Changing definitions---Jerry Harste
- 1. Changing Definitions of Literacy and Why Enrolling in the MountPuts You a Leg UpJerome C. HarsteProfessor Emeritus Indiana University
- 2. Past Definitions – Low EndRead the Bible
- 6. Be able to sound out words
- 7. Be able to hold a job
- 8. Pass a reading test
- 9. Spin a good phrase
- 10. Have legible handwritingBoth the teaching and learning of reading are theoretical.
- 11. Little kids know a lot about reading and writing prior to going to school.
- 12. Literacy is a multimodal event.
- 13. Early literacy is real literacy. Behind every professionalThere was first an amateur. To call early literacy scribbles orScribbling is a misnomer.
- 14. We need to build curriculum from children rather than doCurriculum to children.
- 15. Curriculum ought to be built from the inquiry question of learners.
- 16. Education is inquiry; Inquiry is education.
- 17. We want children in the 21st Century to be agents ofText rather than victims of text.
- 18. Learning is a social event.
- 19. Past Definitions (High End)Spin a good phrase
- 21. Read to do practical things
- 23. Be able to express yourself in writingMore Current Definitions – Low EndMake sense of what you read
- 24. Monitor your reading in terms of meaning-making
- 25. Enjoy using reading to keep informed
- 26. Use writing to get your voice heard
- 27. Know how to use reading and writing to learn
- 28. Be able to vary your reading strategies given your purposeand the materials being read
- 29. More Current Definitions – High EndUse writing as a tool for clarifying one’s thinking
- 30. Successfully vary your language to fit the context of situation
- 31. Enjoy the lived-through aesthetic experience of reading
- 32. Read to nurture the imagination
- 33. Read to understand and develop our own and others’ historyand cultural valuesReading to understand and develop our humanity (those thingsthat make us human)
- 35. Understand the relationship between language and power
- 36. Know how to use the traditional literacies (reading and writing) andthe new literacies (visual, digital, and media) to get things done in the worldBe able to interrogate and critique the literate and multimodal literate productions one makes as well as those of others.To have the ability to interpret, negotiate, make meaning and critiqueinformation presented in the form of an image along with the ability touse design elements of visual texts for one’s own purpose in specific contexts
- 37. Some ObservationsNothing ever goes away in education
- 38. Changing definitions have been interpreted as changing methods (The dominantmethod being explicit, direct, systematic, and decodable instruction – Publisherspackage it this way with the assumpytion that teachers will buy it and do it) (The emerging metaphor seems to be education as opportunity – invitations, demonstrations, ownership, strategy lessons, mini-lessons, strategic, counter-narrtives, etc.)(Even meaning-making is often seen as something learned from the teacherrahter than constructed by the individual reader)Teacher have been seen as technicians rather than as professionaldecision-makers (There still is not widespread belief that one should investIn teachers and professional development)Teachers are seen as knowledge users rather than knowledge producers
- 39. Lower class children are seen as needed lower end literacy trainingUnderstand the kid’s in-head theory of readingBelieve in the child’s ability to make sense of textFind it pleasurableGrowth in Readings equals problem solving with flexibility, independently, and withIncreasingly more complex texts.You are not giving kids strategies so much helping themDevelop a functional in-head model of readingTo do this effectively you need to trust children and trust The learning processTo become literate one needs to see oneself in literacy andFind it pleasurable.
- 40. Reading is seen as a Linguistic Process*Cue Systems*Incidentally Visual*Syntax is one of our most powerful cuing systems
- 41. Reading is seen as a Psycholinguistic Process*Language learning is rule governed*Language is learned through use*There is no order to the way in which language is learned – interest and experience as opposed to age and stage*Meaning is central to language learning*The very complexity of the reading process support learning to read*Most of what we know about language is learned from being in the presence of others
- 42. Reading as a Cognitive Process*Reading is first and foremost a meaning-making process*Meaning is constructed*Schemata -- Background Knowledge*Schema – Learned*Comprehension – Finding Slots*Comprehension – Affected by Text Structure*Comprehension – Teaching Overrides Text Structure*Metacognition -- Monitoring*Strategies – Underlying Processes
- 43. Reading as Reader Response*The Reader, The Text, The Poem – Reading as Transaction*A search for unity drives the reading process*Reading, and literacy more generally, is a matter of morality and ethics*To understand reading is to understand the “lived-through” experience of reading*Great books complicate our lives; our lives ought to complicate great books, in turn.
- 44. Reading as a Sociolinguistic Process*Dialects are not inferior forms of language*Dialects do not make reading more difficult*Context includes not only the words on the page but the child’s instructional history*Language is inherently social*What you believe about reading affects what strategies you employ and has a direct relationship to instruction*Semantics and pragmatics are key systems if one wishes to understanding meaning-making and language learning
- 45. Reading as a Critical Process*Literacy is a cultural (community) construction*There is not one literacy but multiple literacies*Literacy is kept in place by the social practices that are operating*All language is ideological – from letters, words, sentences, texts, to discourse)*Discourse is never neutral – readers need to become text analysts who understand the relationship between language and power*To be literate is to understand how you as a reader are positioned by text as well as to understand how texts do the work they do.*Children for the 21st Century need to be agents of texts rather than victims of text
- 46. Reading as a Multimodal Process*Entails being visually literate – be able to read and use the grammar of visual design for purposes of meaning-making and critique*Digitally literate – be able to work the information and communication technologies in a networked environment as well as understand the social, cultural, and ethical issues that go along with the use of these technologies*Media literate – to have the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, reflect upon, and act with the information products that media disseminate