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I learned several things in my Skype chat with my Ed.D. thesis supervisor (Steve Higgins) this week, notably:

• I’m a pearl-grower
• People can be metaphorical in different ways
• How ambiguity can be productive

Our conversation

Steve was very interested in what I’d mentioned in our brief email conversation earlier this month about different types of ambiguity. After reading William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity (Wikipedia)recently I’ve realised that the terms that I’ve been analysing in the literature – ‘digital literacy’, ‘electracy’, information competence’, and the like – are actually ambiguous in different ways.

In fact, the level of ambiguity and lack of clarity can depend upon the ‘level’ at which people are working. So, for the teenager at school talking about ‘digital literacy’ isn’t productive or helpful. For the university professor, on the other hand, it could create a productive space in which to discuss one or more concepts.

Steve mentioned that I need to be careful about different positions taken by thinkers about literacy. Radicalists, for example, would argue that the way that you become literate affects the way you are literate later. This all links into the seven types of ambiguity mentioned above. I think that, given that Empson was considering mainly poetry and works of literature, there may be scope in my thesis to collapse or discard two or more types of ambiguity.

The problem about New Literacies is that they potentially lead to ‘infinite literacies’. For example, I’ve seen studies that seem to consider the use of Flickr as requiring a separate ‘literacy’ than, for example, Facebook. If there is such a thing as ‘digital literacy’ then it would need to be a level up from this – a complex organizing construct that could explain such affinity spaces.

Moving on to the structure of my thesis, I explained to Steve that I’m thinking about moving the location of my discussion on the Pragmatic method to the beginning of my thesis. If it went after the Literature Review, as originally planned, then it would seem a bit out-of-kilter. If so, that would give me the following structure:

1. Pragmatic method (plus discussion of other lenses that can be used)
2. Literature Review (including evolution of New Literacies)
3. Discussion and analysis of seven types of ambiguity
4. Analyse digital literacy (and other concepts) as constructs (do they have pragmatic utility?)
5. Review of terminology used in government, NGO and media reports (e.g. Singapore, BBC, NGOs, UK, USA – what do people mean by digital literacy? is it a productive ambiguity?)
6. Digital Flow as a more coherent and less ambiguous construct

Steve noted that ‘digital literacy’ is a term used mainly by digital enthusiasts. It creates a positive space or construct for people to explore shared meanings. I thought this was an interesting idea and brought up the idea of a continuum of positions people could take. Steve expanded on this to say that it’s as if the whole of the Venn diagram can be discussed rather than just the intersect:- includes the whole of the Venn diagram rather than just the intersect:

My ‘Norwegian analysis’ (as Steve calls it) contains a metaphorical aspect which is at heart of way the term has evolved. It creates a ‘productive space’ which may or may not be useful. By moving computer skills into the ‘literacy’ domain the debate is altered as a ‘value space’ has been created. After all, no-one is going to argue about the utility of a literacy. This could be a useful segué into the section about the what the media and governments say about digital literacy and related concepts.

Regarding my final section on ‘flow’ I mentioned how in the literature it is used most in relation to computer games. Steve mentioned that he has an unpublished presentation/paper on how interactive whiteboards (IWBs) develop teacher didactic ‘flow’ (in that they control IWB with one hand and class with another). The IWB encourages whole-class presentation, with more answers from students, but less depth. The teacher ends up in some kind of bubble which becomes less and less permeable. They are in control of resources; lessons ‘progress’ but without the cognitive dissonance required.

I was concerned that I wasn’t discovering academic journal articles in the most efficient mannter. I explained to Steve my method:

• Find recent relevant, high-quality journal article using Google Scholar
• Scour reference section for relevant articles.
• Go through relevant articles and repeat.

Steve calls this pearl-growing and apparently it’s a popular method. He did, however, mention that ‘forward-tracking’ via services such as Google Scholar is also useful. Steve also recommended keyword searching at the Web of Science and directly within the archives of relevant journals. The problem with everyone ‘pearl-growing’ I pointed out is that, like the iPhone App Store, once something becomes slightly popular, it will become exponentially more so. Steve said that his colleague, Peter Timms, had found that there is evidence to this effect as there is no strong correlation between the quality of references in academic papers and the quality of the article itself.

Moving on we discussed the problem of ’solidification’. As I’ve referenced before, Allan Martin has written on the idea of ‘liquid modernity’. This is the idea that by the time research has been done and social norms have begun to emerge, the technology has moved on. What Steve wondered, however, was whether this is true from this point forward (i.e. we will be in this situation forever more) or whether it’s for a finite period of time. I pointed out that my historical research has shown that people pretty much always think they’re living through times of rapid change! Steve quite rightly pointed out the difference between technological and conceptual things changing. Something to dwell on…

The problem with such a nebulous concept as ‘digital literacy’ is that it can collapse to meaning no more than ‘having access to digital texts’. Steve and I discussed the importance of ‘knowing’ (in terms of internalization and understanding). All an individual can do on the first attempt is to assimilate information and value judgements into what W.V. Quine would call an individual’s web of belief. It would be interesting to explore the extent to which new concepts such as ‘digital literacy’ restructure belief systems (as oppose to merely being assimilated)

This led onto my wondering about ‘digital epistemologies’ – especially as Richard Rorty claims that pragmatists don’t have an epistemology. Steve though that, although he would have to check, Rorty means by this that pragmatists don’t have a single epistemology. They are more agile than thinkers holding different positions.

I thought that this potentially linked together our discussion of ‘liquid modernity’ with the idea of a ‘web of beliefs’. Pragmatists have a more fluid and changeable web of beliefs, meaning they are better situated when faced with fluid change. It’s something I’m going to think about putting into the first section of my thesis.

Finally, Steve and I discussed the difference between C.S. Peirce (a community of inquirers would find truth in the long run) and Richard Rorty (there is no ‘truth’ to find). Peirce, coming before Thomas Kuhn, didn’t take into account paradigm shifts where the graph of what constitutes ‘normal science’ is forever having to restart. Although Peirce can be interpreted in a Postmodern way, Steve is more comfortable interpreting him towards the Realist end of the spectrum. That is to say: Peirce believed that the external world exists and there are truths to be known, it’s just that we as humans aren’t in a position to do that. The difference between Rorty and earlier pragmatists, suggested Steve, is that Rorty came from a strongly libertarian standpoint, whereas Dewey, for example, was more of a communitarian.

The hour went very quickly. Lots to think about and lots of work to do!

(pearl image CC BY Vali… & web image CC BY josef.stuefer)

Posted: February 18th, 2010
Categories: Thesis
Tags: ambiguity, citation, digital literacy, journals, Skype, Steve Higgins, Thesis, William Empson
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Sometimes things come to me. Sometimes these things are garbage. Sometimes they’re insights. I’m not sure which category this taxonomy fits into, but it represents a very abstract overview for the next section of my Ed.D. thesis…

(icons courtesy of Jason Cho)

Posted: February 4th, 2010
Categories: Thesis
Tags: access, competence, digital literacy, Ed.D., experience, flow, Thesis, use, visualization
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This post comes from my (ongoing) Ed.D. thesis, which can be read in full over at http://dougbelshaw.com/thesis. You may want to check out my wiki to follow up references.

CC-BY kevindooley

The assumption made by many is that Traditional Literacy has some form of counterpart in the form of ‘Digital Literacy’. Such thinking places use of, for example, the internet on a continuum stretching neatly back from inventions such as writing on slate, through papyrus, the printing press and mass media (TV, radio, cinema). The danger with this ‘artefactual’ approach when examining new technologies, argues Ursula Franklin, is that ‘[technologies] involve much more than simply passing on and/or adding to written or visual texts or information per se… Rather, they are tied directly to ways of interacting with others… and to ways of being, knowing, learning and doing’ (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006:235). ‘Reading with understanding’ on the internet is not as straightforward as the ‘reading with understanding’ of a book or other printed matter. On the most basic level, unlike with most printed matter, there is no correct way to navigate via hyperlink the myriad websites that make up the digital world. But more than this, there is no barrier to publishing. No barriers means no editorial control. No editorial control means potential equal weight and emphasis given to extreme views, incorrect assertions and illegal acts. Thus access to, and use of, technology becomes a moral issue.

