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

This paper explores the challenges of espousing a critical pedagogy within the managerial climate that presently shapes teacher education. It argues that current discourses of professionalism are incommensurate with a view of literacy as social practice and that they disregard complex semiotic ecologies in which both school and university students operate. Graduate teachers are constructed as the ‘providers’ of decontextualised literacy skills to school students whose existing communication networks are ignored. Rejecting this narrow view of professional practice, we draw on activity theory to analyse the social configuration of tertiary students’ identities and the textual resources that mediate their professional learning. This kind of research is needed to reveal the contradictions within and between activity systems in which tertiary students participate as well as to construct possible solutions to the contradictions identified.

Rethinking the spatiality of literacy practices in multicultural conditions

Moving beyond the limitations of the ‘space-as-container’ ontology (Gotham, 2003), this paper offers Bakhtinian (dialogical) perspective on the use of cultural-semiotic spaces, in particular with regard to the production of new transcultural meanings and hybrid literacy practices as a result of interaction between differences. From this perspective cultural-semiotic space is not a neutral backdrop against which literacy practices unfold, but rather it is in the constant process of change due to the struggle between centrifugal and centripetal forces that operate on the level of spatial and textual politics – that is, between the processes of cultural and textual uniformization and local fragmentation. Given the dialogical nature of space and its relations to cultural identities of migrant and minority students and their literacy practices, the paper argues for rethinking literacy studies in multicultural conditions. This task becomes more urgent in the current educational era of standards, accountability and classroom pedagogies that are not attuned to the particularities of students’ intertextual practices and emergent transcultural places in which they live.

Post-literacy, a school, a website and lifelong learning in a regional context

This paper explores the potential impact that visual literacy or post-literacy in the postmodern age has on traditional educational structures. It follows a collaboration between an academic and a Central Queensland regional school in a learning journey that initially culminated in a website but then became a lifelong-learning experience for all participants.

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.

Transcultural literacy : between the global and the local

In this paper the authors draw on a larger project related to diasporic identification in order to explore the concept of transcultural literacy. They argue that transcultural literacy grows out of border-crossing dynamics that extend beyond the binaries of 'us' and 'them' as these are lived within and between nations. In this way it is responsive to, and reflects, the various shifts between the local and the global; between place and space. Transcultural literacy is inseparable from social and cultural practices of meaning- and identity-making on the fault-line between various and often competing cultures. This model of transcultural literacy uses theorisations of space to connect textual practices to the construction of hybrid identities. In so doing, it offers an alternative to models of literacy premised on liberal or neo-conservative understandings of cultural difference. In this paper, we explore transcultural literacy in relation to current literacy debates.

Up to a quarter of the Australian population may have suboptimal health literacy depending upon the measurement tool : results from a population-based survey

The objective of this paper is to measure health literacy in a representative sample of the Australian general population using three health literacy tools; to consider the congruency of results; and to determine whether these assessments were associated with socio-demographic characteristics. Face-to-face interviews were conducted in a stratified random sample of the adult Victorian population identified from the 2004 Australian Government Electoral Roll. Participants were invited to participate by mail and follow-up telephone call. Health literacy was measured using the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM), Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA) and Newest Vital Sign (NVS). Of 1680 people invited to participate, 89 (5.3%) were ineligible, 750 (44.6%) were not contactable by phone, 531 (32%) refused and 310 (response rate 310/1591, 19.5%) agreed to participate. Compared with the general population, participants were slightly older, better educated and had a higher annual income. The proportion of participants with less than adequate health literacy levels varied: 26.0% (80/308) for the NVS, 10.6% (51 33/310) for the REALM and 6.8% (21/309) for the TOFHLA. A varying but significant proportion of the general population was found to have limited health literacy. The health literacy measures we used, while moderately correlated, appear to measure different but related constructs and use different cut offs to indicate poor health literacy.