Implicit learning and imperceptible influence: Syncretic literacy of multilingual Chinese children.

This article reports on an ethnographic study involving the literacy practices of two multilingual Chinese children from two similar yet different cultural and linguistic contexts: Montreal and Singapore. Using syncretism as a theoretical tool, this inquiry examines how family environment and support facilitate children’s process of becoming literate in multiple languages. Informed by sociocultural theory, the inquiry looks in particular at the role of grandparents in the syncretic literacy practices of children. Through comparative analysis, the study reveals similarities and differences that, when considered together, contribute to our understanding of multilingual children’s creative forms of learning with regard to their rich literacy resources in multiple languages, the imperceptible influences of mediators, various learning styles and syncretic literacy practices.

Re-envisioning literacy instruction with adolescents: multiliteracies, multimodality and new technologies

Engaging students' lifeworlds and the concerns of their communities in globalised, semiotic and information societies is imperative in New Times. As youth continue to exhibit their proficiency with new literacies emerging from Internet communication technologies (leTs), education-particularly curriculum and instruction-remains largely focused around monomodal, print-only literacy practices, often ignoring students' hybrid multiple voices. This paper reports on two curricular interruptions to the progressive reading and writing workshop that acknowledged adolescents' engagement with digital technologies and their new multimodalliteracy practices in a year eight public classroom within a small urban academy of technology.

Creativity as capital in the literacy classroom: youth as multimodal designers

Many school literacy practices ignore adolescents' new digitally mediated subjectivity as it has been shaped by the new media age. Youth possess often unappreciated repertories of practice which allow them to use their imagination and creativity to combine print, visual and digital modes in combinations that can be applied to new educational, civic, media and workplace contexts. This paper reports on research in two middle years classrooms in New York City's Chinatown, where students' design skills were recognised and validated when they were encouraged to critically re-represent curricular knowledge through multimodal design. The curriculum, rather than privileging print-only representations, recognised the linguistic, social, economic and cultural capital that different students brought to school. The findings suggest schools should harness youths' creativity – that often manifests itself through their capital resources – as they integrate and adapt to the new digital affordances acquired through their out-of-school literacy practices.

Literacy in the new media age: creativity as multimodal design

Much of the current discourse of adolescence is best described as emblematic of modernity, as colonial, as gendered, and as administrative (Lesko, 2001) working to maintain “progressive” school literacy practices that ignore adolescents’ new “cyber-techno subjectivity” (Luke & Luke, 2001) and creativity in the “new media age” (Kress, 2003). School curricula often do not acknowledge the range of skills adolescents acquire outside formal education. Youths’ new multimodal social and cultural practices—as they fashion themselves creatively in multiple modes as different kinds of people in “New Times” (Luke, 1998)— oints to the liberating power of new technologies that embrace their imagination and creativity. In two middle years classes, adolescents’ creativity was recognised and validated when they were encouraged to re-represent curricular knowledge through multimodal design (New London Group, 1996). The results suggest the changed classroom habitus (Bourdieu, 1980) produced new and emergent discursive and material practices where creativity, through imaginative collaboration, emerges as capital in an economy of practice (Bourdieu, 1996). The findings suggest schools should recognize adolescents’ creativity—that often manifests itself through their cultural and social capital resources—as they integrate and adapt to the new affordances acquired through their out-of-school literacy practices.

Doing literacy online : teaching, learning and playing in an electronic world

The essays in this volume provide an international perspective on persistent and emerging questions related to the use of online technologies for teaching and learning. They demonstrate that online literacy practices can be understood only when they are examined within their social, political, economic, cultural, and historical contexts.

Reading practices experienced by preschool children in areas of disadvantage

The purpose of this survey investigation was to gain insight into the different home literacy practices of preschool children in some disadvantaged areas across the state of Victoria, Australia. Findings indicate that parents read to their children regularly from a young age, found libraries easy to access and use, and have children who enjoy books and paper and pencil activities. However, more than half of them found there was not enough information available to support them in their child's literacy development. It is argued here that such information should be made available as a matter of some urgency and be distributed through libraries.

Shifting to more authentic language and literacy activity in the middle years

This paper reports on the shifts in literacy teaching and learning that occurred at a Melbourne primary school, one of twelve schools that took part in a large research project undertaken by staff at Deakin University funded by the Victorian Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs: Middle Years Literacy Research Project. The project focused on literacy teaching, learning, and assessment of students in the middle years of schooling. Through close collaboration between the researcher and teachers at the school, significant changes were made to the language and literacy program. These changes reflected current language theory and extended the school's focus on independent learning to the area of literacy. The development of more authentic ways of assessing student learning grew out of the work in the project as teachers sought assessment practices that were consistent with their philosophy of teaching and learning. With a focus on developing authentic literacy practices, teachers developed new ways of tracking and reporting student achievement.

Teaching literacy in the new media age through the arts

Many school literacy practices often ignore youths' creativity in the 'new media age'. School curricula often do not acknowledge the range of skills adolescents acquire outside formal education. Youths' new multi- modal social and cultural practices - as they fashion themselves creatively in multiple modes as different kinds of people in 'New Times' - points to the liberating power of new technologies that embrace their imagination and creativity. In two middle years classes, adolescents' creativity was recognised and validated when they were encouraged to re-represent curricular knowledge through multi-modal design (New London Group 1996). The results suggest the changed classroom habitus produced new and emergent discursive and material practices where creativity emerges as capital in an economy of practice. Recommendations are put forth for schools to recognise adolescents' creativity - that often manifests itself through their cultural and social capital resources - as they integrate and adapt to the new affordances acquired through their out-of-school literacy practices.

