Bachelor of Secondary Education Department

Reaccredited Level IV by the Accrediting Agency of Chartered Colleges and Universities

of the Philippines

PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT
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COURSE
EDUC 206: Building and Enhancing New
Literacies Across the Curriculum

DEVELOPER AND THEIR

BACKGROUND Ms. Sheila Marie O. David
Faculty, Tarlac State University
College of Teacher Education
smdavid@tsu.edu.ph

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course introduces the concepts of new
literacies in the 21st century as an evolving social
phenomena and shared cultural practices across
learning areas. The 21st century literacies shall include
(a) globalization and multicultural literacy; (b) social
literacy; (c) media literacy; (d) financial literacy; (e) cyber
literacy/ digital literacy; (f) eco-literacy and (g) arts and
creativity literacy. Field-based interdisciplinary
explorations and other teaching strategies shall be used
in this course.
COURSE OUTLINE
Week 1: TSU Vision, Mission, Core Values, and Class
Orientation
Week 2: Introduction to 21st Century Literacies
Week 3-5: Globalization and Cultural and Multicultural
Literacies
Week 6: Social Literacy
Week 7-8: Financial Literacy
Week 9: Midterm Examination
Week 10-12: Media and Cyber or Digital Literacies
Week 13: Ecological Literacy
Week 14-15: Artistic and Creative Literacy
Week 16-17: Critical Literacy
Week 18: Final Examination

CHAPTER #
01
TITLE
INTRODUCTION TO 21ST CENTURY LITERACIES

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RATIONALE
This is the first chapter of EDUC
206-Building and Enhancing New
Literacies Across the Curriculum. It
centers on the fundamental concepts
and views in understanding the 21st
Century Literacies, the essential skills in today’s society.
Specifically, this chapter is clustered into three key
discussions: (a) Traditional or Conventional Literacy; (b)
Expanded Views of Literacy; and (c) Literacy in the 21st
century.

INSTRUCTION TO THE USERS

This module serves as a guide in understanding
one unit or chapter under EDUC 206. It consists of
the following sections:
(a) introductory guide: to establish common ground
and familiarize you with the course title,
description along with the rationale of this
chapter/module;
(b) pre-test: to gauge your prior knowledge about
the lesson;
(c) learning objectives: to set the expected
outcomes or skills to be learned in this chapter;
(d) content (with preparatory, developmental and
closure activities): to impart knowledge, skills,
and abilities through this mode prepared by the
instructor;
(e) synthesis/generalization: to outline the focal
points that you need to remember in this
chapter;
(f) evaluation: to check your level of understanding
of the concepts explored in this chapter;
(g) assignment/agreement: to encourage the
continuity of learning; and
(h) references: to enlist the available resources
used for this chapter and give due credit to the
intellectual properties of the authors.

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 You can re-read the chapter/module anytime.
However, the activities should be answered or
completed based on the schedule and/or
instructions set by the instructor.
The activities are set to be recorded and/or graded
by the instructor.
Should you have questions, difficulties, or
clarifications, feel free to contact the instructor.

PRE-TEST
Let us do a SELF-CHECK!
With literacy as the core of this
course, try to recall and answer the
following questions, which in one way
or another, may have been a part of
your high school education:
1. How do you define literacy?
2. What are the 21st century literacies?
3. What are some examples of literacy skills?
Write your answers in a clean sheet of paper. You
may answer this for a maximum of 20 minutes. Once you
are done with the pre-test, you may proceed to check the
learning objectives for this chapter.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Upon completion of this chapter, the student will
be able to:
Share insights on the traditional and conventional
literacy;
Compare and contrast the expanded views of
literacy;
Point out the features of literacy in the 21st
century; and
Show self-reliance while working independently to
complete this chapter.

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 CONTENT
In a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the
PREPARATORY ACTIVITIES
highest and 1 being the lowest, how
literate do you think you are? Explain
your rating in a sheet of paper. This is good for 10
minutes.
If your answer ranges from 7-10, then you are
confident with your literacy competence. Meanwhile if
you gave yourself a rating of 5-6, then you are not
confident with your literacy skills and feel that your skills
are only average or adequate. Otherwise, if you gave
yourself lower than 5, you believe that you have not
acquired the skills necessary to become literate at your
age, and you need thorough training and/or lessons to
muster the courage to consider yourself as literate.
In this technologically advanced world, it is vital for
young people (like you)—the next generation of young
professionals—to be at par and be equipped in terms of
literacies.

