![addresses critics of situated ethnographic studies who claim NLS promotes a "relativistic" definition of
literacy. These critics contend that even thousands of individual ethnographies of literacy would not form
a coherent picture of the impacts of literacy on society at large. Street concedes that some NLS
research “runs the danger of romanticizing such local
[Literacy] practice against that of the dominant culture. It is here perhaps, that NLS has hit an impasse:
how to account for the local whilst recognizing also the general - or the global. Though NLS was
founded on the idea that local context must be the focus on literacy as a situated social practice,
advocates have recently emerged for a shift in focus to include the broader ways in which literacies
pattern in society.
.
Frequently, to acquire literacy is much more than to psychologically and mechanically dominate reading
and writing techniques. It does not involve memorising sentences, words and syllables, lifeless objects
unconnected to an existential universe - but rather an attitude of creation and recreation, a" self-
transformation producing a stance of intervention in one's context". The words of Paul Freire illuminate a
view of literacy that is purposeful, contextual and transformative. It places the learner rather than the
teacher or text at the centre of literacy process and it defines this process as much more than skills
associated with reading and writing per se. Literacy is understood as a creative activity through which
learners can begin to analyse and interpret their own lived experiences and make connections between
those experiences and those of others. In this sense literacy is intimately connected to language itself,
grounded in the historical and cultural background of the learner and centred in the personal and social
construction of meaning. One cannot pretend that cultural and ideological assumptions are neutral and
universal. The ideological model recognises that educational and policy decisions have to be based on
prior judgements regarding the type of literacy to impart to students in a culturally and linguistically
environment and why.
Due to immigration in to Ireland, we need to recognize the evolution of English, as particular aspects of
non-native English are slowly being defined and gaining recognition. The myth of the 'native speaker' as
the only reliable and valid source of language data should be dropped since much of the world's verbal
communication takes place by means of a language that are not the user's 'mother' tongue but his sec ond
or even third language. We need a worldview of English which recognizes that it no longer belongs
exclusively to its native speakers. When any language becomes international in character it cannot be
bound to one culture. English has to be "denationalized". There is no room for "linguistic chauvinism"
(Chew, 1991: 43).
The ideological model recognizes that educational and policy decisions have to be based on prior
judgements regarding what form of literacy to impart to learners in culturally and linguistically diverse
environments and why. Today's workforce need higher levels of skills in order to compete in the
international markets. Much of the development literature assumes that as people acquire literacy their
cognitive faculties will be enhanced and that they will become modernised, progressive and rational.
Recent research has challenged this assumption that one cannot simply impose western conceptions of
literacy on to other cultures. Researchers now argue that the 'standard' itself is a cultural artefact not a
universal given, so that in effect educators are imposing narrow personal conceptions of literacy upon
culturally diverse learners who have other conceptions. Critiques of this culturalist viewpoint could argue
that perpetuating local practices are not appropriate in a modern world where high communicative skills
are required including formal literacy. It might also be simply seen as simply receiving a lower quality
education. The problem with this criticism is that it assumes that the current forms of literacy are fixed,
universal and given where in fact they have been culturally and historically constructed. The knowledge
which both the instructor and instructed have of the language is important and since there is a close
relationship between language and culture, the cultural background of the learners should be taken into
account when teaching and learning is taking place.
Freire’s 'pedagogy of the oppressed' (Freire 1972, 1973, 1974) explicitly denounced psycholinguistic-
technicity reductions of literacy, insisting instead that 'Word' and 'World' are dialectically linked, and that
education for liberation involved relating Word and World within transformative cultural praxis. Freire](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/02f2f37c-624d-48f0-88aa-2be05f2e4b97-161018192949/85/LITERACY-PAPER-2-320.jpg)
LITERACY PAPER
- 1. LANGUAGE, LITERACY AND LEARNING. Geraldine O’Meara This paper discusses the implications of a social perspective on literacy for teaching and learning. There are in essence two major perspectives on the nature of literacy - as a cognitive skill and as a social practice. Cognitive literacy has developed from cognitive psychology culminating in research on reading development and the 'metalinguistic awareness' of children. The social perspective is sourced in anthropological and sociolinguistic research as to how written language is utilized in social life. Both are influential in educational practice. We will consider both aspects in turn. The cognitive perspective is based on a theoretical perspective, the premise that becoming literate has specific effects on methods of thinking; for individuals and societies. This traditional autonomous model based on the traditional view of literacy construes literacy as existing independently of specific contexts of social practice; having autonomy from material enactments of language in such practices; and producing effects independently of contextual social factors. Accordingly, literacy is seen as independent of and impartial toward trends and struggles in everyday life - a 'neutral' variable. In contrast a 'social perspective' focuses on how people use written language in their everyday lives. Barton and Hamilton (1989) conclude that "literacy is best understood as a set of social practices, that different literacies are associated with different domains of life, that practices are embedded in broader social goals, that it is historically situated and is