Understanding the Evolving Nature of Literacy in the Global Socio-Cultural Contexts - Literature review Example

Changing concepts of literacy: Understanding the evolving nature of literacy in the global socio-cultural contexts If one has to understand critically the meaning and the ramifications of the simple term known as literacy on would have to start the discussion by attempting to define the trrem in the words of some of the thinkers who have come up with an explanation of the nature and characteristics inherent in literacy. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “the quality or state of being literate; knowledge of letters; condition in respect to education, especially the ability to read and write." This one could accept as the traditional model of what one defines literate while, the explanation provided by former US president, George W Bush, is more of a modern interpretation of the term. He states that with the progressive division of the world into more and more nationalities, one finds that the basic national division that remains that between the literate and the illiterates-translating to one set that has aims and ambitions and the second set that has nothing. The definition highlights the importance of literacy in a world where a life is meaningless if one is clueless about how to read and write. The final definition that one could look at within the introduction is a skill based interpretation of the term explains it to be the ability, the procedure, the performance of the act of reading and being able to express notions about 'men and nations,, translating to a meaning of literacy that is more than a simple, isolated set of decoding and encoding skills”. When asked to define the concept of literacy, there are those that would often state that it refers to the practice of reading and writing. Yet others would think more of the adjectives such as ‘literate’ and the ability to read or to write or the knowledge of reading and writing. Because of the fact that such interpretations ate generally suggested without hesitation or great thought, it seems safe to say that most people who have the ability to read or write are literate. Understanding the meaning of the term literacy is made doubly complex by how the term’s frame of reference is extended by analogy-leading to the concept o analogical illiteracies (Wiley, 1996). There are two very basic ideas about the nature of literacy. First is the idea that literacy is somehow associated with a different, more elaborate and effective use of language. To be literate is no longer just about being able to read and write; it is also about speaking and understanding the more elaborate forms of language that literacy has allowed us to create. In fact there are those that suggest the fact that literacy does not place books at its centre so much as conversations about books (Street, 1984). Second is the assumption that structured speaking and listening promote the successful use of written language, and that successful oral communication is fostered by contact with the written word. A further development of this idea is that if literacy includes our ability to talk about books, then it may also be implicated that in the enhancement of the thinking processes that underlie such talk and hence to think about complicated issues ad abstract problems (Holme, 2004). The importance of literacy could be understood in the context of the fact that insistence on a quantity of reading without internalization of texts proposed for understanding rather then mechanical memorization revealing a magical view of the written word. It has to be understood that before giving a written form a popular word, we customarily challenge the learners with a group of codified situations so that they would be able to apprehend the word. Decodifying of reading the situations pictured lead to a critical perception of the meaning of the culture by leading them to a critical perception of the meaning of culture by leading them to understand how human practice or work transforms the world. Basically, the pictures of concrete situations enable the people to reflect on their former interpretation of the world before going on to read the word. It is in this way that a critical reading of reality whether it takes place in the literacy process or not and associated above all with the clearly political practices of mobilization and organization, constitutes and instrument of what Antonio Gramsci call counter-homogeny (Goodman, 2003). In conclusion therefore one would state with some confidence that reading always involves critical perception, interpretation and rewriting of that which is read. Traditionally, most theories of literacy have had their focus trained on the importance that is assigned to the processes of learning the methods defining reading and writing. More recent approaches on the other hand, however have trained their focus on coming up with alternative views and have challenged the limitations imposed by reading and writing process facts. It also has to be understood that in the context of studies trained on anthropological-ethnography have tried to examine the expansive operations in terms of the local contextual scenario. These would thus reveal the fact that for the most part the issues of literacy are based on the text produced and are therefore instilled with social and cultural values. There are researched that have attempted to do any of the number of following in the process of bringing literacy out of the text books and within the mainstream of the learning process. The following essay will essentially take two pronged strategy towards the analysis of the concept-first an analysis of the traditional theories of literacy and second an outline of the modern challenges to the topic along with the newer factors pushing for inclusion within the purview of the literacy debate. One of the first theories of literacy to have been