Given this and other ‘problems’, theorists have attempted to incorporate extra elements within literacy in an attempt to answer or avoid them. For example, Martin (2005) conceives of ‘Digital Literacy’ as including ‘the ability to plan, execute and evaluate digital actions in the solution of life tasks’ (quoted in Erstad, 2008:50) – something without parallel in conceptions of Traditional Literacy. Martin also adds ‘the ability to reflect on one’s own digital literacy development’ (ibid.) as being an important aspect of Digital Literacy, propelling the term into a level much higher than mere ‘competence’. The heart of the tension is whether or not the technologies involved are ‘transformative’ in their bearing on literacy. A difficulty arises, however, as improvements in technology mean that the goalposts are continually shifting and thus altering social practices. This is an important point raised by Graham 1999:25-6) who wonders at what point something (such as the internet) that extends literacy practices can count at transformative. There must be some revolutionary, transformative technologies, otherwise everything from the invention of the wheel would be an ‘extension’ of existing technologies and social practices. Those who support this ‘revolutionary’ view, such as Taylor & Ward (1999:xvii) believe that because ‘computer networks… improve communicative interaction among students, teachers, and even texts’ then sociocultural practices are altered. It is these changes in sociocultural practices that result in a new form of literacy being required.

This sociocultural practices model conceives of literacy as ‘an active relationship or a way of orienting to the social and cultural world’ (Rantala & Suoranta, 2008:96-7). Unlike models of Traditional Literacy based upon the printed word, the sociocultural practices model conceives of literacy as being a process instead of a state. Literacy is thus bound up with identity, culture and involves a reflective element. Whereas Traditional Literacy is about training and competence, the forms of literacy put forward by the sociocultural practices model involve interaction and creativity. This almost ‘meta’ form of literacy is defined by the mashup, the remix and could be seen as post-postmodernism: making one’s own sense of a fragmented ‘reality’.

The difficulty is that the view of literacy put forward by the sociocultural practices model strains at the very edges of the word ‘literacy’. This, believe Lankshear & Knobel, is a problem relating to conceptions of Traditional Literacy, not a new problem for the sociocultural practices model to face uniquely:

Sometimes… ‘literacy’ [is] a metaphor for ‘competence’, ‘proficiency’ or ‘being functional’. Concepts like ‘being computer literate’ or being ‘technologically literate’ are sometimes used to mean that someone is more or less proficient with a computer or some other device like a video recorder: they can ‘make sense of’ and ‘use’ computers, or can program their video player or mobile phone. (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006:20)

Presumably, Lankshear & Knobel’s conception of true ‘Traditional Literacy’ would be more than the ability to ‘read with understanding’ any printed matter. It would involve some meta-level remixing, the ability to deconstruct the text and reflect on what would have done. If not, then it is difficult to see how they could describe skills in the digital world at a ‘literacy’.

Much has been made of the fact that Norway has a curriculum based on digital skills. Indeed, after a review in the early 21st century, Norway named digital skills as the ‘fifth basic skill’ along with reading, writing, arithmetic and oracy (Søby, 2008:120-1). Some have championed this as ‘digital literacy’ and, indeed, some European Union policy documents consider it as such. However, as Audunson & Nordlie argue (2003:319) point out, ‘[t]he Norwegian language does not use the term literacy to describe a person’s competencies in other fields of activity, be it cooking, social intercourse, skiing – or in the field of ICT and information.’ As a result, the Norwegian example cannot defensibly be referred to as an example of ‘digital literacy’ in action.

If the use of, and interaction with, digital texts is not a ‘revolution’ and if therefore theorists want to continue using the term ‘literacy’, then some type of middle ground must be sought. Most would agree with Lankshear & Knobel’s ‘working hypothesis’:

[T]he world is now significantly different from how it was two or three decades ago… this different has a lot to do with the emergency of new technologies and changes in social practices associated with these… the changes are part of a move from what we have called ‘industrial’ values and ways of doing things and increasing embrace of ‘post-industrial’ values and ways of doing things. (2006:53)

To establish a ‘middle ground’, then, a dialectic should be set up:

[T]he idea of ‘new’ literacies is a useful way to conceptualize what might be seen as one component of an unfolding ‘literacy dialectic’. By a dialectic we mean a kind of transcendence, in which two forces that exist in tension with one another ‘work out their differences’, as it were, and evolve into something that bears the stamp of both, yet is qualitatively different from each of them. (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006:29)

Indeed, Martin (2008:173) believes that ‘transformation is not a necessary condition of digital literacy’ as ‘[a]ctivity at the level of appropriate and informed usage would be sufficient to be described as digitally literate.’ This is a rather conservative and non-specific conception of literacy. It allows for ICT-based, procedural definitions such as those that frame Microsoft’s ‘Digital Literacy Curriculum’ and European Commission reports as well as more ‘critical’ conceptions – as championed by authors such as Buckingham (2008).

To be clear, the forces that ‘exist in tension with one another’ on Lankshear and Knobel’s view are, on the one hand, Traditional Literacy, and on the other, digital skills. The problem is that words used to describe the latter are used imprecisely. As Fieldhouse & Nicholas put it:

Definitions of digital and information literacy are numerous. Within this pool of definitions, terms often are interchangeable; for example, “literacy”, “fluency” and “competency” can all be used to describe the ability to steer a path through digital and information environments to find, evaluate, and accept or reject information. (Fieldhouse & Nicholas, 2008:50-1)

Without an appeal to a dialectic, this ‘ability to steer a path’ would becoming in what amounts to a naming dispute. What remains to be seen, however, is whether the term ‘literacy’ can be stretched to accommodate the higher-level, ‘meta’, reflective elements that ‘new literacies’ proponents envisage.

Posted: January 7th, 2010
Categories: Thesis
Tags: dialectic, digital literacy, digital skills, Ed.D., Norway, Thesis
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CC-BY-NC raffyd

I met (via Skype) with my Ed.D. thesis supervisor, Steve Higgins, last night to discuss my progress over the last couple of months. Regular readers interested in my thesis (What does it mean to be ‘digitally literate’?) will already know that it’s available online as I write it at http://dougbelshaw.com/thesis. Here are the relevant posts that make up the parts of my thesis we discussed:

• Why digital literacy != the ‘aftermath’ of literacy
• Ed.D. Thesis snapshot: towards a bedrock definition of literacy
• Affinity spaces, secondary orality & digital epistemologies
• A useful way to categorise educational technologies
• The history of ‘new literacies’
• ‘Information literacy’: its history and problems
• The future of my Ed.D. thesis
• The evolution of communication

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I had several things I wanted to raise, namely:

1. The structure of my third section: I want to include an analysis of policy documents from various countries and outline a definition of ‘digital flow’. Possible?
2. This definition of literacy that I developed after an analysis in the early stages of my literature review:
   

   Literacy involves the mastery of simple cognitive and practical skills. To be ‘literate’ is only meaningful within a social context and involves having access to the cultural, economic and political structures of a society. In addition to providing the means and skills to deal with written texts, literacy brings about a transformation in human thinking capacities. This intellectual empowerment happens as a result of new cognitive tools (e.g. writing) or technical instruments (e.g. digital technologies).

3. Whether he considers ‘affinity spaces’ to comprise of networks or groups of people (or whether they are ‘third spaces’)?
4. Which modern-day Pragmatist thinkers should I be reading in preparation for writing my methodology section? (e.g. Richard Rorty)
5. Is it worth spending time looking at ‘media literacy’ separately (as I have done with ‘information literacy’), or should I simply insert it as part of the evolution of ‘new literacies’?

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Steve thought my roadmap seemed sensible, but that I needed to be aware of times at which I would have more/less time to write. Writing the section on the history of new literacies now is fine, but I’ll have to (as I was going to) make sure I’m up-to-date on the latest thinking surrounding ‘digital literacy’ in late 2010.

One of the most exciting aspects of my thesis is how I’m going to publish it. Steve and I are both of the opinion that (only) publishing it in a traditional way would be somewhat anachronistic. Instead, we’re going to think of ways in which my thesis is very much a ‘digital text’. This won’t be an easy option by any means as I will have to balance author intentionality (i.e. what I’m trying to argue) with reader freedom (i.e. to ‘jump around’ the text). I’m going to finish the traditional version first, but have at the back of my mind the digital version. Steve suggested I might want to ‘tag’ sections to help me do this.