acquired through processes of informal learning and sense making". (Barton and Hamilton, 1999, p.8). Street supports this view. Street drew contrast between 'ideological' and 'autonomous' forms. Street's (1984) core contention is that all literacy events carry ideological meanings. Literacy education in schools does not simply teach a set of decontextualized, discrete cognitive skills. Rather, the types of literacies that are taught - for example - sustained silent reading, comprehension questions, and fill-in-the-blank forms - contribute to an organization of society according to the vision of those who have captured the power to create, endorse, promote and institute particular brands of literacy in society. These forms evolve and are enacted in contexts involving particular relations and structures of power, values, beliefs, goals and purposes, interests and so on, He is a proponent of New Literacy Studies (NLS) and defends it vigorously. His stance is that literacy, as a social practice is embedded in existing social structures and cannot be separated from the ideological baggage which participants bring to any literacy event. He emphasizes that even literacy acquisition is not a neutral process - it is a social practice involving students and teachers. Likewise, literacy practices that are taught in school are not neutral or autonomous, but serve certain ideological interests. Street sees literacy practices as hybrids. He encourages us to consider that local literacies do not exist autonomously, but commonly draw on perspectives that participants have developed through participation in other literary practices - school literacies, work literacies, religious literacies, bureaucratic literacies - then we see that "a single essential zed version" of local literacy practices ignores much of the context that participants use to create practice in the first place. Likewise, "global literacy does not exist in an essential zed, pure form, but only emerges as one piece of hybrid literacy practices that are always, necessarily locally constituted. We come to see that "local" and "global" contexts do not exist in contrast to one another, but as constituents of a larger whole. In no way can literacy be seen as 'neutral' or as a producer of effects in its own right. In his foreword to Collins and Blot's Literacy and Literacies: Text, Power and Identity, Street (2003a)
- 2. addresses critics of situated ethnographic studies who claim NLS promotes a "relativistic" definition of literacy. These critics contend that even thousands of individual ethnographies of literacy would not form a coherent picture of the impacts of literacy on society at large. Street concedes that some NLS research “runs the danger of romanticizing such local [Literacy] practice against that of the dominant culture. It is here perhaps, that NLS has hit an impasse: how to account for the local whilst recognizing also the general - or the global. Though NLS was founded on the idea that local context must be the focus on literacy as a situated social practice, advocates have recently emerged for a shift in focus to include the broader ways in which literacies pattern in society. . Frequently, to acquire literacy is much more than to psychologically and mechanically dominate reading and writing techniques. It does not involve memorising sentences, words and syllables, lifeless objects unconnected to an existential universe - but rather an attitude of creation and recreation, a" self- transformation producing a stance of intervention in one's context". The words of Paul Freire illuminate a view of literacy that is purposeful, contextual and transformative. It places the learner rather than the teacher or text at the centre of literacy process and it defines this process as much more than skills associated with reading and writing per se. Literacy is understood as a creative activity through which learners can begin to analyse and interpret their own lived experiences and make connections between those experiences and those of others. In this sense literacy is intimately connected to language itself, grounded in the historical and cultural background of the learner and centred in the personal and social construction of meaning. One cannot pretend that cultural and ideological assumptions are neutral and universal. The ideological model recognises that educational and policy decisions have to be based on prior judgements regarding the type of literacy to impart to students in a culturally and linguistically environment and why. Due to immigration in to Ireland, we need to recognize the evolution of English, as particular aspects of non-native English are slowly being defined and gaining recognition. The myth of the 'native speaker' as the only reliable and valid source of language data should be dropped since much of the world's verbal communication takes place by means of a language that are not the user's 'mother' tongue but his sec ond or even third language. We need a worldview of English which recognizes that it no longer belongs exclusively to its native speakers. When any language becomes international in character it cannot be bound to one culture. English has to be "denationalized". There is no room for "linguistic chauvinism" (Chew, 1991: 43). The ideological model recognizes that educational and policy decisions have to be based on prior judgements regarding what form of literacy to impart to learners in culturally and linguistically diverse environments and why. Today's workforce need higher levels of skills in order to compete in the international markets. Much of the development literature assumes that as people acquire literacy their cognitive faculties will be enhanced and that they will become modernised, progressive and rational. Recent research has challenged this assumption that one cannot simply impose western conceptions of literacy on to other cultures. Researchers now argue that the 'standard' itself is a cultural artefact not a universal given, so that in effect educators are imposing narrow personal conceptions of literacy upon culturally diverse learners who have other conceptions. Critiques of this culturalist viewpoint could argue that perpetuating local practices are not appropriate in a modern world where high communicative skills are required including formal literacy. It might also be simply seen as simply receiving a lower quality education. The problem with this criticism is that it assumes that the current forms of literacy are fixed, universal and given where in fact they have been culturally and historically constructed. The knowledge which both the instructor and instructed have of the language is important and since there is a close relationship between language and culture, the cultural background of the learners should be taken into account when teaching and learning is taking place. Freire’s 'pedagogy of the oppressed' (Freire 1972, 1973, 1974) explicitly denounced psycholinguistic- technicity reductions of literacy, insisting instead that 'Word' and 'World' are dialectically linked, and that education for liberation involved relating Word and World within transformative cultural praxis. Freire
