T E X T S
New Literacy Studies (NLS) What has come to be termed New Literacy Studies (NLS) refers to a body of work that for the last 20 years has approached the study of literacy not as an issue of measurement or of skills but as social practices that vary from one context to another. In policy circles, on the other hand, dominant voices still tend to characterize local people as illiterate (currently media in the UK are full of such accounts, cf. Street, 1997), while on the ground ethnographic and literacy-sensitive observation indicates a rich variety of practices (Barton and Hamilton, 1998; Heath, 1983). When literacy campaigns are set up to bring literacy to the illiterate— light into darkness, as it is frequently characterized—those adopting the more ethnographic and culturally sensitive perspective of NLS first ask what local literacy practices are there and how do they relate to the literacy practices of the campaigners (see chapters in Volume 2 of this encyclopedia). In many cases, the latter fails to take; few people attend classes and those who do drop out (cf., Abadzi, 2003) precisely because they are being required to learn the literacy practices of an outside and often alien group. Even though in the long-run many local people do want to change their literacy practices and take on some of those associated with western or urban society, a crude imposition of the latter that B. V. Street and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 2: Literacy, 3–14. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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B R I A N V. S T R E E T
marginalizes and denies local experience is, from an NLS perspective, likely to alienate even those who were initially motivated. Research, then, has a task to do in making visible the complexity of local, everyday, community literacy practices and challenging dominant stereotypes and myopia. Much of the work in this ethnographic tradition (Barton and Hamilton, 1999; Collins, 1995; Gee, 1999; Heath, 1993; Street, 1993) has focused on the everyday meanings and uses of literacy in specific cultural contexts and linked directly to how we understand the work of literacy programs, which themselves then become subject to ethnographic enquiry (Robinson-Pant, 2005
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