Lecture Note 1: EDUC 95 Building and Enhancing New Literacies across the Curriculum
Introduction to 21st Century Literacies
Objectives:
After the completion of the chapter, students should be able to:
a. Discuss various definitions of the traditional and conventional literacy;
b. Explain and expand views of literacy and skills in the 21st Century
c. Build appreciation to the 21st century curriculum meant to cater 21st century learners’
demands; and
d. Create cooperative analysis of traditional concept of literacy to modern view of literacy
The advent of technology plays a major role in the process of teaching and learning in this so
called Information Age or Digital Age. The greatest challenge however is the call of the adequate
and appropriate literacies that this generation needed and is mostly responsible of.
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 its past nuances will
give us a solid foundation in exploring and discussing the “new” literacies of the 21 st century and
why possessing them is now mandatory for both teachers and students and students in all levels
of education.
This chapter explores several definitions of literacy and what being literate means in the
multiplicity of contexts in the 21st century, with the goal of raising awareness in readers who
might be presently be unaware of the perspectives on literacies even as they attempt to teach
the new literacies to their students.
The word “literacy” stems from the word “literate,” which means appeared in the 15th century
and is in turn derived from the Latin word litteratus, 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.
Lecture Note 1: EDUC 95 Building and Enhancing New Literacies across the Curriculum
Traditional or Conventional Literacy
Miller (1973) divides this conventional concept of literacy into three subcategories:
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.
Example:
The word “b-a-s-a” forms the word basa in Filipino, even without understanding what it means.
2. Comprehensive Literacy – it is the ability to understand the meaning of what is being read.
Example:
To capitalize on the example above, this would be like knowing that basa can mean either “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.
Example:
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 the 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.
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.
 Schelechty (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.
As the rest of this chapter will argue, this synchronicity between decoding textual symbols and
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.”
Lecture Note 1: EDUC 95 Building and Enhancing New Literacies across the Curriculum
Expanded Views of Literacy
Despite the popularity of American films in the Philippines, many Filipinos cannot follow the
actors’ dialogue, and thus resort to guessing the overall story based on the actions onscreen.
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 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), Banton
(2007), and Mkandawire, Simooya-Mudenda, and Cheelo (2017), which acknowledged that –as
we have just pointed out-modern views, appear to equate literacy with knowledge.
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 that
context 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 of 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
Lecture Note 1: EDUC 95 Building and Enhancing New Literacies across the Curriculum
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 is not a new skill-but being able to do so when there are a hundred
similar documents available to you online is.
Case in point: throughout history, humans have communicated on level 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 the indigenous peoples of North
America.
In the victory 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 spoke 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 a “visual literacy” to
understand the message 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
where accuracy, validity and reliability of the messages we interpret form the basis for some very
important personal and collective decision-making.
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 manipulate 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 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 on 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.
Lecture Note 1: EDUC 95 Building and Enhancing New Literacies across the Curriculum
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 the 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 do 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.
To better address the need for teachers to be literate in these new literacies, this book
discusses and explores them in the ensuing chapters, namely:
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.
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.
Lecture Note 1: EDUC 95 Building and Enhancing New Literacies across the Curriculum
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.
Ecoliteracy and Artistic and Creative Literacy explore the emerging 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.
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.
Enhance
One of the ways students can be trained in the new literacies is to engage them in digital
storytelling, wherein the students take part in the traditional process of storytelling, but with
some digital enhancements. They choose a topic, conduct research, write a script, develop a
story, and through the use of multimedia. Create something that can be played online or on a
computer.
Digital Storytelling can be broken down into following six steps:
1. Writing — Write about a particular story from your life. The story must have a central theme.
2. Developing a Script — Develop a script that identifies the important points of your story.
3. Creating a Storyboard — Create a storyboard that visually organizes the flow of the story.
Assign a particular image to portions of the script.
4. Locating Multimedia — Use search engines to locate photos and videos. Photos and videos
from one's personal collection may also be used.
5. Creating the Digital Story — Record the voice over for your movie. Create the movie using the
software that is available to you.
6. Sharing and Uploading — Share your story in class and upload your work online.
Lecture Note 1: EDUC 95 Building and Enhancing New Literacies across the Curriculum
Reflect
Wrap Up
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Traditional Literacy is the ability to read and write.
The traditional or conventional concept of literacy can be divided into sub-categories:
o Literacy, which is the ability to recognize letters and words;
o Comprehension Literacy, which is the ability to understand the meaning of what
is being read; and
o Functional/Practical Literacy, which is the ability to read written materials needed
to perform everyday vocational tasks.
Modem 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, media and cyber/digital literacy, ecoliteracy, artistic
and creative literacy, and critical literacy.
Questions to Ponder
Read the questions and instructions carefully. Write your answers in the space provided.
1. Given the traditional/conventional concept of literacy, how literate are you?
2. How deep is your level of comprehension?
3. As a pre-service teacher? What kind of written materials should you be able to read and
understand? Are you reading these materials? How well?
4. Which of the literacies are you knowledgeable in? Which of the new literacies do you lack
knowledge in?
5. Although reading education in the Philippines aims to develop Functional/Practical
literacy in learners, what level of literacy is being developed when classroom practices
focus more on memorialization rather than on understanding and application?
Evaluate
Read the questions and instructions carefully.
1. Compare and contrast the traditional concept of literacy to the modern view of literacy.
2. Describe the changes in the 21st century that have led to the rise of new literacies.
3. What teaching strategies and forms of assessment could you use to help develop functional
literacy?
4. Lesson Planning and Lesson Demonstration: Prepare and deliver a lesson that incorporates
some of the new literacies.