- 3. asserted the impossibility of literacy operating outside of social practice and, consequently, outside processes of creating and sustaining or recreating social worlds. For Freire, the crucial issues concerned the kinds of social worlds humans create in or through their language mediated practices, the interests promoted and subverted therein, and the historical option facing education of serving as either an instrument of liberation or of oppression. The 'new' sociology of education addressed processes by which and ways in which schooling and school knowledge contributed to reproducing sociocultural stratification along class, race-ethnic and gender lines. Some of this work focused more or less specifically on the workings of language within the larger historical 'logic' of reproduction. Work contributing to the 'new' sociology corpus included the writings of Pierre Bourdieu who is widely recognized as having provided important formative support for the sociocultural approach to literacy. DISCUSS BOURDIEU ESSAY. Curriculum developers must be aware of the limits of strategies that take the institution’s model of literacy as given and instead show the merits of recognizing the diversities and dynamics of social literacies within a multicultural student population whose origin of literacy is not necessarily in the institution but in other forms of social practices. This does not mean that curricula have to be based only on the recontextualizations of the student's every day and practices. This will obviously have limitations in so far as it assumes that everyday practices and experiences have direct relevance to curricula and direct application in the workplace. Any acceptable and illuminating sociocultural of literacy has to make sense of reading, writing and meaning-making as integral elements of social practices. Such a definition is provided by Gee (1996) who defines literacy in relation to Discourses. Discourses are socially recognised ways of using language - reading, writing, speaking, listening - gestures and other semiotics as well as ways of thinking, believing, feeling, valuing and interacting to people and things, such that we can be identified and recognised as being a member of a socially meaningful group or playing a socially meaningful role. (Gee 1991, 1996). Language is a dimension of discourse but only one dimension, and to be truly literate is to be able to handle the various human elements of 'co-ordinations’ (Gee 1997) effected by Discourses. To play a role, be a particular identity, etc. is a matter of both 'getting co-ordinated as an element of Discourse, and of co-ordinating other elements. Language-literacy is a crucial element if discursive co- ordinating but it is only one aspect, and other elements need to be in syncretisation for fluent performance - literacy - to be realised. This powerful sociocultural conception of literacy has much to offer education; It honours the reality of myriad literacies - since there are m myriad secondary Discourses. It removes the emphasis from 'print competence' (skills, inner processes) whilst retaining link with 'print' by virtue of the fact that most secondary Discourses being non face-to-face involve 'print' which now must be extended to include digitally encoded language. This reminds us that literacy is never an end in itself but always part of a larger purpose. To this extent, we may get various literacy/language bits correct but to little effect because of the failures to get other elements co-ordinated. This is why so many students can learn to encode and decode print or digital text and yet fail to achieve in school and wider world Discourses. It denounces the misguided notion of literacy as being 'foundational' or linked in a linear way to larger practices. It is not as though we can learn the print and then go on and use it in straightforward applications to forms of life. To this extent it puts the emphasis within education in the right places, insisting that literacies be acquired ‘whole'. This generates important issues of pedagogy, long silenced within education, but being
- 4. increasingly recognised beyond formal schooling. ( Heath and Mc Laughlin 1994). It provides a basis for questioning the narrow privileging of characteristic 'School Discourse(s)' and the assumed relationships between school learning and wider domains of social practice. Similarly, it provides a basis for understanding patterned differentials in school literacy-mediated achievement - in terms of the fact that many primary Discourses are far removed from school Discourses. At the same time, it helps explain why bridging the gap between primary Discourses experiences and secondary discursive competence proves so difficult. As is evident in our primary Discourse, coming to acquire mastery of the various co-ordinations takes a long time and much of the mastery comes by way of immersed acquisition rather than through instructed learning. It focuses our attention on the arbitrariness and injustice inherent in historically produced hierarchies of Discourses and therefore in the processes whereby schooling privileges certain literacies over others; thereby advantaging those whose primary and other secondary Discourses 'fit' more closely with the cultural selections of school and the wider social order (Gee 1991). This helps us to unmask simplistic and ingenuous models and rhetoric’s of empowerment. Conclusion. Socioliteracy studies provides a case of post disciplinary development that has helped achieve some important academic advances. It has provided those working within established fields of linguistics and language studies with an important material focus for ongoing theory development and application: namely discursively embedded social practices mediated by literacy. In particular, it has facilitated educational studies to challenge a psychology-technocracy alliance and to have sociocultural practices better understood.