Whilst Steve maintained that he’s no problems with ‘the quality or quantity’ of my work, we need to think about how we’re going to prove that it’s an original contribution to knowledge. Suggested ways included:

• Synthesizing of different conceptions of literacy.
• Proposing a new definition (‘digital flow’)
• My method of publication (digital text)

Steve sees a couple of journal articles in the third section of my thesis – perhaps one on analysing policy documents (how ‘digital literacy’ is used as a construct/aspirational term) and then another on how this helps flesh out economic policies, etc.

I then brought up the concept of ‘digital flow’ and how I could use this as a separate lens through which not only to analyse policy documents, but to consider concepts such as ’21st century skills’. There may be something, Steve said, in synthesizing policy presentations of what the ‘digital future’ is going to be like. He reminded me that it’s not just country-specific policy documents I should look at but European Commission, OECD papers, etc. A PhD student of Steve’s is doing a review of the ‘digital divide’ in China which may be useful (to compare, for example, with Futurelab’s report).

The definition of ‘literacy’ (above) that I came up with in the introduction to my thesis seemed reasonable to Steve, although he’s going to have another look at his leisure. He brought up the important point that ‘literacy’ can bring about a transformation in human thinking capacities. I linked this to the reading I’ve been doing of Ong and McLuhan – especially the latter’s belief that:

We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us.

There is something beyond ‘reading’ digital texts and manipulating information – how does this alter cognitive structures? Although we both don’t like her conclusions, Steve suggested that looking at some of Professor Susan Greenfield’s work. I could speculate about longer-term influences here and perhaps link it to my conception of ‘digital flow’. I need to have a realistic conception and presentation of this rather than re-iterating a polarisation (good/bad) of the debate as it currently stands.

We then moved on to the concept of ‘affinity spaces’. I explained how I was interested in these but wasn’t sure whether they were networks, groups or something different. Steve is going to get back to me with some pointers for further research. He did point out, however, that it is usually theorised in terms of ‘cultural spaces’. Each affinity space has its own cultural norms and practices, usually understood by reference to activity theory. I mentioned how these are often ‘third places‘ and that this blurs traditional boundaries. Steve mentioned how the ‘continuity of contact’ that social networking services and affinity spaces provide changes social interactions but also conceptions of identity. He suggested a distinction between ‘temporary spaces’ (not enduring, provisional) and ‘parallel spaces’ (contact maintained over time). It may be interesting to examine the status literacy and ‘digital flow’ in relation to these.

In terms of Pragmatist philosophers and thinkers that I need to make sure I’ve read, Steve suggested Quine in addition to Rorty. He also mentioned Mead (although this strays into anthropology) and perhaps Merleau-Ponty. Pragmatism itself is always presented from a certain point of view – for example, Rorty tends towards right-wing libertarianism. I asked whether there was a collection of articles on Pragmatism that Steve recommended. He’s going to look for this, but also picked Gutting’s Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity from his shelf as one I could look at. I should also look at Neopragmatism and its influences.

I then suggested that I should write my introduction, set out my stall, and then go about explaining my methodology in depth. Steve agreed, stating that this should be a justification of my approach to the thesis and include underpinning epistemologies. He outlined the difference between ‘necessary’ and ‘empirical’ epistemologies – i.e how things ’should be’ versus how they actually are. This is something I need to explore further, but Steve said that it was perfectly possible to have a strongly empiricist or realist epistemology in a digital world. He cited Tim Berners-Lee, the ‘father of the internet’ as someone who had a traditional view of the exchange of knowledge.

This reminded me of a debate I’d heard on Radio 4’s Start the Week about Wikipedia and its history. Steve talked about the role of the expert and the fact that there is in fact some type of hierarchy within Wikipedia. He related this to Peirce’s idea of a ‘community of enquirers’, explaining that what Peirce had in mind in terms of 19th century Boston wasn’t quite the same in digital, hyperconnected spaces. Steve continued to state that there is an elision underpinning Wikipedia: the notion seems to be that knowledge is not tied to context and intention, whereas we always know something for a purpose. How ‘disinterested’ in information/knowledge can you be, asked Steve, if you’ve chosen to write about it for free? (Platonic forms don’t exist!)

After this I brought up my question surrounding the concept of ‘media literacy’ – should I incorporate it within a history of ‘new literacies’, or would it be better to consider it by itself? Steve’s response was really useful and enlightening. He said that media literacy was ‘quite a meaty chunk’ and was probably worth considering by itself. Whilst analysing ‘information literacy’ has allowed me to get a handle on the ‘literacy’ part of ‘digital literacy’, an analysis of media literacy would allow me to look at the ‘digital’ part. What he meant with this is that information literacy is predicated upon the neutrality of information/knowledge, whereas media literacy recognises communicative intent. A comparison of these against various definitions of digital literacy would be Pragmatic with a capital ‘P’.

Steve warned that I need to be careful how far down the media literacy rabbit-hole I go, as there are many forms – film, TV, radio, etc. I suggested that I should look at the work of (for example) Negroponte and Tapscott (especially the latter’s Growing Up Digital and Grown Up Digital). Steve suggested that there are two main conceptions of ‘digital’:

1. Similar messages communicated in different ways (e.g. film/poem, text/graph)
2. Translatability – moving things across different contexts

I mentioned how the latter could be conceived of as a ‘networked literacy’ and could be linked to ‘digital flow’. Steve agreed, mentioning how nowadays things ’spill out across contexts’. We linked this to mashups and memes.

To conclude, Steve talked about how the level and detail of what I’m looking at is complex. I therefore need to think about how the reader is going to scaffolded through this, to impose a structure to help the reader understand. I could have alternative routes through the structure (through the use of hyperlinks) but then readers could lose the intended structure. As a result, I will need more scaffolding than usual and keep going over my arguments. I noted that I’ve already started doing something like this by writing my thesis on Google Docs but taking out blog posts that need to stand by themselves. Steve re-iterated that a potential contribution to new knowledge could be a synthesis of the ideas and form of my thesis.

We’re going to be looking at potential external examiners in 2010. Steve’s currently thinking someone from the London Knowledge Lab or similar – someone who ‘can deal with’ presenting my thesis as a digital text.

Steve and I will be meeting (via Skype again – it works well for us) in about a month’s time. I’m going to consider the 3 (or so) main points I want to make in my thesis, as I will need to reference these throughout the digital text by way of scaffolding. At the moment, I’m thinking that two of these will be:

1. Digital literacy is not useful term to use as consensus cannot be reached.
2. Digital flow is a useful for conceiving of post-21st century skills.

Finally, Steve’s invited me to meet up with a couple of his other doctoral students who are working in similar areas to kick around some ideas. I look forward to it!

Posted: December 16th, 2009
Categories: Thesis
Tags: affinity spaces, digital flow, digital literacy, Ed.D., literacy, literature review, meeting, Pragmatism, Skype, Steve Higgins, Thesis
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This is another post from my Ed.D. thesis which can be seen in its entirety as I write it at http://dougbelshaw.com/thesis. References can be found at my wiki)

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Since coming into existence humans have had to communicate with one another. One method of doing so is through the written word, but this technology has come rather late in the evolution of communication. One way to represent this evolution would be with the aid of the following diagram:

Writing in the age of mass communication and mass media, but before the dawn of the internet, Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan were not disadvantaged by discussions of the latter clouding their thinking about previous technologies. It is from a synthesis of their thinking that the above diagram was created. As Ong (1982:7) explains, language is, and has been, by far the most prevalent method of communication. Language is ‘overwhelmingly oral’:

Indeed, language is so overwhelmingly oral that of all the many thousands of languages – possibly tens of thousands – spoken in the course of human history only around 106 have ever been committed to writing to a degree sufficient to have produced literate, and most have never been written at all. Of the some 3000 languages spoken that exist today only some 78 have a literature (Edmonson 1971, pp.323, 332).

