Here’s what I have. I no longer know it if makes sense. I feel it sure as hell seems senseless w\/o the pictures, but I don’t have the time to format and embed them. I’m also worried that the last bit is just redundant meandering and nonsense. To be honest, I’m not sure that any of it makes complete sense anymore and I never got to the point that I wanted to use about Chip Bruce’s explanation of a parallel to Halliday. I guess that has to be a separate note somewhere, cuz I’m not sure how to fit it in. What I meant to write was something like this:<\/p>\n
\nChip Bruce has suggested that as we think of the roles that technologies play in education, \u201cthere is a parallel to Michael Halliday’s (1978) formulation about the reasons for the centrality of language study in schools: We need to learn technology, to learn through technology, and to learn about technology.\u201d I would argue instead that we should revisit M.A.K. Halliday\u2019s model and consider how it can be expanded to include these wider notions of literacy.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And then I wanted to talk through the ways that technology already fits into the Halliday model, that no new formulation is needed. I think that’s a different focus though, so I dropped it. Sadly, I think it’s also the one thing I’d really like to talk about. Oh well. The draft and then to bed.<\/p>\n
\nThis all began on Cindy and Dickie Selfe’s porch in Houghton.There was
\n a copy of George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant<\/i> lying
\n on the kitchen table, and because I was supposed to be writing something else
\n altogether, I picked up their book, went out to a comfy chair on the porch,
\nand started reading. Gracie gave me an evil look, doing her best to keep me on
\n track, but I found the book interesting and finished a chapter to two before
\n going back to what I was supposed to be writing. What I found most interesting
\n about the book was the way that the discussion of Democratic and Republican
\nvalues could be extended to the challenges that educators face in the classroom. <\/p>\nLakoff uses the metaphor of the government as a parent, tracing the idea back
\n to the founding fathers<\/i>, and describes how the values underlying political
\n positions amount to a parents’ attitude toward children, who by the extension
\nof the metaphor are the nation’s citizens. <\/p>\nRepublicans follow a strict
\n father model, according to Lakoff. The government takes the role of the father,
\n knowing right from wrong, and making decisions that reward those who are self-reliant,
\n those "whose prosperity reveals
\n their discipline and hence their capacity for morality" (9). The citizens
\n in this model, metaphorically the children, “are born bad, in the sense
\n that they want to do what feels good, not what is right. Therefore, they have
\n to be made good" (7).<\/p>\nDemocrats, on the other hand, follow a nurturant parent model, believing that "children
\n are born good and can be made better. The world can be made a better place,
\n and our job is to work on that. The parents’ job is to nurture their children
\n and to raise their children to be nurturers of others" (12).<\/p>\nRepublicans, Lakoff explains, win voter support because they focus on a strong,
\n moral stance—on “family values”—from a position of
\n patriarchal authority. Democrats, on the other hand, focus on issues, rather
\n than on the underlying values. Lakoff explains in the book’s Preface:<\/p>\n\nIf the Democrats are to win in the future, the party must present a clear
\n moral vision to the country—a moral vision common to all progressives.
\n It cannot present a laundry list of programs. It must present a moral alternative,
\n one more traditionally American, one that lies behind everything Americans
\n are proud of. (xvi)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIt’s not that Republicans do not address the same issues that Democrats
\n do. It’s a question of framing, of how Republicans position the discussion
\n of those issues so that they fall in line with the traditional family values
\nwhile Democrats are more likely to talk about the issues independently. <\/p>\nNow what
\n does this have to do with education? Plenty, especially when you consider
\n that the strict father model has led to standardized testing and No
\n Child Left Behind<\/i> legislation as a way to reward those who are hard-working
\n and self-reliant and punish those who do not achieve. Lakoff explains the conservative
\n perspective:<\/p>\n\nTeachers should be strict, not nurturant, in the example they set for students
\n and in the content they teach . . . . Uniform testing should test the level
\n of discipline. There are right and wrong answers, and they should be tested
\n for. Testing defines fairness: Those who pass are rewarded; those not disciplined
\n enough to pass are punished. (84)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThis authoritarian model of education is at odds with nurturant strategies
\n such as whole language education and Freirean pedagogy. The focus on students
\n who are good and can be made better with support and encouragement comes across
\n as lenient and indulgent. The underlying values fail to rise to the surface,
\n and the moral vision of these nurturant strategies go unexpressed. The focus
\n falls on the various ways of teaching rather than on the pedagogical goals
\n of the teaching strategies.<\/p>\nProgressive educators who support these nurturant strategies must focus on
\n reframing, on foregrounding the underlying educational values, rather than
\n describing the various ways of teaching.<\/p>\nThis same tension plays out in our educational work with digital technologies.