DEVELOPMENTAL ACTIVITIES

In this chapter, our focus is on the fundamentals of 21st century literacies. You may review the
answers that you provided for your pre-test and verify their accuracy while reading this section.

HEAR YE, HEAR YE! In the previous section, you described LITERACY and rated your
competence. Why do we have to dig deeper about literacy, and not focus on your
specialization instead? Will literacy benefit you and your family? What do you think?

A. TRADITIONAL OR CONVENTIONAL LITERACY

Literacy is defined by dictionaries as the state of being able to read and write (Literacy,
Literate, n.d.). Although it is the ultimate thesis of this chapter that such a traditional
definition no longer suffices in the information age, a thorough understanding of literacy and
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its past nuances will give us a solid foundation in exploring and discussing the “new”
literacies of the 21st century and why possessing them is now mandatory for both teachers
and students in all levels of education.
The word “literacy” stems from the word “literate,” which first appeared in the 15th century
and is in turn derived from the Latin word literatus, meaning “(a person) marked with letters”
– that is, “distinguished or identified by letters” – and it carried with it the idea that such a
person was cultured and educated. Since the subjects of the time (e.g., grammar, logic,
arithmetic, geometry, etc.) all had written texts (which were composed of letters) that had
to be studied, the ability to read and write was therefore of prime importance, leading to the
strong association of being “literate” with the ability to read and write.

Miller (1973) divides this conventional concept of literacy into three sub-categories:
1. Basic literacy – It is the ability to correspond visual shapes to spoken sounds in order
to decode written materials and translate them into oral language. Simply put, it is the
ability to recognize letters and words. This would be akin to recognizing that the
sequence of letters “b-a-s-a” forms the word basa in Filipino, even without
understanding what it means.
2. Comprehension Literacy – It is the ability to understand the meaning of what is being
read. To capitalize on the example above, this would be like knowing that basa can
mean either “to read” or “to be wet.”
3. Functional or Practical Literacy – It is the ability to read (i.e., decode and
comprehend) written materials needed to perform everyday vocational tasks. This is
the equivalent of reading the text “Ang bata ay nagbabasa.” and being able to
understand that basa here refers to reading and not to being wet.
Based on this conventional view of literacy, we notice two things for reading (and therefore
literacy) to exist: (1) a text (consisting of symbols and grammar) to be read; and (2) a
meaning or message being communicated by the text for the reader to extract. Without a
text, there would be nothing to read; without meaning, the text is reduced to series of
incomprehensible doodles.

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It should therefore be noted that even in Miller’s definition of literacy, the act of reading
implies a level of understanding. Simply knowing how to say a word (or a series of words)
is not the same as being able to understand what it means. Without understanding of the
meaning of the words, reading has not taken place. Based on this, Schlechty (2001) defines
the concept of functional illiteracy as the state of being able to read, but not well enough to
manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level.
This synchronicity between decoding textual symbols and being able to extract and
understand their meaning is a necessary part of being literate, even as the new contexts of
the 21st century change the nature of what the “text” is, and what it means to “read” and
“write.”

B. EXPANDED VIEWS OF LITERACY

Despite the ubiquity of the traditional view of literacy,

Roberts (1995) notes that “in the past fifty years,
hundreds of definitions of ‘literacy’ have been advanced
by scholars, adult literacy workers, and programme
planners,” with even the United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2006)
acknowledging that literacy as a concept has proven to
be complex and dynamic, it being continually defined
and interpreted in multiple ways.
In 2004, UNESCO formally defined literacy as “the ability to identify, understand, interpret,
create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with
varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to
achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their
community and wider society.”
Note that “reading” does not appear in UNESCO’s definition of literacy. instead, literacy has
taken on a definition more akin to “knowing about something and what to do with it.”
In this vein, Mkandawire (2018) more succinctly posits that literacy is “a form of knowledge,
competence, and skills in a particular field or area,” being supported by UNESCO (2006),
Barton (2007), and Mkandawire, Simooya-Mudenda, & Cheelo (2017), which
acknowledged that –as we have just pointed out –modern views appear to equate literacy
with knowledge.