This is because, unlike writing, orality is ‘natural’ (Ong, 1982:81) and primary (‘Oral expression can exist and mostly has existed without any writing at all, writing never without orality’ Ong, 1982:8) The process of writing and becoming ‘literate’ actually restructures consciousness, believes Ong (‘Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does’, Ong, 1982:77). McLuhan goes a step further, calling writing ‘the technology of individualism’ (McLuhan, 1962:158) and reminds us that the typographic world is in its relative infancy. Although the written word as we know it did exist between the fifth century B.C. and the fifteenth century A.D. this was not ‘mass communication’ and was restricted to the elite few (McLuhan, 1962:74). It was the typographic world, as opposed to the scribal, manuscript-driven world previously in existence that led to the context-free nature of literacy, claims Ong (1982:77) – ‘ written discourse has been detached from its author.’ Whereas in an oral world things could be forgotten, stances changed and context necessarily understood, this changed fundamentally with the dawn of the typographic world. A difficulty arises when, at a distance from the author – and out of context – an individual attempts to separate the signifier from the thing signified:

Writing makes ‘words’ appear similar to things because we think of words as the visible marks signaling words to decoders: we can see and touch such inscribed ‘words’ in texts and books. Written words are residue. Oral tradition has no such residue or deposit. (Ong, 1982:11)

This ‘residue or deposit’ affects ideas surrounding human consciousness and identity. It gives human beings, both individually and corporately, additional ‘powers’ – especially in relation to ‘memory’ and communication over large distances. ‘Conversations’ (in a loose sense of the term) can happen asynchronously over many years and great distances. As Ong reminds us, there is no way to completely refute a written text as ‘after absolutely total and devestating refutation, it says exactly the same thing as before’ (Ong, 1982:78).

The move to ‘new literacies’ came at the end of the 20th century. Ong (1982:3) would explain this through a move into what he would call ’secondary orality’, whilst McLuhan (1962:253) speaks of the ‘Gutenberg galaxy’ coming to an end in the era of electronic communication. Although McLuhan (1962:1) points out that we are approximately as far into the ‘electric era’ as the Elizabethans were into the ‘typographical age’, and that they had to justify books in education in a similar way that we have to justify technology (McLuhan, 1962:145), he explains that the two changes are nevertheless very different:

Our extended senses, tools, technologies, through the ages, have been closed systems incapable of interplay or collective awareness. Now, in the electric age, the very instantaneous nature of co-existence among our technological instruments has created a crisis quite new in human history. Our extended faculties and senses now constitute a single field of experience which demands that they become collectively conscious… As long as our technologies were as slow as the wheel or the alphabet or money, the fact that they were separate, closed systems was socially and psychically supportable. This is not true now when sight and sound and movement are simultaneous and global in extent. (McLuhan, 1962:5)

It is this less individualised, more ‘networked’ world that has led to the discussion of ‘new literacies’. The stimulus to traditional conceptions of literacy, says Ong (1982:85) was urbanization, partly because it led to the need and desire for record keeping. The stimulus to newer conceptions of literacy, including ‘digital literacy’ is, therefore, perhaps the metaphorical ‘proximity’ of our relationships despite geographical distance. Whereas traditional literacy was predicated upon technologies that promoted individualism, newer conceptions of literacy depend upon access, collaboration and sharing.

Just as post-Gutenberg civilizations struggled with the technology of the typographic world (and associated problems surrounding grammar/personal access to previously difficult-to-obtain works) so we struggle faced with a world where, quite literally, anybody can publish to a global audience cheaply and without delay. We are in a world where new literacies are required or, as Ong (1982:133-4) puts it, a world of ’secondary orality’:

The electronic transformation of verbal expression has both deepened the commitment of the word to space initiated by writing and intensified by print and has brough consciousness to a new age of secondary orality.
…
This new orality has striking resemblances to the old in its participatory mystique, its fostering of a communal sense, its concentration on the present moment, and even its use of formulas (Ong 1971, pp.284-303; 1977, pp.16-49, 305-41). But it is essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print, which are essential for the manufacture and operation of the equipment and for its use as well.

The reference to the self-consciousness of this ’secondary orality’ is important, but also causes problems. As LaFitte put its (quoted in McLuhan, 1962:155), ‘because we are their makers, we have too often deluded ourselves into believing that we knew all there was to know about machines.’ Unfortunately, we do not. ‘In the electronic age which succeeds the typographic and mechanical era of the past five hundred years, we encounter new shapes and structures of human interdependence and of expressions which are “oral” in form even when the components of the situation may be non-verbal’ (McLuhan, 1962:3) We want to call this knowledge of machines and new shapes and structures a form of literacy. The question is whether ‘new literacies’ are ‘literacies’ in any real sense of the word.

Posted: December 15th, 2009
Categories: Thesis
Tags: digital literacy, Ed.D., literacy, McLuhan, new literacies, Ong, Thesis
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This section of my Ed.D. literature review is nearing completion, so I thought I’d share it! (although, of course, the whole thing is available via http://dougbelshaw.com/thesis)

The field of ‘new literacies’ has a relatively long history; it is a term that has evolved. Its beginnings can be traced back to the end of the 1960s when a feeling that standard definitions of ‘literacy’ missed out something important from the increasingly visual nature of the media produced by society. In 1969 John Debes offered a tentative definition for a concept he called ‘visual literacy’:

Visual Literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural or man-made, that he encounters in his environment. Through the creative use of these competencies, he is able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these competencies, he is able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communication. (Debes, quoted in Avgerinou & Ericson, 1997:281)

Dondis in A Primer in Visual Literacy (1973) made explicit the reasoning behind considering visual elements as requiring a separate ‘literacy’:

In print, language is the primary element, while visual factors, such as the physical setting or design format and illustration, are secondary or supportive. In the modern media, just the reverse is true. The visual dominates; the verbal augments. Print is not dead yet, nor will it ever be, but nevertheless, our language-dominated culture has moved perceptively toward the iconic. Most of what we know and learn, what we buy and believe, what we recognize and desire, is determined by the domination of the human psyche by the photograph. And it will be more so in the future. (quoted in Barry, 1997:1)

Those who espoused this doctrine were careful to stress the importance of both being able to both decode and encode, creating and communicating via images. Considine (1986) championed visual literacy as being ‘the ability to comprehend and create images in a variety of media in order to communicate effectively,’ leading to those who are ‘visually literate’ being ‘able to produce and interpret visual messages’ (quoted in Tyner, 1998:105). More recently, with the explosion of what I shall term ‘micro-literacies,’ the concept of ‘visual literacy’ has been re-conceived of as ‘media grammar literacy’ (Frechette, quoted in Buckingham & Willett, 2006:168-9). That is to say it stresses the medium as being at least as important as the message.

In essence, the notion of ‘visual literacy’ is an important corrective to the idea that it is only textual symbols that can encode and decode information and meaning. As Lowe (1993:24) puts it, ‘visual materials in general are typically not considered to pose any reading challenges to the viewer.’ This is considered in more depth by Paxson (2004:vi), Sigafoos & Green (2007:29), Bazeli & Heintz (1997:4) and Kovalchik & Dawson (2004:602). As Raney (quoted in Owen-Jackson, 2002:141) explains, coupling ‘visual’ with ‘literacy’ not only prompts a debate about the metaphorical use of language but, by using ‘literacy’ suggests ‘entitlement or necessity, and the need to seek out deficiencies and remedy them.’

Hijacking the term ‘literacy’ for such ends has, however, worried some who believe that it conflates ‘literacy’ with ‘competence’ (Adams & Hamm, in Potter, 2004:29). Whilst some in the early 1980s believed that ‘visual literacy’ may ’still have some life left in it’ (Sless, in Avgerinou & Ericson, 1997:282), others considered the concept ‘phonologically, syntactically, and semantically untenable’ (Cassidy & Knowlton, in Avgerinou & Ericson, 1997:282), as ‘not a coherent area of study but, at best, an ingenious orchestration of ideas’ (Suhor & Little, in Avgerinou & Ericson, 1997:282). Each writer on the term has written from his or her viewpoint, leading to a situation akin to the apocryphal story of the six blind men tasked with describing an elephant, each doing so differently when given a different part to feel (Burbank & Pett, quoted in Avgerinou & Ericson, 1997:283). The feeling from the literature seems to be that whilst there may be something important captured in part by the term ‘visual literacy’, it all too easily collapses into solipsism and therefore loses descriptive and explanatory power.