\n If we are to create sustainable environments, we must foreground the underlying
\n educational values supporting those environments rather than focus on the specific
\nstrategies we employ in these various environments.<\/p>\nTo see this strict father\/nurturant parent metaphor in play, we need look
\n no further than the ways that our work is generally defined. There are many
\n ways that we identify what we teach in English language arts, composition,
\n and literature classrooms:<\/p>\n\n
- media literacy<\/li>\n
- visual literacy<\/li>\n
- film literacy<\/li>\n
- technology literacy<\/li>\n
- multimodal literacy<\/li>\n
- technological literacy<\/li>\n
- game literacy<\/li>\n
- out-of-school literacy<\/li>\n
- adult literacy<\/li>\n
- computer literacy<\/li>\n
- emergent literacy<\/li>\n
- multimedia literacy<\/li>\n
- cultural literacy<\/li>\n
- information literacy<\/li>\n
- content area literacy<\/li>\n
- early literacy<\/li>\n
- adolescent literacy<\/li>\n
- young adult literacy<\/li>\n
- new literacy<\/li>\n
- multiliteracies<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
And for us, the differences among these terms are meaningful and significant.
\n The challenge is that they are often meaningful and significant ONLY to us.
\n To the many people we encounter outside our discipline, these words and phrases
\n can be confusing. How well does the average family member understand the difference
\n between technological literacy, computer literacy, and multimodal literacy?
\n For that matter, would our colleagues who spend more time with literature be
\n able to explain such terms?<\/p>\nWhat we have here, friends, is a laundry list. The areas we teach end up broken
\n out in so many ways that the underlying values become hidden. General audiences
\n assume the most basic definitions, and the work that we really do is lost.<\/p>\nAs an example, let’s focus on those literacy areas that have to do with
\ndigital technology in some way. Cindy Selfe explains:<\/p>\n\nThe prevailing cultural understanding of [technological literacy] as simple competence
\n with computers<\/i> serves to misdirect the energy put into the national
\n project to expand technological literacy—limiting the effectiveness
\n of literacy instruction as it occurs within schools and homes in this country
\n and hindering efforts to formulate increasingly complex and robust accounts
\n of technological literacy.
\n (xx, Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century<\/i>) <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThough the political leadership has changed in the country since Selfe wrote
\n those words, the gap between the cultural understanding of technological literacy
\n and the more complex and robust understanding of technological literacy most
\n of us share persists; and as a result, there is still a lot of misdirected
\n energy expended in the pursuit of educational goals.<\/p>\nThe reason for this misdirection is that the explicit nature of technological
\n literacy distracts from the underlying educational goals and values. When we
\n talk about digital technology in the classroom, too often what others hear
\n is a discussion of competence with those technologies<\/i> rather than significant
\n literacy education.<\/p>\nFollowing the strict father model, students need to learn to read and write.
\n Their use of digital technologies should be limited to learning how to use
\n the tools available in the service of that goal. Focusing on game literacy
\n or film literacy simply diverts attention from the more significant educational
\n goals. Playing games, watching films—those things aren’t what’s
\n important from this perspective.<\/p>\nMost of us would argue that exploring game literacy or film literacy IS<\/i> learning
\n to read and write. The problem is that the technologies hide what is going
\n on. Our challenge is to make the underlying educational values more obvious.
\n As Lakoff would say, we need to reframe the debate based on our values, not
\n on others’ conception of what we care about. <\/p>\nFor most of us, what we value in our teaching is the ways that we encourage
\n students to expand their literacy by exploring the various digital technologies
\n available to them—a collection of resources that can include computers,
\ncamcorders, audio recorders, handheld game systems, cell phones, and PDAs.<\/p>\nThe general public, those folks who define technological literacy as simple
\n competence with computers, focuses on those digital technologies. They question
\n why, for example, students learn about the ways that video games work and never
\n think of the classroom exploration of the games’ complex narrative and
\nhypertextual structures. <\/p>\nWhat are we to do? How are we to reframe our work so that we get beyond simple
\n competence with computers? Don’t Think of the Technologies<\/b>. We
\n have to focus on the literacy instruction, not on the technologies that we’re
\n using as part of the instruction. It’s contradictory in a way. To focus
\n on the ways that technological literacy goes beyond simple competence with
\n computers, we have to reframe the discussion to focus on literacy, rather than
\ntechnologies. <\/p>\nThe NCTE\/IRA site ReadWriteThink provides an example of the way this reframing
\n can be done. ReadWriteThink publishes lessons on a wide range of subject areas,
\n for the K-12 classrooms—from literature to composition, and from technical
\n writing to critical thinking. Each of the lessons on the site uses the same
\nbasic structure: <\/p>\n\n
- an overview of the lesson activities<\/li>\n
- the underlying NCTE\/IRA standards<\/li>\n
- the supporting pedagogical theory<\/li>\n
- the estimated lesson time<\/li>\n
- the required resources necessary for the lesson<\/li>\n
- the instructional plan<\/li>\n
- and suggested reflection and assessment activities<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Additionally each includes an “Internet connection.” This Internet