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This shift in the definition of literacy from “reading and writing” to “knowledge” is especially
important as we explore the “new” literacies of the 21st century that seem far-removed from
the contexts upon which conventional literacy is based.
When viewed from the perspective of conventional/traditional literacy, the concept of “new”
literacies is a bit of a misnomer, as even these new literacies of the 21st century make
generous use of being able to read and write, rather than supplant them as skills necessary
for survival. However, when viewed from the perspective of literacy as knowledge, the new
literacies begin to make sense as they are the “skills and bodies of knowledge” that are
necessary for survival and productivity in the information age.
In the same vein of reasoning, the new literacies are not “new” per se –as in the sense that
they never existed before. Rather, we consider them to be new because the contexts in
which old skills and knowledge are being employed are new, both in nature and in scope.
The ability to translate textual information into images is not a new skill, but it is the ability
to do so in a way that is concise, complete, and clear that is certainly new, given that it will
be how ninety percent of the population will be informed on the issue. Similarly, being able
to verify the truth-value and veracity of a document is not a new skill –but being able to do
so when there are a hundred similar documents available online.
Case in point: Throughout history, humans have communicated on
levels apart from the spoken and written word, for example,
visually, using the long-distance communication system of smoke
signals used by the ancient Chinese, the ancient Greeks, and
indigenous peoples of North America.
In the Victorian era, there was such a thing as the “Language of
Flowers,” where the kind, color, and arrangement of a bouquet of
flowers were used to communicate messages that could not otherwise
be spoken aloud in Victorian society (Greenaway, 1884). For example,
a bouquet of oak leaves (representing strength), purple roses (sorrow),
white lilies (resurrection), and pale-yellow tulips and rosemary
(memory or remembrance) would altogether communicate a message
of sympathy, usually over the death of a loved one.
Successfully interpreting these “visual languages” required a kind of “visual literacy” to
understand the message of being presented and to manage the information encoded
therein –skills which, as following chapters will further reveal, are coming into use again in
the 21st century literacies. The difference is that now we are not analyzing smoke signals or
bouquets, but rather sounds, texts, and images from a hundred different sources at a nearly
non-stop rate to the point accuracy, validity, and reliability of the messages we interpret
form the basis for some very important personal and collective decision-making.
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Another difference involves the question of necessity: One did not need to be literate in the
language of flowers to live a fruitful and fulfilled life in Victorian-era England, but to be not
media or digitally literate in the 21st century makes one vulnerable to manipulation by those
who are, and such manipulation can easily cost an individual time, money, property, and
even life.
These so-called “new” literacies arose from the increasing availability of communication
technologies that were once unavailable to the average individual. Technologies like
blogging and vlogging, social networking, and even text-messaging change and expand
both the extent and the form of our communication –blending text, sound, and images in
ways unforeseen and unprecedented (Richardson, 2014). Never before have the opinions
of a twelve year-old child in an unheard-of town in an unheard-of country been available for
everyone on earth to read and hear, and while adults might scoff at a child’s opinions, that
child might have more than a thousand online subscribers who certainly think his or her
opinions are important, maybe even more so than the opinions of adults.
Simply put, three things have been critical in the rise of the new literacies:
1. Increased Reach – We are communicating with more people, from more diverse
cultures, across vaster distances than ever before.
2. Increased Means of Communication – We are communicating in more ways and at
faster speeds than ever before.
3. Increased Breadth of Content – We are communicating about more things than ever
before.
How do we work together with people of different cultures who might have vastly different
perspectives on communication, work ethics, values, religious beliefs, and worldviews?
What do we when some of these might be mutually exclusive to our own? In an age where
information is power –where knowing more and knowing first can spell the difference
between success and failure –how do we leverage both current and emergent technologies
so that our endeavors are both productive and profitable? Moreover, how do we navigate
and manage the veritable minefield of information that was once considered taboo and
private and is now online, for all the world to see and judge, whether we like it or not?
Answering such complex questions requires new sets of skills and knowledge –ones that
our school system have never had to teach before. With these changes in with whom, how,
and why we communicate, new literacies, are required not only to make sense of the
changes, but also to use these new technologies and paradigms in meaningful and
productive ways –something required not only of students, but of teachers as well.