The concept of ‘visual literacy’ continued until the late 1990s, eventually being enveloped by ‘umbrella terms’ combining two or more ‘literacies.’ Parallel to visual literacy from the 1970s onwards came the development of the term ‘technological literacy.’ It began to gain currency as a growing awareness took hold of the potential dangers to the environment of technological development as well as economic fears in the western world about the competition posted by technologically more adept nations (Martin, 2008:158). ‘Technological literacy’ (or ‘technology literacy’) was a marriage of skills-based concerns with a more ‘academic’ approach, leading to a US government-funded publication entitled Technology for All Americans. This defined ‘technological literacy’ as combining ‘the ability to use… the key systems of the time,’ ‘insuring that all technological activities are efficient and appropriate,’ and ’synthesiz[ing]… information into new insights.’ (quoted in Martin, 2008:158) This literacy was one defined and prompted by economic necessities and political concerns.

Although stimulated by competition with non-western countries, a growing awareness in the 1980s that computers and related technologies were producing a ‘postmodern consciousness of multiple perspectives’ with young people ‘culturally positioned by the pervasiveness of computer-based and media technologies’ (Smith, et al., 1988, quoted in Johnson-Eilda, 1998:211-2) reinforced the need for the formalization of some type of literacy relating to the use of computers and other digital devices. Technological literacy seemed to be an answer. Gurak (2001:13) dubbed this a ‘perfomative’ notion of literacy, ‘the ability to do something is what counts.’ Literacy was reduced to being ‘technology literate’ meaning ‘knowing how to use a particular piece of technology.’ The ‘critical’ element of literacy, which Gurak is at pains to stress, including the ability to make meta-level decisions judgements about technology usage, were entirely absent from these 1970s and 80s definitions. Technological or technology literacy is too broad a concept as ‘nearly all modes of communication are technologies – so there is no functional distinction between print-based literacy and digital literacy.’ (Eyman, no date:7) Discussions about, and advocates of, ‘technological literacy’ had mostly petered out by the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Growing out of the perceived need for a ‘technological literacy’ came, with the dawn of the personal computer, calls for definitions of a ‘computer literacy.’ Before the Apple II, ‘microcomputers’ were sold in kit form for hobbyists to assemble themselves. With the Apple II in 1977, followed by IBM’s first ‘Personal Computer’ (PC) in 1981, computers became available to the masses. Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) were developed from the early 1980s onwards, with the first iteration of Apple’s ‘Finder’ coming in 1984 followed by Microsoft’s ‘Windows’ in 1985. There is a symbiotic link between the hardware and software available at any given time and the supposed skills, competencies and ‘literacies’ that accompany their usage. As computers and their interfaces developed so did conceptions of the ‘literacy’ that accompany their usage.

The term ‘computer literacy’ was an attempt to give a vocational aspect to the use of computers and to state how useful computers could be in almost every area of learning (Buckingham, 2008:76). Definitions of computer literacy from the 1980s include ‘the skills and knowledge needed by a citizen to survive and thrive in a society that is dependent on technology’ (Hunter, 1984 quoted in Oliver & Towers, 2000), ‘appropriate familiarity with technology to enable a person to live and cope in the modern world’ (Scher, 1984 quoted in Oliver & Towers, 2000), and ‘an understanding of computer characteristics, capabilities and applications, as well as an ability to implement this knowledge in the skilful and productive use of computer applications’ (Simonson, et al., 1987 quoted in Oliver & Towers, 2000). As Andrew Molnar, who allegedly coined the term, points out ‘computer literacy,’ like ‘technological literacy’ is an extremely broad church, meaning that almost anything could count as an instance of the term:

We started computer literacy in ‘72 [...] We coined that phrase. It’s sort of ironic. Nobody knows what computer literacy is. Nobody can define it. And the reason we selected [it] was because nobody could define it, and [...] it was a broad enough term that you could get all of these programs together under one roof” (“Interview with Andrew Molnar,” OH 234. Center for the History of Information Processing, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, quoted at http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Digital+literacy).

Later in the decade an attempt was made to equate computer literacy with programming ability:

It is reasonable to suggest that a peson who has written a computer program should be called literate in computing. This is an extremely elementary definition. Literacy is not fluency. (Nevison, 1976 quoted in Martin (2003:12)

In the 1980s applications available from the command line removed the need for users to be able to program the application in the first place. Views on what constituted ‘computer literacy’ changed as a result. The skills and attributes of a user who is said to be ‘computer literate,’ became no more tangible, however, and simply focused on the ability to use computer applications rather than the ability to program (Van Leeuwen, et al., in Cunningham, 2006:1580). On reflection, it is tempting to call the abilities that fell within the sphere of ‘computer literacy’ as competencies – as a collection of skills that can be measured using, for example, the European Computer Driving License (ECDL). By including the word ‘literacy,’ however, those unsure about the ‘brave new world’ of computers could be reassured that the digital frontier is not that different after all from the physical world with which they are familiar (Bigum, in Snyder (ed.) 2002:133). Literacy once again was used to try to convey and shape meaning from a rather nebulous and loosely-defined set of skills.

Martin (2003, quoted in Martin 2008:156-7) has identified conceptions of ‘computer literacy’ as passing through three phases. First came the Mastery phase which lasted up until the mid-1980s. In this phase the computer was perceived as ‘arcane and powerful’ and the emphasis was on programming and gaining control over it. This was followed by the Application phase from the mid-1980s up to the late 1990s. The coming of simple graphical interfaces such as Windows 3.1 allowed computers to be used by the masses. Computers began to be used as tools for education, work and leisure. This is the time when many certification schemes based on ‘IT competence’ began – including the ECDL. From the late 1990s onwards came the Reflective phase with the ‘awareness of the need for more critical, evaluative and reflective approaches.’ (Martin 2008:156-7) It is during this latter phase that the explosion of ‘new literacies’ occurred.

The main problem with computer literacy was the elision between ‘literacy’ as meaning (culturally-valued) knowledge and ‘literacy’as being bound up with the skills of reading and writing (Wiley, 1996 quoted in Holme, 2004:1-2). Procedural knowledge about how to use a computer was conflated with the ability to use a computer in creative and communicative activities. The assumption that using a computer to achieve specified ends constituted a literacy began to be questioned towards the end of the 1990s. A US National Council Report from 1999 questioned whether today’s ‘computer literacy’ would be enough in a world of rapid change:

Generally, ‘computer literacy’ has acquired a ’skills’ connotation, implying competency with a few of today’s computer applications, such as word processing and e-mail. Literacy is too modest a goal in the presence of rapid change, because it lacks the necessary ’staying power’. As the technology changes by leaps and bounds, existing skills become antiquated and there is no migration path to new skills. A better solution is for the individual to plan to adapt to changes in the technology. (quoted in Martin, 2003:16)

Literacy is seen as fixed entity under this conception, as a state rather than a process.

It became apparent that ‘definitions of computer literacy are often mutually contradictory’ (Talja, 2005 in Johnson, 2008:33), that ‘computer literacy’ might not ‘convey enough intellectual power to be likened to textual literacy,’ (diSessa, 2000:109), and with authors as early as 1993 talking of ‘the largely discredited term ‘computer literacy” (Bigum & Green, 1993:6). Theorists scrambled to define new and different terms. An explosion and proliferation of terms ranging from the obvious (‘digital literacy’) to the awkward (‘electracy’) occurred. At times, this seems to be as much to do with authors making their name known as provide a serious and lasting contribution to the literacy debate.

