What is Literacy

1
What is Literacy?

• Five Aspects of Literacy
• According to
• Daniela DiGregorio
• Kim Donovan
• Lara Plate
• Deborah Sams

2
A Method to our Madness
In order to synthesize the readings best, we
created four categories through which to view
ideas of literacy approaches. These categories
include historical, theoretical, controversial,
and practical.
3
Historical

• Writing itself, pencils, telephone and telegraph
  and computers are all Literacy Technologies
  (Baron)
• Education in the 1800s failed to create better
  literacy (Graff)
• Lists are literacy broken into its smallest
  component its was purposeful, mainly economic
  (Goody, a predecessor to Olson)
• Writing is not codified speech it is
  metalinguistic (Olson)

4
Theoretical

• Writing displaces orality, but writing is a
  technology that changes thought (Ong)
• Poor writing is connected to certain cognitive
  states and social conditions (Elssasser and
  John-Steiner)
• Writing depends upon an appropriate combination
  of cognitive, affective, social and physical
  conditions (Hayes)
• Socialization influences language learning and
  emergent literacy (Purcell-Gates)

5
. . . more theoretical

• Primary and secondary discourses are acquired
  rather than learned they are both necessary in
  order to become fully literate it becomes
  impossible to become literate if the individual
  learns, rather than acquires, the second
  discourse (Gee)
• Activities involved in reading and writing
  promote specific language-processing and
  cognitive skills (Scribner and Cole)
• Writing itself uses and is technology within
  philosophical, historical, and socio-psychological
  theories (Haas)
• New Literacy replaces theories that believe
  only reading and writing constitute literacy
  (Street)

6
Controversial

• Teachers made a difference by not ignoring the
  dominant discourse, but rather by teaching it
  (despite what Gee says, Delpit)
• Critical technology literacy must be promoted
  educators must wary of government and business
  initiatives which create greater inequality
  (Selfe)
• Composition theorists agree, computers are
  unequally distributed, but there is not enough
  action research in their field (Moran)
• Encounters with literacy sponsors have the power
  to create dynamic change in the lives of students
  (Brandt)

7
Practical

• Oral literacy has greater value, using visual and
  auditory context clues within the tight-knit
  Piedmont community of Trackton (Heath)
• Computers and composition scholars should
  participate in technology decision-making in
  order to combat political problems (Sommers)

8
Concluding Thoughts

• Literacy is mastery of a secondary discourse.
  Technologies of literacy--writing, using
  computers, et cetera--mediate literacy and change
  thinking.
• There are various types of literacy the
  discourse of power, the discourse of status quo,
  and the discourse of resistance (Foucault).
• Thereby, we are left asking, what are the
  boundaries of literacy? Do we include merely
  reading or writing, or do we extend to include
  skill literacies of all types?