\n connection is the highlight of the lesson plans in some ways. ReadWriteThink
\n is part of MarcoPolo, a nonprofit consortium of education organizations and
\n the Verizon Foundation, dedicated to providing the highest quality Internet
\n content and professional development to teachers and students.<\/p>\nAll MarcoPolo resources, in accordance with the funding grants agreement,
\n include Internet-based resources. Typically the lessons use Web resources,
\n and partners are urged to include student “interactives” in as
\n many lessons as possible. For MarcoPolo, “interactives” are essentially
\n Flash or Shockwave tools that either present information, serve as online graphic
\n organizers, or produce print-based artifacts such as newspapers and brochures.<\/p>\nDespite this focus on Internet resources, the collection of over 500 lesson
\n plans on the ReadWriteThink site was designed to engage students in authentic
\n and meaningful language<\/i> learning, with the Internet component included
\n in pedagogically appropriate ways. The site’s design is based on literacy
\n engagements, as defined by M. A. K. Halliday (1982). Literacy engagements simultaneously
\n involve:<\/p>\n\n
- learning language
\n (as students listen to language and use language with others in their everyday
\n lives.)<\/li>\n- learning about language
\n (as students try to figure out how language works, engage with their teachers
\n in focused instruction on how language works or in critiquing its impact),
\n and<\/li>\n- learning through language
\n (as students use language to learn about or do something).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWhile all three literacy functions—learning language, learning about
\n language, and learning through language—operate in any literacy event
\n that makes sense to a learner, teachers, according to Kathy Short (1999), frequently
\n find it instructionally useful to highlight one or more of these functions
\n at a time (at least in their minds) so that they can consider which curriculum
\n experiences are most likely to engage learners in that specific literacy function.<\/p>\nOnce teachers determine the experiences they want to highlight, they can sort
\n the lessons by the literacy engagements (in addition to grade level), to find
\n the resources the will address those language functions in the classroom. Digital
\n technology is included in each lesson, but the focus<\/i> is on
\n the literacy engagements. In other words, the site strives to foreground the
\n educational value of strong literacy skills rather than listing the technologies
\nthat students will explore as they work on the activities. <\/p>\nLiteracy frames the site. This focus on literacy does not mean however that
\n the site ignores the ways that technologies shape our notions of literacy.
\n It is simply that the definitions of reading and writing are expanded to take
\n into account more complex and robust ways of reading and writing—and
\n students are asked to engage in this process of reframing what it means to
\n be literate.<\/p>\nLet me share three examples. Defining Literacy in a Digital World asks students
\n to create a working definition of literacy that they refine and explore as
\n they continue their investigation of the texts that they interact with at home,
\n at school, and in other settings. The lesson Star-Crossed Lovers Online: Romeo
\n and Juliet<\/i> for a Digital
\n Age invites students to use their understanding of modern technologies to make
\n active meaning of an older text by creating their own modern interpretation
\nof specific events from the drama. Campaigning for Fair Use: Public Service Announcements
\n on Copyright Awareness asks students to explore a range of resources on fair
\n use and copyright then design their own audio public service announcements
\n to be broadcast over the school’s public address system or posted as
\n podcasts. <\/p>\nThese three lessons engage students in standard literacy activities: persuasive
\n writing, research, literary analysis, and expository writing and analysis.
\n All three engage students in activities that focus on learning through language
\nand learning about language. Literacy frames the lessons. Yet at the same time,
\n students clearly engage in technological literacy activities. Focusing on literacy
\n does not mean that we forget about the technologies. We have simply reframed
\nthe way that we address them.<\/p>\nThis is the work that we must do to create sustainable educational environments.
\n We must foreground the underlying educational values—in our case, the
\n importance of literacy education and a literate community—rather than
\n focusing on the various strategies and technologies that we employ in pursuit
\nof those values.<\/p>\nIn short: Don’t Think of the Technologies: Know your pedagogical values
\n and focus on the basic underlying literacy goals that frame your work.<\/p>\n<\/b><\/p>\n
Works Cited<\/h1>\n
Halliday, M. 1980. Three Aspects of Children’s Language Development: Learning
\n language, Learning through Language, Learning about Language. In Oral and
\n Written Language Development Research<\/b>, Y. Goodman, M.H. Haussler, and D.
\n Strickland (Eds.), 7-19. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.<\/p>\nShort, K. 1999. The Search for "Balance" in a Literature-rich Curriculum.
\n In Theory into Practice<\/i>, 38(3), 130-137.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here’s what I have. I no longer know it if makes sense. I feel it sure as hell seems senseless w\/o the pictures, but I don’t have the time to format and embed them. I’m also worried that the last bit is just redundant meandering and nonsense. To be honest, I’m not sure that any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-journal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqzI8-af","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}