As the term ‘computer literacy’ began to lose credibility and the use of computers for communication became more mainstream the term ‘ICT literacy’ (standing for ‘Information Communications Technology’) became more commonplace. Whereas with ‘computer literacy’ and the dawn of GUIs the ‘encoding’ element of literacy had been lost, this began to be restored with ‘ICT literacy.’ The following definition from the US-based Educational Testing Service’s ICT Literacy Panel is typical:

ICT literacy is using digital technology, communications tools, and/or networks to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge society. (ETS ICT Literacy Panel, 2002:2)

The skills outlined in this definition are more than merely procedural, they are conceptual. This leads to the question as to whether ICT literacy is an absolute term, ‘a measure of a person’s total functional skills in ICT’ or ‘a relative measure’ – there being ICT literacies, with individuals on separate scales (Oliver & Towers, 2000). Those who believe it to be an absolute term have suggested a three-stage process to become ICT literate. First comes the simple use of ICT (spreadsheets, word processing, etc.), followed by engagement with online communities, sending emails and browsing the internet. Finally comes engagement in elearning ‘using whatever systems are available’ (Cook & Smith, 2004). This definition of literacy is rather ‘tools-based’ and is analagous to specifying papyrus rolls, fountain pens or even sitting in a library on the classical definition. A particular literacy is seen as being reliant upon particular tools rather than involving a meta-level definition.

The problem is that, as with its predecessor term, ‘ICT literacy’ means different things to different groups of people. The European Commission, for example conceives of ICT literacy as ‘learning to operate… technology’ without it including any ‘higher-order skills such as knowing and understanding what it means to live in a digitalized and networked society.’ (Coutinho, 2007). This is direct opposition to the ETS definition above – demonstrating the fragmented and ambiguous nature of the term. Town (2003:53) sees ‘ICT literacy’ In the United Kingdom as

a particularly unfortunate elision’ as it ‘appears to imply inclusion of information literacy, but in fact is only a synonym for IT (or computer) literacy. Its use tends to obscure the fact that information literacy is a well developed concept separate from IT (information technology) literacy.

As Town goes on to note, this is not the case in non English-speaking countries.

(Please see http://dougbelshaw.com/thesis for references/bibliography. To avoid making a long post even longer, I shall post separately my section on ‘information literacy’)

Posted: December 11th, 2009
Categories: Thesis
Tags: Computer literacy, digital literacy, Ed.D., History, ICT literacy, new literacies, Thesis, visual literacy
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I’ve been trying to squeeze in my Ed.D. research when I can recently, sometimes rising well before the sun does! I’m at the stage (seedougbelshaw.com/thesis) where I’m nearing the end of my first run through my Literature Review. I want to have it pretty much finished when I have a video chat with my supervisor next week.

This post is to summarize what I’ve been learning (and attempting to synthesize) about so-called ‘affinity spaces’, ’secondary orality’ and ‘digital epistemologies’. Much of the following comes from, or was thinking provoked by, Lankshear and Knobel’s New Literacies (2006). My notes on the books and articles mentioned, as ever, are available at dougbelshaw.com/wiki.

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Literacy is all about communication. Literacy therefore is all about creating or reading texts for a particular purpose. This doesn’t change when we move into the realm of ‘digital literac(ies)’. It was Gee (2004) who came up with notion of ‘affinity spaces’. These spaces are characterized by the following elements (taken from this useful post):

• A common endeavor is primary, not aspects such as race, class, gender, or disability that can often hinder communication.
• Newbies, masters, and everyone else share common space
• Some portals are strong generators (whatever gives the space some content)
• Content organization is transformed by interactional organization
• Both intensive and extensive knowledge are encouraged
• Both individual and distributed knowledge are encouraged
• Dispersed knowledge is encouraged
• Tacit knowledge is encouraged and honored
• Many different forms and routes to participation
• Many different routes to status
• Leadership is porous and leaders are resources

In other words, an affinity space is somewhere where informal learning takes place and which ‘bridge[s] barriers of age, race, socio-economic status, and educational level, and allow[s] each user to participate as he/she is able’ (Gee, 2005). They are hotbeds of literate practices.

Some – e.g. Davies (2006) – discuss the ‘Third Space’ that websites such as Flickr allow to flourish:

Third Space … constitutes the discursive conditions … that ensure that … even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rhetoricized and read anew. (Bhabha, 1994 – quoted in Davies, 2006)

The example that is used time and again in the literature is that of Fan Fiction as the genre is a relatively stable one. Other affinity spaces tend to be characterised by memes. Knobel (2006) mentions that, indeed, affinity spaces are ‘perfect conduits’ for memes and that the former ‘can be fixed or fleeting and are always thoroughly relational in nature’. Lankshear & Knobel (2006:236) quote Gee as saying the following about affinity spaces:

[Affinity spaces are] specially designed spaces (physical and virtual) constructed to resource people [who are] tied together… by a share dinterest or endeavor… [For example, the] many many websites and publications devoted to [the video game, Rise of Nations] create a social space in which people can, to any degree they wish, small or large, affiliate with others to share knowledge and gain knowledge that is distributed and dispersed across many different people, places, Internet sites and modalities (magazines, chat rooms, guides, recordings).

It is clear even from the short introduction above that affinity are at the other end of the scale from the traditional classroom. They are based on interest rather than compulsion, the idea that everyone participating is of equal status rather than one person being in control, and emerging ‘rules’ rather than those imposed top-down.

The driving question behind my Ed.D. thesis is What does it mean to be digitally literate? Lankshear & Knobel (2006:243) make the point that definitions of digital literacy make little or no reference to memes, creativity or ‘digital playfulness’:

[T]he phenomenon of online memes challenges the growing dominance of ‘digital literacy’ conceptions of what it means to be a competent user of new technologies and networks… Digital literacy mindsets do not pay sufficient attention to the importance of social relations in developing, refining, remixing and sharing ideas in fecund and replicable ways, or to the important role that memes play in developing culture and creativity. (my emphasis)

The authors proceed to discuss Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You, comparing books with ‘networked texts’. Digital literacy, of course, is not necessary to read the former – but it’s perhaps the inherently social element of the latter that sets it apart from print-based classical conceptions of literacy.

It is this idea of ‘text plus something else’ that will lead me to bring in the work of Walter Ong to my thesis. Ong (1982, 2002:3) talks of ’secondary orality’ – i.e. a set of social practices that resemble purely oral cultures but which are predicated upon technologies surrounding literacy:

The electronic age is also an age of ’secondary orality’, the orality of telephones, radio, and television, which depends on writing and print for its existence.

Ong’s point (summarized well at Wikipedia) is that oral cultures are additive in a way that solely print-based cultures are not. Writing before the dawn of the internet, Ong rather presciently explained that oral cultures allow ideas to be revisited in different ways that books and articles often do not. Positions are less fixed. As Douglas (1998:160) puts it in relation to the internet, ‘when you spin an argument in hypertext, you can choose to represent a world that is strictly ‘either/or’ or one that is ‘and/and/and’.’ Chris Lott made an interesting presentation entitled Closing the Gutenberg Parenthesis related to this recently.

All of which takes us neatly to the question of digital epistemologies. I need to check out A New Literacies Sampler before actually writing this section of my thesis, but I’m fairly sure where I’m going in abstract. Epistemology is, of course, philosophical questions about the nature and scope of knowledge. Digital epistemologies, therefore, refer to how knowledge is different in a digital world. This obviously has an impact and a bearing upon notions of T/truth. Truth (with a capital ‘T’) is received – and often ‘revealed’ – truths about the world that cannot (or should not) be questioned. Education has often been like this, leading to a transmission model of education.

On the other hand, truth (with a small ‘t’) is provisional knowledge, tentative conclusions based upon available evidence. This is the Pragmatist position, a philosophical methodology I’m employing in my thesis. A lot of what happens online – in fact most of what happens online is concerned with truth with a small ‘t’. As Lankshear & Knobel (2006:242-3) put it:

[A] seemingly increasing proportion of what people do and seek within practices mediated by new technologies – particularly computing and communications technologies – has nothing directly to do with true and with established rules, procedures and standards for knowing. That is most emphatically not to say that these matters are no longer important. Rather, it is to draw attention to the fact that today’s learners are increasingly recruited to other values and priorities.

Given the nature of the above, it seems out of place to tie everything together into a neat conclusion at the end of this post. Suffice to say, therefore, that memes and their impact on affinity spaces, the concept of ’secondary orality’ in respect to the internet, and the links between literacy, truth and epistemology will certainly be featuring towards the end of my literature review.

I’ve still quite a bit of work left to do on this, so do feel free to point me towards any related and useful blog posts, journal articles books, etc.!

