C&T 5037 Reflection What is Literacy? As I read the many discussions of the powerful question, What is literacy? and thought about the many definitions literacy can have, forms it can take, and factors it can involve, I made many connections as well as realizations about literacy. One of the most prominent ideas related to literacy is its relationship to identity. In his article, What is Literacy? Gee discusses discourse as an identity kit and the idea of literacy through acquisition as opposed to, or balanced with, literacy through learning (Gee). The suggestion that many children have conflicting discourses of school and home in their lives, means that they subsequently have different identities affecting how they acquire or learn across those places. This idea in itself is a challenge to the definition of literacy. In the article, What we mean by multiple literacies, Bloome and Enciso further examined such places and spaces where literacy occurs and relates to identity. We interact with literacy in all kinds of spaces in our everyday lives, in and outside of home and school. If then we are to understand a place, we have to understand the diverse literacy practices that enable and constrain its economic, social, cultural, political, and educational life and reciprocally we have to understand these places as complex activities and movements through place and time (Bloome & Enciso). As we recognize multiple literacies across spaces, we have to understand relationships among people and texts and participation in shaping literacies becomes even more important than acquiring literacies (Bloome & Enciso). Multiple places involve multiple complex literacy activities, in which culture and identity matter and literacy is shaped.
When exploring the question of what is literacy, I also found reoccurring
importance placed on the shift to increasingly multimodal, complex, and intertextual texts with which our children engage (Carrington). In her article, Im in a bad mood. Lets go shopping, Carrington points out that print literacy is no longer sufficient enough to ensure successful participation in civil and social life and being literate is about having the skills and knowledge with which to participate in and transform ones social and cultural context (Carrington). In Carrington challenges us to think of literacy in a broader context, which she calls glocalized literacy, in which even toys children play with are texts from which they can make meaning. I agree with her idea that glocalized literacy would equip children with the necessary cultural and social literacies to navigate successfully through knowledge and power scapes. In her article, The textual shift, Walsh adds that we need to understand how readers construct meaning from these multimodal texts to inform relevant pedagogy (Walsh). Finally, in Historical Considerations, Willis reminds us that, as teachers, we can work with these broader definitions of literacy and purposes for literacy that respect differences within culture and identities. She urges us that now is the time to dismantle and deconstruct definitions and purposes of literacy (Willis). Willis states, there is no singular history of literacy, nor is there a singular definition of literacy and whether literacy is acquired (Gee) or shaped, (Bloome & Enciso), I have found that all these ideas surrounding literacy relate to three main themes: power, culture and identity. As teachers, our awareness and mindfulness of all considerations around literacy and the identities our students live will help us to be part of the ongoing process of deconstructing and reconstructing the definition of literacy.