Unfixing knowledges : queering the literacy curriculum

In the literacy classroom, students have few opportunities to use their literacy practices to contest narratives of race, class, gender and sexuality. Instead, extensive time is spent completing literacy activities associated with what “good” readers and writers do. Students’ literacy practices are often formulaic, repetitive, and serve classroom management strategies producing a mythic narrative of good literacy teaching. This paper introduces a queer literacy curriculum that poses pedagogy as a series of questions: What does being taught, what does knowledge do to students? How does knowledge become understood in the relationship between teacher/text and student? (Lusted, 1986) It emphasizes developing critical analyses of heterosexism, heteronormativity and normativity with the goal of helping students understand binary categories are not givens, rather social constructions we are often forced to perform (Butler, 1990) through available discourses. The paper highlights an interruption into the literacy curriculum where, through collective memory work, students investigated, analysed and contested the usually-not-noticed ways a small understanding of heterosexuality has come to structure their lives.

Teacher education and critical inquiry : the use of activity theory in exploring alternative understandings of language and literacy

This article explores the challenges of espousing a critical pedagogy within the managerial climate that presently shapes teacher education. Current discourses of professionalism are incommensurate with an understanding of the way that literacy practices are grounded in the social worlds in which both school and university students operate. Such discourses construct graduate teachers as the providers of decontextualised literacy skills to school students whose existing communication networks are ignored. We argue that an alternative understanding of professional practice can be developed by focusing on the textual resources university students use to mediate their learning, and by locating their emerging professional identities within the activity systems and meaning-making practices in which they participate.

Technologies in literacy learning : a case study

This article draws on outcomes of a study which explored changes in teachers’ literacy pedagogies as a result of their participation in a collaborative teacher professional learning project. The educational usability of schemas drawn from multiliteracies and Learning by Design theory is illustrated through a case study of a teacher’s work on website exploration and design with 8- to 11-year-olds. The teacher sought to develop pedagogical responses which were cognisant of multimodal shifts resulting from an increasingly digitised, networked communications environment. Engagement with the schemas influenced the teacher’s print-based literacy pedagogies to incorporate multimodal literacy practices.

Mothers in family literacy : a critical feminist analysis

This research addresses the invisibility of mothers in the Family Literacy movement and explores the work of the mother in maintaining and extending family literacy practices. Despite the centrality of mothers in their children's education, mothers are largely invisable in the research literature theorising and decribing family and intergenerational literacy practices and programs, or they are viewed as somehow deficient in their literacy practices. In this study I aim to address this absence and offer a feminist analysis of the Family Literacy movement throught an exploration of the mother's literacy practices within families. I make visible the complexity of the literacy work performed by mothers within families, and extend further feminist discussion on the body through an analysis of the embodiment of language and literacy practices within the mother/child reading dyad. I reconceptualise family literacy programs within a post structuralist feminist framework, and suggest pedagogies which acknowledge the multiple subjectivities of womenas mothers. learners and teachers of their children.

Computer games – pushing at the boundaries of literacy

The need to expand traditional, print-based versions of literacy to also incorporate attention to multimodal forms of text and literacy in the English curriculum is now well established. Much can be learnt about students and their literacy practices from the exploration of their engagement with digital culture – particularly videogames – from their out-of-school lifeworlds. However, the emerging set of skills and competencies or, the ‘new’ literacies and literacy practices associated with multiple and ever-emerging genres generated through information and communications technologies, present challenges in terms of how they might be conceptualised as literacy (or not) and how the multiple dimensions entailed in gameplay are increasingly a part of what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Drawing on two case studies of classroom work, the paper describes approaches to conceptualising the complexity of digital texts and their access, production and distribution and the opportunity to create spaces where students could interact, socialise and learn in both the real and virtual world. Dimensions such as play, interactivity, action, movement and time raise challenging questions about the limits and possibilities of constructing games and gameplay as texts and literacy practices that push the boundaries of literacy.

Interdisciplinary literacy through social media in the mathematics classroom: an action research study

This article looks at how social and participatory media can be used to strengthen interdisciplinary literacy and connects the multimodality of social environments with Middle-Years Mathematics curriculum and delivery. The article reports on part of an eighteen months action research study in an Australian public high school within the author's two Year 8 Mathematics classes. The article provides student samples from within these classes as it contributes evidence and analyses that may help to inform teachers from across subject areas to recognise and implement literacy practices, not as an isolated classroom activity, but across their disciplines. By taking a more ‘social’ approach to designing projects for Middle-Years Mathematics, this study supports concepts of literacy as a social, cognitive and cultural practice.

What is good practice in the development, assessment and evaluation of digital literacy for graduate employability?

This report seeks to identify the features of good practice in the development, assessment and evaluation of digital literacy for graduate employability.

The report forms Stage 2 of a two-stage literature review. The results of the first stage of the review are reported in: Towards an understanding of ‘Digital Literacy(ies)’. The current report draws on some of the same literature to that of the Stage 1 report and covers the same time period – up to the end of 2012. In addition, the current report covers literature that provides discussion and accounts of good practice in digital literacy – particularly practice that is embedded in course curricula.

The literature provides numerous examples of standalone digital literacy practices. While such practices may be effective for some purposes, they may be less effective than course-integrated practices in contributing to graduate employability. However, there are few accounts of course-integrated practices in the literature and fewer still that provide a compelling case for their positive contribution to graduate outcomes. Accordingly, the report identifies eight criteria of good practice in digital literacy for the assurance of graduate learning outcomes. It then identifies types of broad teaching and learning practices that appear to best encompass these criteria and which provide meaningful contexts in which to develop the digital literacy competencies of students.