Bibliography

• Davies, J. (2006) Affinities and Beyond! Developing Ways of Seeing in Online Spaces (E-Learning, 3:2, 2006)
• Douglas, J.J. (1998) ‘Will the most reflexive relativist please stand up: hypertext, argument and relativism’ (in I. Snyder (ed.), Page to Screen, London, 1998)
• Knobel, M. (2006) Memes and Affinity Spaces: some implications for policy and digital divides in education (E-Learning, 3:3, 2006)
• Knobel, M. & Lankshear, C. (2006) New Literacies: Everyday Practices & Classroom Learning
• Ong, W. (1982, 2002) Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word

Posted: November 21st, 2009
Categories: Education, Thesis
Tags: Chris Lot, digital epistemologies, digital literacy, Ed.D., Pragmatism, secondary orality, Thesis, truth, Wikipedia
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Although I’m progressing well with my Ed.D. thesis, I do feel sometimes as though what I’m reading is adding epicycles on top of epicycles, rather than cutting (Copernicus-like) to the chase. Take, for example, definitions of digital literacy. For me to be able to deal with these systematically and critically, I need a bedrock definition of literacy upon which to base any criticism. What follows is a draft section of my thesis that aims to deal with just that. The quotation in bold towards the end is the definition of ‘literacy’ I’m thinking of using to base the rest of my thesis upon.

N.B. You may want to read my previous post The 8C’s of digital literacy for context before reading this one!

Image CC BY-NC tj.blackwell @ Flickr

Claire Bélisle (in Martin, 2008:156) identifies three conceptions in the evolution of our concept of ‘literacy’. First is the model favoured by UNESCO, the functional model. This conceives of literacy as the ‘mastery of simple cognitive and practical skills.’ Most theorists in the literature – and especially those who espouse ‘new literacies’ – would see this as a definition of competence, not literacy. Thus, ‘digital competence’ could involve a basic understanding of how the internet works (e.g. hyperlinks) and having the practical skills to be able to navigate it.

The second model in the evolution of literacy cited by Bélisle is the socio-cultural practice model. This model takes as its basis that ‘the concept of literacy is only meaningful in terms of its social context and that to be literate is to have access to cultural, economic and political structures of society’ (quoted in Martin, 2008:156). This seems to make sense: that individuals have to be literate for something. A rejoinder might be that we could conceive of someone who was ‘literate’ marooned in the middle of nowhere. However, as Lemke reminds us:

Even if we are lost in the woods, with no material tools, trying to find our way or just make sense of the plants or stars, we are still engaged in making meanings with cultural tools such as language (names of flowers or constellations) or learned genres of visual images (flower drawings or star maps). We extend forms of activity that we have learned by previous social participation to our present lonely situation. (Lemke, 2002:36-7)

Within the digital sphere, the socio-cultural practice model makes sense. It deals specifically with the disenfranchisement felt by those not literate within a given domain. The model can also explain how hegemonic power can be grasped or maintained by those with access to literacy tools. A good example of the latter would be the Catholic church in Europe in the medieval period. The model is also a useful call-to-arms for those concerned about liberty and equality in society – in other words, social justice. It provides an arena for discourse about the importance of literacy in living a productive and rewarding life.

There are, however, problems with the socio-cultural practice model of literacy. It deals with literacy as an ideology more than as a practical skill. As a result, the constructive, creative and critical elements of the 8 C’s are only alluded to whilst the cultural, communicative and civic aspects are focused upon. The cognitive element is not addressed, nor is the link between literacy and confidence. The socio-cultural practice model of literacy does not, therefore, have sufficient explanatory power to be used as the bedrock for new literacies.

The final stage in the evolution of literacy, according to Bélisle, is the intellectual empowerment model. This deals with the link between new tools and new ways of thinking:

Literacy not only provides means and skills to deal with written texts and numbers within specific cultural and ideological contexts, but it brings a profound enrichment and eventually entails a transformation of human thinking capacities. This intellectual empowerment happens whenever mankind endows itself with new cognitive tools, such as writing, or with new technical instruments, such as those that digital technology has made possible. (Bélisle, 2006: 54-55, quoted in Martin, 2008:156)

This ‘meta-level’ view of literacy certainly deals with the cognitive element of the 8C’s as well as, to some extent, the critical and communicative aspects. The cultural and creative elements are inferred, but no specific mention is given to the civic, constructive and confidence aspects of literacy.

If these conceptions of literacy have indeed ‘evolved’ from one another then they are additive; they build upon one another. If this is the case, then the functional, socio-cultural practice, and intellectual empowerment models of literacy together deal with the earlier-derived 8C’s. Putting them together, we would get a definition of literacy similar to the following:

Literacy involves the mastery of simple cognitive and practical skills. To be ‘literate’ is only meaningful within a social context and involves having access to the cultural, economic and political structures of a society. In addition to providing the means and skills to deal with written texts, literacy brings about a transformation in human thinking capacities. This intellectual empowerment happens as a result of new cognitive tools (e.g. writing) or technical instruments (e.g. digital technologies).

This definition would seem to satisfy the 8C’s outlined earlier, dealing with the cultural, communicative, cognitive, civic, constructive, creative, confidence, and critical aspects of literacy.

Now that a working definition of literacy has been arrived at based on the literature, we need to test it against the four conditions outlined earlier that would make for a valid definition of digital literacy. This is because digital literacy is necessarily predicated upon a bedrock definition of ‘literacy’. To recap:

1. ‘Cash value’ – it must be useful and must be able to make a difference in practice.
2. Retrospective nature – it must include past (and future) instances of ‘digitally-literate practice.’
3. Metaphorical nature – its position to other metaphorical terms in the literate practices arena must be explained adequately.
4. Digital element – advocates must be able to explain to what the ‘digital’ part of ‘digital literacy’ pertains.

The definition of literacy has the potential to deal adequately with the ‘digital’ part of ‘digital literacy’ in that it acknowledges that changes can take place as a result of new ‘cognitive tools’ and ‘technical instruments’. Likewise, the definition can deal with both past and future instances of literate practices, as it mentions the ‘transformation in human thinking capacities’ that literacy brings about. Given that literacy is altered by the aforementioned cognitive tools and technical instruments, changes in the latter produce changes in the former. The metaphorical aspect of literacy is dealt with through its explanation that ‘the concept of literacy is only meaningful in terms of its social context’. The ‘cash value’ of the definition could be seen to be a call to action due to literacy involving gaining ‘access to cultural economic and political structures of society’ .

Bibliography

• Lemke, J.L. (2002) ‘Becoming the Village: Education Across Lives’ (in G. Wells & G. Claxton (eds.) Learning for Life in the 21st Century)
• Martin, A. (2008) ‘Digital Literacy and the “Digital Society”‘ (in Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M., Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices)

You can read my thesis as it progresses here and view notes I’ve made on my wiki here.

Posted: October 27th, 2009
Categories: Thesis
Tags: definition, digital literacy, Ed.D., literacy, quotation, Thesis
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Image by jared @ Flickr

Poets talk of a ‘muses’ and people talk of inspiration ‘just coming’ to them. Me, I’m a believer that connections come when you completely immerse yourself in something. About an hour ago I had a breakthrough with my thesis, the tentative title of which is What does it mean to be ‘digitally literate’? A Pragmatic investigation.

I’ve been looking for a way to organize the multitude of definitions of ‘digital literacy’ that there are – almost as many as there are writers on the subject! Then, as I was looking for categories, I noticed that almost every category I used began with ‘C’! I quickly wrote down eight and tweeted it out:

Josie Fraser, herself quite the expert on digital literacy, responded that I really needed a ‘critical’ element in there:

She had a very good point and I noticed that the similarity between the things I wanted to put in the ‘cultural’ and ‘community’ sections I’d demarcated. Hence, I changed it round to come up with this, the 8 C’s of digital literacy. Each of the following I believe to be an element with which any definition of the concept must deal:

• Cultural
• Communication
• Cognitive
• Citizenship
• Constructive
• Creativity
• Confidence
• Critical

I haven’t numbered them as they’re in no particular order. I will, no doubt, be thinking and reflecting more on the subject. I just wanted to get this post out before anyone else tried to claim this as their own!

A reminder that you can view my thesis as I write it, if you wish.