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To better address the need for teachers to be literate in these new literacies, this course
discusses and explores them in the ensuing chapters, namely:
a. Globalization and Multicultural Literacy discusses how our increasing ability to
communicate with almost anyone, anywhere, in real time requires new skills and
attitudes in interacting with people with cultures, perspectives, worldviews, and
priorities different from our own, particularly with the end-view of not only peace and
understanding, but also mutual benefit and productivity.
b. The chapter on Social and Financial Literacies meanwhile explores the need for the
ability to navigate our own social networks – of both the online and off-line variety –to
not only communicate clearly, but also to leverage resources which we ourselves might
not possess. At the same time, the chapter addresses the notorious problem of short-
sightedness in Filipino culture regarding personal finances and how this must be
addressed at an increasingly earlier age to help mitigate the ever-widening gap
between the rich and the poor.
c. Media and Cyber/Digital Literacies explore the emerging need to locate, verify, and
ultimately manage online information, especially in an age where information is power
and where having the right (and wrong) information and the ability to communicate it
with others and use it to address real-world problems easily spell the difference
between both personal and career success and failure.
d. Ecoliteracy and Artistic and Creative Literacy explore the merging demands for
knowing how to effectively and sustainably manage the natural resources that our
increased industrialization and demands for productivity are so rapidly eating up. The
chapter also explores how this increase in productivity also brings with it an increased
demand for arts and aesthetics and the need to develop ways of effectively
communicating through the creative arts in industries dominated by objective data.
e. Finally, Critical Literacy addresses the increasing need to discern the underlying (and
often tacit) messages behind the new “texts” of the 21st century, particularly in an ever-
increasingly multicultural society where ideas, cultures, and ideologies vie with one
another for power and dominance in the minds of the masses.

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CLOSURE ACTIVITIES
The nature of literacy is
exemplified in this chapter. Additional
information and readings may also be
accessed in the class’ official Dropbox
folder should you be interested in extending your
knowledge about the lesson.
Based on the lesson presented, what are the key
areas to highlight and remember? What can you say
about the traditional and conventional literacy? Explicate
your thoughts by writing a reflection paper about the
chapter. You may use a short bond paper or yellow paper
for this activity. This is good for 1 hour.
SYNTHESIS / GENERALIZATION
 Traditional Literacy is the ability to read and
write.
 The traditional or conventional concept of
literacy can be divided into sub-categories:
1. Basic Literacy, which is the ability to
recognize letters and words;
2. Comprehension Literacy, which is the
ability to understand the meaning of what is
being read; and
3. Functional/Practical Literacy, which is the
ability to read written materials needed to
perform everyday vocational tasks.
 Modern views of literacy equate it with
knowledge.
 New literacies have risen due to increased
reach, increased means of communication, and
increased breadth of content. These new
literacies are globalization and multicultural
literacy, social and financial literacy, and media
and cyber/digital literacy, ecoliteracy, artistic
and creative literacy and critical literacy.

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EVALUATION
Get a whole sheet of yellow paper or short
bond paper, and accomplish the tasks
below. Make sure that your answers are the
product of your own understanding and not lifted
nor consulted from outside sources, as the
instructor may run your answers in a Plagiarism
Checker/ Detector software. This is good for 1
hour. Do not forget to submit your output to your
instructor on the prescribed schedule.
1. Discuss the expanded views of literacy and
compare these views. (10 points)
2. Describe the features of literacy in the 21st
century and organize them into an outline form.
(20 points)
ASSIGNMENT / AGREEMENT
List at least ten terms that you
associate with GLOBALIZATION, and
organize them into a diagram. Plot the
diagram in a short bond paper. Do not forget
to submit your ouput on the prescribed schedule by your
instructor.
REFERENCES
Main Textbook:
Alata, E.J.P. and Ignacio, E.J.T. (2019). Building and
Enhancing New Literacies Across the Curriculum, First
ed. Metro Manila, Philippines: REX Book Store.
Other References:
International Reading Association (2009). New
Literacies and 21st Century Technologies: A Position
Statement of the International Reading Association.
Newark, Delaware, USA: International Reading
Association. Retrieved June 27, 2020 from
https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-
source/where-we-stand/new-literacies-21st-century-
position-statement.pdf?sfvrsn=6
SEAMEO INNOTECH (2012). GURO 21 Course 1
Module 1: Equipping Teachers with Knowledge, Skills,
Attitudes, and Values for the 21st Century. FLSU-
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Flexible Learning Solutions Unit. Retrieved June 27,
2020 from
http://iflex.innotech.org/GURO21/module1/index.html
SEAMEO INNOTECH (2012). GURO 21 Course 1
Required Readings. FLSU-Flexible Learning Solutions
Unit. Retrieved June 27, 2020 from
http://iflex.innotech.org/GURO21/References/GURO21
%20Course%201%20Required%20Readings.pdf

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