Thinking about the similarities and differences between new literacy studies and digital aspects of literacy from a sociocultural perspective (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Mills, 2010; Coiro, 2003; Leu et al, 2013)

Thinking about the similarities and differences between new literacy studies and digital aspects of literacy from a sociocultural perspective ((Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Mills, 2010; Coiro, 2003; Leu et al, 2013)

A socio-cultural perspective brings the focus to the social and cultural aspects involved in literacy, and not “merely” consider decoding, using strategies, and building meaning as part of it.

Sociocultural theories of language and literacy are not always about reading in the traditional sense of decoding a text and extracting meaning from it. Instead, literacy, in sociocultural terms, emphasizes the social worlds and cultural identities of students and views the act of making meaning as always embedded within a social context. (Hammerberg, 2004 p.648)

According to Lankshear and Knobel (2003, p. 8) “‘Literacy bits’ do not exist apart from the social practices in which they are embedded and within which they are acquired.” So, “being literate involves much more than knowing how to operate the language system. The cultural and critical facets of knowledge          integral to being literate are considerable (p. 12).

This approach is more concerned with the social aspects of literacy, the cultural practices in which literacy takes place and how the literacy agencies (not only, nor mainly, school) act. They “regard literacy as a repertoire of changing practices for communicating purposefully in multiple social and cultural contexts. Knowledge and literacy practices are primarily seen as constructions of particular social groups, rather than attributed to individual cognition alone” (Mills, 2010, p. 247).

The New literacies perspective, on the other hand, focus the skills, the strategies, the texts and the tasks. This is a more cognitive perspective where thinking, reading, writing and building meaning from the text is considered as the main points.

The authors of this report [RAND, 2002] defined reading comprehension as “the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language” (Coiro, 2003 p. 459).

Textual and cognitive aspects of literacy are essential.

New text formats (e.g., hypertext and interactive multiple media that require new thought processes); new reader elements (e.g., new purposes or motivations, new types of background knowledge, high-level metacognitive skills); and new activities (e.g., publishing multimedia projects, verifying credibility of images, participating in online synchronous exchanges) (Coiro, 2003, p. 459).

Social activities are taken into account, not in a broad sense as in the socialcultural perspective, but as a way to promote meaning making, communication and learning.

As far as I understand, none of the perspectives ignores or rejects the importance of the aspects of the other approach. It is mainly a matter of focus.

As similarities between the two approaches, we can point the expansion of the notion of text and, consequently, the expanded notion of text. Text is not only written products, but multimodal, participatory, communicative events.

Dynamicity is also a concept that we can find in both approaches. The sociocultural approach considering literacies as something that changes “on the basis of the social and cultural context in which communication occurs”, making the notion of identity and competence fluid. (Hammerberg, 2004, p. 649). And the New Literacies considering the “deitic” aspect of the literacy, caused by the fast pace in which new technologies changes, creates new social practices and requires a redefinition of what it means to be literate (Leu at al, 2013, p. 1160)

Another similarity seems to be the idea that literacy involves active construction (reception and production) of meaning and the “use of cultural tools, symbols, texts, and ways of thinking in an active process of "meaning making and reality construction" […] To be literate in a particular setting involves specific situations, purposes, audiences, texts, and tasks. (Hammerberg, 2004, p. 651)

They also seem to agree that digital literacies are more demanding than print literacies, or demands different ways of dealing with the communicative situations it affords.

Innovative digital practices are significantly more complex and varied than traditional literacy curricula and externally imposed standardized assessments currently permit (Street, 2005b). Consequently, many features of new literacy practices remain “untapped” by standardized literacy tests: self-monitoring online reading, collaborative online writing, digital media production, critical media literacy, and hybridization of textual practices (Mills, 2010, p.  262).

Both perspectives are interesting and present very important aspects related to digital literacy. As someone that has a background in linguistics, I am more used to the new literacies approach. I need to consider social aspects, because in Brazil the sociocultural differences are very big and they have influence on text interpretations and on the readers familiarity with computers, programs and apps. However, I usually focus on the characteristics of the text, on reading skills and strategies as well as the comprehension built by the reader. The way we find to deal with sociocultural differences is to select students from the same school or people of a similar socioeconomic context, or make different groups of subjects.

For example, in some research we developed, we consider that different life experiences will lead to different interpretations, that textual genres requires a different approach, and that each reading situation (aim/purpose) requires different gestures, strategies. We mainly want to know if the readers can find information, how they deal with the interface, the design, as well as other multimodal aspects of the text, and how they build meaning based on digital texts.

References:

Coiro, J. (2003). Reading Comprehension on the Internet: Expanding our understanding of reading comprehension to encompass new literacies. The Reading Teacher, 56(5), 458-464.

Hammerberg, D. D. (2004). Comprehension instruction for socioculturally diverse classrooms: A review of what we know. Reading Teacher, 57(7), 648-661.

Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2003). From ‘reading’ to ‘new literacy studies.” In New literacies: Changing knowledge in the classroom (pp. 1-22). Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

Leu, D. J., Jr., Kinzer, C.K., Coiro, J., Castek, J. (2013). New literacies: A dual-level theory of the changing nature of literacy, instruction, and assessment. In R.B. Ruddell & D. Alvermann (Eds.), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, Sixth Edition, (pp. 1150-1181). Newark, DE: International Reading Association

Mills, K. A. (2010). A review of the “digital turn” in the New Literacy Studies. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 246-271.