developed was the maturation theory that dominated the child’s learning in the early to mid parts of the 1900s. one can in fact glean the basic tenets of the theory from the professional literature of the century which mostly seems to suggest that little attention was paid to a child’s literacy development before age or she entered school, it was generally assumed that literacy began with the formal instruction in the first grade (Tracey and Morrow, 2006). A strong influence in reading instructions during this time came from developmental psychologists who advocated maturation as the most important factor in learning to read. Preschool and kindergarten teachers during the early part of the 1900s generally ignored and avoided reading instructions but did follow the Unfoldment Theory based teaching. The maturation theory was the dominant theory in reading education from the 1930s until the 1950s affecting the literacy instructions of millions of children around the world in general and the in the western more developed countries such as US and England in particular (Hiebert and Raphael, 1998) As a result of the theory, formal reading instructions were withheld from children both at home and at school until children reached the mental age of 6 years and 6 months, the 1950s however the theory was challenged by behaviorism-which resulted in the popular depiction of reading as a complex behavior that could be broken down into component skills. The subskills approach to reading which also yielded the reading readiness approach to early literacy development was the dominant approach to reading and literacy for 50 years thereafter. Next to the Maturation theory, the Theory of Literacy development was one of the major developments in the context of the literacy issue. The theory was propounded by Holdaway in 1979. The theory basically holds that learning to read is a natural developmental occurrence and should in most ideal; cases begin at home itself. In this theory it is the parents that are the models for children and children strive to emulate what their parents do (Morrow, 2001). Holdaway believes that these first attempts to reading are and should be reinforced by parents. Gradually, according to this theory of literacy development, as the child’s attempts at reading are reinforced and child’s skills grow the child begins to read for real. In the theory therefore the development of reading is natural and very much minimizes children’s natural development of oral language skills. Beginning in the 1980s the educators interested in the development of reading abilities began to propose different models of regarding the stages through which reader pass as they move toward reading proficiency. Since reading development is ongoing, continuous and gradual, it is somewhat artificial to separate its growth in terms of stage (Gunning, 2003). In fact it was stated that this is one however, to provide greater understanding of the reading process. By having a sense of what readers have accomplished, what stage they are in now and what stage they are headed for [educators[ should be able to be better able to understand and plan for their needs. Another central point in the stage models is the common belief that the ways in which children approach the task of reading qualitatively change as they mature. These theorists believe that a child’s reading skills develop they increase both the number and type of strategies that they can use during reading experiences. Furthermore, these theorists believe that the strategies that are associated with the earlier stages o development remain available to readers even as more refined reading skills associated with later stages of development are attained. stages of reading development have been proposed by many. In most models that have been proposed, the development of word recognition goes through three basic stages-those of visual cue reading, phonetic cue reading and phonological recoding (Ehri, 1992). The characteristics of the three could be summarized as thus: the first stage is also known as the logographic stage is one where the children use visual cues as their primary method of word recognition. In this stage children memorize words by their shape. The second stage is one where the child uses some letters un words typically the initial or the boundary letters to generate one or more sounds in the spoken equivalent of the word, thereby narrowing the ranges of choices for contextual guessing. The third stage is also known as the orthographic stage (cipher reading). At this point of the development readers use their automatic knowledge of sound-letter relationships to help them read using letter patterns within words. These letter patterns also known as word families or phonograms help reader in processing text more quickly. Reading through the use of word patterns within words has been identified as a primary route by which mature readers process texts. Socio-Cultural aspects of literacy could be understood in terms of the fact that schools are never the only system to have an impact on the growth and development of the child. Experts generally agree that there are three systems in addition to the school that are large determinants if the child’s growth and development. These other systems are inclusive of the family, health and childcare (Belsky, 1981). A failure in any of the three systems would clearly have a impact on the child’s capacity to benefit fully from a learning environment. In fact it has been pointed out that the more we know about the conditions that foster development of human competence and character, the more we see these same conditions as being eroded (Bronfenbrenner, 1990).   