An affective perspective on literacy and equality

1
An affective perspective on literacy and equality

• Maggie Feeley
• Equality Studies Centre
• University College Dublin

2
Literacy is an equality issue

• Literacy work needs an equality context
• Economic, cultural, political and affective
• Literacy defined as the full range of language
  capabilities that are a necessary precondition
  for the acquisition of all forms of economic and
  cultural capital and for the full and fair
  realisation and management of relationships of
  power and intimacy.
• 2

3
Literacy facilitates our interdependence

• Literacy is relational encoding and decoding are
  socially situated
• A vehicle for language that connects us
• Hypothesis unmet literacy needs linked to
  learning care inequalities
• Learning care inequalities derived from Lynch and
  McLaughlin (1995)
• Affective inequalities linked to wealth, power
  and status

4
Literacy, care and resources

• Literacy dominated by issues of productivity and
  profitability IALS (1997) Moser
  (1998)Lankshear and Knobel (2003)
• No recognition of care as a link to learning
• Care is dependent on resources
• Lack of learning care in childhood results in
  unequal educational challenges and outcomes
• Literacy fluency in adulthood is linked to
  resource and affective wellbeing that in turn
  determine
• Generational cycles of privilege and affluence

5
Literacy, care and resources

• A benign circle of care

6
Learning care resources-private

• financial
• material
• environmental private and public
• human
• corporal
• temporal
• credentialised

7
Learning care resources-public

• Inequality of resource condition
• Disadvantaged groups and communities-
  disadvantaged schools and pupils(ERC,2004)
• National anti-poverty strategy-1997 Review in
  2002 set new targets for 2006 that will be unmet
• Caring about literacy concern for profit?

8
Literacy, care and relationships of power

• Hierarchical educational system
• Dominant and vernacular literacies
• Low status of literacy work gives limited power
  to advocates
• Illiteracy, powerlessness and abuse
• Multiple intelligences Gardner (19931999)
  Sternberg (1998)
• Functional literacy
• Vested interests

9
The other side of care Illiteracy as social harm

• Hillyard et al (2004) - Zemiology
• Illiteracy as State harm that leads to exclusion
  and marginalisation (ward, 2004)
• Nussbaum (2001) literacy as a capability
• Illiteracy as a violation of rights- Jamil Salmi
  (2004)
• Failure of State duty of care
• School as harmful Lynch and Lodge (2002)
• Adult literacy and relationships of solidarity

10
Literacy, care, respect and recognition

• Literacy and being an uncared for other
  global and national distribution reflects unequal
  status
• Cultural marginalisation unrepresented in
  curriculum denied access to culture
• Stigma Goffman (1963) impacts on family circle
• Gendered attitudes to learning care predominance
  of women in literacy work mothers role as
  literacy tutor (Mace,1998Smythe and Isserlis,
  2003 Horsman 2004)
• Need for culture of care in schools that
  recognises, respects and caters for diversity