EVOLUTION OF THE LITERACY CONCEPT
According to (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012) There have been three different moments in history in which humanity naturally begin making-meaning :
The first stage named “First languages” came out one hundred thousand years ago.It is related to all signs and symbols humans used naturally from the need to communicate. There was a differentiation between languages, and it was related to sex (female, male) age (baby, adult), clans, use of the words.
The second stage, five thousand years ago, began with the starting of writing (as an instrument of control by the elite) in the era of the “Second Globalization”. Conquests and colonization happened. The word was separated from images, gestures, and sounds. The higher and powered hierarchies kept power through the arrival of reading and writing. The third globalization was the third stage, 60 years ago, new communication technologies were invented, multimodality was recovered, there was the accessibility to new media. In this part, the language was divided into four skills: Speaking, writing, reading and listening. With these being said I will be focused on how literacy has evolved over the last 50 years.
Since ancient times, we have been taught that a literate person is the one who doesn`t know how to read and write. A study done by (Freire & Macedo, 1987) stated that they have found something very different, when a little child smells her mom`s breast and starts looking for milk, when you feel a pain on your stomach and know you are starving. Everything is literacy, how to read the world in essence, it refers to read between lines.
Literacy is a social practice. Reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, and being. Adress social inequalities and highlight power.
Literacy perspectives are defined as:
HISTORICAL: Forms and uses
ANTROPOLOGICAL: Comparison of literacy in different cultures
LINGUISTIC: Form of the language
EDUCATIONAL: Language: Phonemes, phonics, meaning-making in a social- cultural environment. Representation of the world.
My pedagogical proposal will be focused on these precepts:
“Reading the world always precedes reading the word” and “Reading always envolves critical perception, interpretation and rewriting of what is read”
(Freire & Macedo, 1987)
(Medel-Anonuevo, 2005) published in a study that the purpose of literacy as: preparing students for work, promoting citizenship and preparation for everyday life. Literacy is everywhere. Having understood the definition of literacy, the concept to present is:
NEW LITERACIES
If teachers have clarity in the real definition of literacy, they also need to read about New Literacies Studies which stated that reading and writing is something people do inside and out their heads, it is a socio-cultural phenomenon, it is related to social models. Telling what determines if an individual read or write “correctly” is the basis of norms, paradigms, histories, religion, types of cultural groups. The term literacy is, in reality, plural : literacies: the kinds of “texts” in life; it is determined by practices and values of cultural and social groups, as such: Academic literacy, corporate literacy, music literacy, legal literacy, among others. (Gee, 2019)
Our students expressed in different modes, for that reason we must think in:
Literacy Events: What you can see Literacy Practice: Strategies to apply in the classroom.
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(Street, 2011) found out that teachers must apply ethnography in their classroom, and have a near look at each student. So what determines how one ‘correctly’ reads or writes in a given case? Not what is in one's head, but, rather, the conventions, norms, values, and practices of different social and cultural groups: lawyers, gamers, historians, religious groups, and schools, for instance, or larger cultural groups like (certain types of) Native Americans, African-Americans, or ‘middle class’ people.
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(By the way, Wittgenstein’s famous ‘beetle in the box’ argument – Wittgenstein 1953: par. 293– makes this same point about language and meaning in general.)So ‘literacy’ is plural: ‘literacies.’ There are many different social, historical, and cultural practices that incorporate literacy, so, too, there are many different ‘literacies’ (legal literacy, gamer literacy, country music literacy, academic literacy of many different types). People do not just read and write in general. They read and write specific sorts of ‘texts’ in specific ways. And these ways are determined by the values and practices of different social and cultural groups. Freire & Macedo, 1987). Practices and events are different in each student.
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Other kinds of literacy are:
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AUTONOMOUS LITERACY:
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Meanings are independent of the use. It is natural Neutral and universal
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IDEOLOGICAL ERACY
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Embedded in social practice
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CHRONOLOGICAL LITERACY
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Conceive recently Fan Fiction, strategy, card games, graphic novels, certain forms of logo based-communications (Lankshear, Knobel, & Curran, 2013). Not necessarily the entire use of digital technologies and digitally coded meaning.​
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ONTOLOGICAL LITERACY
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Digital, electronic technologies different from conventional literacy
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New social practices: Constructing hyperlink (When we link ideas in the classroom) e.g: picture books in a Kindergarten classroom.
In this part (Gee, 2019) has reconfirmed that it is related to activitivies out of school, this engage the uses of new technologies. Learners operate in one literacy “Universe”
Out of school they operate in another “Universe”. Teachers must intertwine the gaps found in and out of school (Lankshear, Knobel, & Curran, 2013). Knowing that literacy is all over the place, two researchers (Wimmer & Draper, 2019) investigated the use of traditional and new literacies in and out of the classroom, this is part of the 25 list of activities they studied: Internet search, creating a presentation a smartphone, creating a spreadsheet, online news, using an e-reader computing, YouTube, photo editing, blogging GPS, uploading to YouTube, using a credit card, online face-to-face, chat instant messaging, online banking, text messaging, online music, social networking, online gaming, photo sharing, online shopping, video gaming. They found students highly engaged with new literacies and teachers more motivated do apply them. Researchers suggested new literacies activities be included in education programs.
