Doug Belshaw's Open Educational Thinkering - Latest Comments in Forms of Literacy

Re: Forms of Literacy

Tracy W — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:37:38 -0000

By many, literacy is no longer seen as merely the ability to ‘read and write’, but instead to make sense of the world through wider competencies and abilities.

Is this a good thing? Does not redefining the word literacy to cover more topics merely lose us specifity? What's gained by redefining "literacy" as something wider than reading and writing?
For centuries there have been ways for making sense of the world that are more than merely the ability to read and write. For example, maps (useful for navigation), technical drawings (used by engineers), the conventions of mathematics (eg what the equal sign means), the command of speech-making skills or oratory, the scientific method. I think all of these are very valuable, but I don't see what is gained by redefining literacy to include all of them and anything else you can think up.

And I have some doubts about some of the claims, for example you quote Kress in 1998 as saying "The problem is that, until recently, ‘visualisation [was] seen as an unproblematic kind of ‘translation’ from one semiotic mode into another - as a simplistic kind of translation from one language to another’ "

Kress doesn't say who was seing this as an unproblematic kind of translation, but this view was certainly not true of specialists in graphic design. I took a high school exam in technical drawing in NZ in 1992 and the course had been offered for decades. My engineering university programme included as a compulsory course more technical drawing, and particularly good examples of visulisation have been admired for decades - for example the first diagrammatic map of the London Underground (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wik.... And I note that Harry Beck drew on previous mapping experience. If all of society regarded visualisation as unproblematic, why so much emphasis on teaching it, and on teaching it in university engineering schools?
Of course there may have been people in society who regarded it as unproblematic, and it may be that those people are the ones who Kress was referring to. But when it comes to *anything* in education you can always find someone in society who thinks it's dead simple, either because they are a natural at it or because they don't know anything at all about it. Merely referring to the uninformed doesn't tell us much about society.

And I am curious about the comment by Tyner that visual literacy shouldn't be separated from information literacy or media literacy. Does he provide in his report more detailed explanations of why he thinks this is so? In high school my English teachers were supposed to teach us visual literacy, but the gap between their knowledge and the feedback they could provide and that that my graphic design teacher was providing was vast. For example the graphic design teacher could list all the different distortions introduced by various projections onto paper, and expected us to be able to identify them to, the English teachers never even used the word projection. How does Tyner address this?

Re: Forms of Literacy

Guest — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:10:25 -0000

Yep, that's me, but I wanted more privacy ;-)

Re: Forms of Literacy

Guest — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:51:44 -0000

The quote comes from Ch 2 "Philosophical Detection" (I think) in her book "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" Here's a link to Rule of Fundamentality entry in the Ayn Rand Lexicon
http://www.aynrandlexicon.c...
Search for the book on Google books, then search for "fundamental" and "derivative" (the excerpts they give you are severely limited. If you can, get the book).
"I think the problem is that there *is* a 'fundamental' out there, but that we're referring to it in derivative terms. " So the fundamental is NOT literacy, you think? I found Rand's distinction of fundamentals from derivatives (and especially her stress on the importance of making this distinction) very useful. You may or may not find it helpful.

Re: Forms of Literacy

Doug Belshaw — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:46:42 -0000

Thanks Marc, I wasn't aware of Ayn's discussion of this. Have you a link to this?

I think the problem is that there *is* a 'fundamental' out there, but that we're referring to it in derivative terms. I don't actually think that 'digital literacy' is a good descriptor and that we'll probably come to call it something different. Exactly what is kind of the point of my whole thesis!

Re: Forms of Literacy

Doug Belshaw — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:44:19 -0000

Marc, I have to say that I think you've conflated a number of issues here. *All* words are human constructs and English especially is far from being a 'pure' language. Surely, if a term adequately describes something that we hold to be important then it should be used? That would be the Pragmatist's response, anyway...

As for the avatar, you must have interacted with http://disqus.com at some point, which powers this blog. Why, is that not you? ;-)

Re: Forms of Literacy

Guest — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:48:12 -0000

My favourite philosopher at the moment, Ayn Rand, has exactly the words I was groping for to express my uneasiness with "digital literacy": "all human knowledge has a hierarchical structure... [we must] learn to distinguish the fundamental from the derivative." Is digital literacy a fundamental, or a derivative? And what are the consequences of learning/teaching a derivative while ignoring the fundamental? To whose benefit is it to push a derivative before a fundamental? Or even, to push a derivative AS IF IT WAS a fundamental?

Re: Forms of Literacy

Guest — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:47:54 -0000

Re "numeracy" and "literacy". Reading the School Gate blog entry
http://timesonline.typepad....
helped me clarify why I think this is a red herring (i.e. bull***t): what is the fundamental skill? ""I have seen children who struggle with calculation transformed by the use of number lines. We have probably all used them in some form or another, for example, using a ruler to help us add one number to another. Today all children learn with a number line - first encountering them in reception when counting on, adding on or taking away." Then the basic skill is not the "numeracy" or learning how to use the number line; it's counting and addition. It's the use of the word "numeracy" or "number lines" which suggest or imply (or are used to fool people into thinking that) counting and basic arithmetic are "old hat" and no longer apply. But they do. Driving a truck is not the same as driving a passenger car, but it is still driving! If you can drive a car, you are already familiar with many basic aspects of driving a truck. It's not a completely different skill, and someone who tells you that driving is history and what people need to learn now is TRUCKING are either ignorant or trying to fool you (probably into paying for an expensive course in trucking in 25 lessons, the first 20 of which will actually consist in teaching you DRIVING but everyone will be most careful never to use that word.) And how do I change the photo that somehow got associated with my name on these 'ere comment thingies?

Re: Forms of Literacy

Doug Belshaw — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:35:17 -0000

Marc, you're absolutely right about the 'red herring' bit. See my
comments about 'horseless carriage', etc. The concept of 'literacy'
doesn't work in the digital arena. These blog posts are signposts
towards the main bit of my thesis which will discuss more along the
lines of 'electracy'. I'm planning (at the moment) to conclude that
there *is* no such thing as 'digital literacy', but some such
construct may be 'good in the way of belief' (to follow my Pragmatist
methodology). :-)

Re: Forms of Literacy

Guest — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:05:23 -0000

I'm still not convinced this hunt for the ultimate definition of "literacy" isn't a giant red herring. Perhaps "literacy" meant being able to read and write, but even in those pre-digital days, critical thinking and the ability to make connections and understand cultural references were all considered important, even if they weren't given an umbrella name like "literacy". Those skills are still important in the digital age; the digital age hasn't made them any more or less important, I would argue. I'd agree that "writing" means something new with the advent of web-publishing for everyone thanks to Blogger, WordPress, etc.: when you have the option to add media and links, it matters whether you use this or not.

On a slightly different tack, Stokes writes In education’s continuing mission of meeting the needs of learners: Gatto would argue that never was compulsory schooling's mission. And skills that may have been appropriate for the medieval clerk, are giving way to skills of analysis and innovation that are considered desirable in today’s modern cultures "Considered desirable"... by whom? "Proficiency with words and numbers is insufficient ". Insufficient... for whom? Who decides? Literacy is not a natural phenomenon, but man-made. It's important to examine the values that underpin literacy, in order to make up our minds whether those values are our own, or did we absorb them uncritically?