Posted: August 4th, 2009
Categories: Thesis
Tags: definition, digital literacy, Education, framework, Josie Fraser, organization, Thesis, Twitter
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I’ve got until Tuesday to get a much of my thesis written as possible to send to my supervisor. I’ve made a start, but need as much help as I can get to continue to be motivated. I thought, therefore, that sharing what I’m writing in real-time with an audience might help with that.

Click here to access my thesis as I write it!

N.B. The comments are obviously notes to myself. Oh, and unlike everything else on this blog, this is most certainly Copyright – All Rights Reserved. No quoting at all until it’s finished please.

Do feel free to add comments here and/or motivational quotations, inspirational thoughts, and helpful guidance!

Posted: August 1st, 2009
Categories: Thesis
Tags: digital literacy, Ed.D., motivation, supervisor, Thesis, writing
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I had another Skype chat with my Ed.D. thesis supervisor, Steve Higgins, last night. I really enjoy our informal video conferences as he’s at the forefront of things at the University of Durham (and further afield!), as well as being very experienced and intelligent.

I’d been a bit apprehensive as during our email exchanges prior to the Skype chat he’d talked about bringing in my second supervisor. I assumed that this was because I wasn’t organized enough, wasn’t on track, etc. – but it turns out that it’s a result of the university’s new QA procedures. Steve said he’s ‘no concerns about the quality and level of my work’. So that’s good to know!

I’m in the slightly odd position of undertaking a vocational doctorate (Ed.D.) in a purely conceptual and philosophical manner more suited to a PhD. That’s because my doctoral course is an extension of my previous MA (and before that my PGCE!) Steve urged me to focus on the overall conceptual schema so that the whole thing ‘flows’ and fits together. We agreed that the following thesis structure (which I’ve blogged about before), with one added section, has the scope to do that:

1. Literacy (what is literacy?)
2. ‘Digital literacy’ (literature review)
3. Pragmatic methodology (what is the ‘core’ of definitions?)
4. ‘Flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal work – ‘digital flow’?)
5. Application to schools (how ‘digital literacy’ as a concept is applied in educational systems around the world)
6. Meta-level definition (*new*) (pragmatic definition of ‘digital literacy’ or similar)

Texts as metaphors

Steve and I started by revisiting the idea of ‘texts’ as metaphors. Whilst some would question this use of the word ‘text’, it is use widely in the literature to refer to even objects (digital/physical) that do not have an alphabet-based written element to them. Steve talked about the ‘denotative’ as well as ‘connotative’ meanings of texts, which is something I’m going to have to explore further…

Hierarchical model of digital literacy?

I brought up the possibility of coming up with some kind of ‘hierarchical model’ of concepts in the digital literacy arena. Perhaps ‘digital competency’ would be at the bottom, with ‘digital literacy’ above it and ‘digital fluency’ as being at the top of the conceptual pyramid?

Steve agreed that this may be possible as ‘competence’ has a restrictive element to it in that it can be assessed or measured – it is bounded in some way. Literacy implies some kind of transferability which is, presumably, why educators like it as it assumes more than mere ‘competence’. Problems arise, however, when people want to be able to ‘assess’ digital literacy as what would such a test look like? Finally, the idea of ‘digital fluency’, Steve wondered, would surely be an extension of digital literacy rather than something separate?

Again, this is something I need to go back to the literature and investigate!

Forms of literacy

Steve mentioned en passant that librarians have really latched on to the term ‘information literacy’ as it describes what they are trying to engender in students and library users. We then discussed the use of ‘umbrella terms’ by those coming at new literacies from a particular angle. I mentioned the fact that not only do people try and use their preferred term as some type of overarching term encompassing other literacies, but that some make up words to try and make a name for themselves when doing so!

21st century skills

Regarding 21st century skills, I wondered about the relationship such an idea may have with ‘digital literacy’. Steve said it was worth looking at in terms of the formation of the phrase and where the drive is coming from. Is it coming from politicians worried about global economic competition and effectiveness, or from educators? If the latter, is it coming from those who would be considered ‘digitally literate’ or not?

We discussed the EU, and Norway in particular, as being at the forefront of ‘digital literacy’ from a participatory rather than simply an economic perspective. I’m going to compare and contrast this with views from (for example) the USA and Singapore.

Can literacy by dissected?

I mentioned to Steve that I’ve read this week about Knobel & Lankshear’s belief that literacy cannot be ‘dissected’. I thought I knew what this meant, but then when trying to explain to Steve got a bit tongue-tied. Steve talked about literacy being ‘complex’ – not complicated – but fundamentally difficult to understand and prise apart. If the various parts are teased apart do they still make sense in isolation? The danger is that literacy is reduced to competency – and therefore susceptible to tick-box tests…

Paolo Freire and ‘conscientization’

Whilst I was aware of some of his work, Steve thought that Paolo Freire’s idea of conscientization might be applicable to my thesis. This is something I need to explore more thoroughly, but the concept of an ‘emancipatory literacy’ which is in some way opposed to ‘functional literacy’ would set up a good dialectic in my argument, I think! We came back to the previous discussion of whether ideas of ‘literacy’ in the EU, Singapore and USA involved an emancipatory element.

Solid and liquid modernity

I’ve mentioned before on this blog how struck I was with Martin’s idea of ‘liquid modernity’. Steve and I discussed the relationship between knowledge and technology and how, because of the rate of change of technology, ‘literacy’ and ‘knowledge’ are always in a state of flux. I raised my concern with Steve that this would mean not even a working definition of something like ‘digital literacy’ could be achieved. He responded that going to some type of ‘meta-level’ without specific mention of technologies, so long as it was rigorous enough, would work.

Steve mentioned the idea of ‘punctuated equilibrium‘ in evolutionary theory and how technological advancements can be seen in a similar way. We moved into discussing cultural practices – for example the difference between being able to quote someone and/or use their ideas in your own words, compared with copying word-for-word what they said. At what stage will we privilege ‘organization’ as a higher-level skill?

After Steve raised the above, it got me thinking about Lessig’s book The Future of Ideas, which I’m currently reading (and have blogged about). Lessig talk about ‘remix culture’, something which Steve said he had a slight problem with as it has a negative connotation as being ‘derivative’. Howeer, if there is some type of granularity of reassembling, then such works should be valued as much as the originals.

Returning to the idea of a ‘meta-level’ definition for literacies, Steve talked about how they are not susceptible to shorter-term change, but must be applicable retrospectively to, for example, someone in Roman times. Obviously the ‘digital’ element will not apply, but the other elements should have some explanatory power.

What is ‘digital’?

Just before we finished, Steve drped a bit of a (positive) bombshell. Up until now I’ve been focusing on the ‘literacy’ aspect of ‘digital literacy’. But what about the ‘digital’ part? What makes something digital? How are, for example, a cassette recorder and a digital recorder different? Do they involve different skills?

In an attempt to tease this out a bit we talked about interoperability and connectedness. I thought about the conceptual difference between a book and a Word document (very little difference) and the difference once hyperlinks are added (quite a lot of difference!)

The idea of ‘digitality’ is something I’m going to have to explore further!

The way forward

Finally, Steve gave an example from a project he’s working on. He’s part of a group at the University of Durham experimenting with ‘multi-touch tables’. He talked about how some Year 6 pupils had seen him and other supervisors use ‘hidden menus’ within the software. The children only had to see this once to be able to access this themselves. Steve wondered wither this would fit into ideas of ‘digital fluency’.

This reminded me of the work of Sugata Mitra, creator of the ‘Hole in the Wall’ computer and ‘emergent literacies’. This is, again, something I need to explore in more depth, but Steve said it fits in with the currently-popular Activity Theory (of which he’s not a big fan) and his concerns about the literature on literacy focusing on meaning rather than intention. It turns out that Mitra is now at Newcastle University, which is handy!

I’m going to concentrate now on my literature review, which I’ve already written a couple of thousand words on. Once that’s (almost) complete I’ll start work on fleshing out the pragmatic methodology.

(Image credit: Literacy by ~Anarxur at deviantart)

Posted: June 11th, 2009
Categories: Thesis
Tags: competence, digital literacy, Durham University, Lawrence Lessig, literacy, Paolo Freire, Skype
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