It has also been argued that critical literacy is the literate uses of language to problem solve and to communicate-this many believe should be the primary aim of the elementary years of schooling (Caifee, 1994). The same scholars also argue that the school as a community of inquiry, a professional collective in which problem solving and communication are the norms should be aim of the schooling system restructuring efforts. At the very moment when children’s literacy learning in schools is highly dependant on a narrow, skills based curriculum focused is decoding and encoding print, their out of school literacies encompass communicating and meaning making in multimodal worlds of composed sounds, symbols, images and interactivity. In addition to books, children are growing up interpreting and making use of a multitude of texts that are inclusive of film, television, videos, DVDs, computer and video games and the Internet and Web services. Electronic images have as much or more presence in the life of a student as does the printed text. It has therefore been contended that media have become the major measure of cultural expression and communication (Buckingham, 2003). Teaching implications in terms of the classroom study are to be found in the light of the fact that print literacy is no longer adequate to address the realities of child experiences or to prepare them for life in a rapidly changing world. Yet classroom continues to provide a position of privilege where the written word is concerned. Children learn a lot from the media in which they engage in their everyday lives yet there is much more that they could and should in fact learn in the long run (Guzetti, 2007). There is therefore a need to broaden school definitions of literacy and to bring out-of-school interest and communicational practices within the purview of mainstream learning. These arguments are in fact validated by the fact that there are those that would believe in the long run that the improper amount of space given to technology within the literate classroom has meant that the entire education system is in trouble (Kress, 2003). The logic behind this simple in terms of the fact that the written text and the visual and technological texts often send out two differing signal to the one trying to learn resulting in a conflict in the space that should otherwise be characterized by compromise and coordination. Among the most pressing challenges in this context are those of (Rose, Meyer and Pisha, 1994) 1. Inclusion, which is the need to provide an education that includes, rather than excludes children of differing abilities within the mainstream settings 2. Individualization that provides an education that is flexible enough to match the individual needs of its students and 3. Engagement that provides an education that engages students in active construction rather than passive reception. The idea therefore is that today’s classroom to come up with truly literate individuals would have to offer equal educational opportunities to an increasingly diverse student body. Students who would otherwise be in segregates placements are being educated within the mainstream settings given the constraints on available resources. Known in terms of numerous labels-learning disabled, physically handicapped attention deficit disordered or even culturally handicapped-these students have been isolated in special programs, tracks or schools for decades. In addition there is the issue of children with diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds that have been for long served poorly within the standard schooling systems. Successful inclusion, individualization and engagement are the key components in critical educational reforms. By its very inertness print actually creates barriers to the inclusion for many students-inefficiencies within challenged group of kids are magnified given their difficulties in processing printed linguistic symbols, both in terms of reading and writing. The ideas have been to provide pathways into classroom literacy practices for reluctant readers and writers, opportunities for the transfer of children’s knowledge of the media and popular culture to literacy in school, spaces for children to rework some of the messages that they get from the media, sites for the exploration of identities and the contexts for the development of critical literacy skills that are a contemporary necessity in the analysis and evaluation of media. Reference: Wiley, T., G., (1996). Literacy and language diversity in the United States. Washington Dc: Center for Applied Linguistics Street, B. V., (1984). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge University Press, pp12-17 Rose, D., Meyer, A. and Pisha B., (1994).. Out of print: Literacy in an electronic age. In Ellsworth, N. J.,. Hedley, C. N., Baratta, C. N., Literacy: a redefinition. Routledge, p19 Bronfenbrenner, U. (1990). Discovering what families do. In Rebuilding the Nest: A New Commitment to the. American Family. Retrieved March 18, 2010,   Caifee, R., (1994).. Critical Literacy: Reading and Writing for the new millennium. In Ellsworth, N. J.,. Hedley, C. N., Baratta, C. N., Literacy: a redefinition. Routledge, p19 Guzetti, B. J., (2007). Literacy for the New Millennium: Early literacy. A1 Books. pp253-255 Kress, G. R., (2003). Literacy in the new media age. Routledge. pp16-20 Tracey, D. H., and Morrow, L. M., (2006). Lenses on reading: an introduction to theories and models. Guiford Press. pp87-92 Hiebert,E. H., and  Raphael, T., (1998). Early literacy instruction. A1 Books. p5 Morrow, L. M., (2001). Literacy development in the early years: helping children read and write. A1 Books. p134 Gunning, T., (2003). Creating literacy instruction for all children in grades pre-K to 4. A1 Books. p560 Ehri, L., (1992). ‘Summaries and a critique of five studies related to letter-name knowledge and learning to read’, in Gentile, M. K., and J. Blanchard (Eds.), Reading research revisited. Columbus. OH: Merrill, pp131-153   Holme, R., (2004). Literacy: an introduction. Edinburgh University Press. pp5-18 Goodman, S., (2003). Teaching youth media: a critical guide to literacy, video production. Read More