Literacy mediation as a form of powerful literacies in community-based organisations working with young people in a situation of precarity

This paper aims at understanding the complex relations between bureaucratic literacies, the lives of young people in a situation of precarity and the work of employees of two community-based organisations in Québec (Canada). Drawing on the perspective of the New Literacy Studies, the focus of this article is around the role of literacy mediators that can play youth workers. It also endeavours to clarify the meaning of the term precarity (précarité) by suggesting a multidimensional perspective on it. This paper reveals that literacy mediation can be a form of powerful literacies that offer opportunities to counteract dominant literacies and support new ways of learning. Finally, it suggests a reflection on the importance of the work of community-based organisations in countering the situation of precarity experienced by some young people. It underlines the fact that these organisations are also experiencing financial uncertainty and insecurity that affect their services.     

Supporting academic literacies: university teachers in collaboration for change

This article deals with an action research project, where a group of university teachers from different disciplines reflected on and gradually extended their knowledge about how to support students’ academic literacy development. The project was conducted within a ‘research circle’ [Bergman, L. 2014. “The Research Circle as a Resource in Challenging Academics’ Perceptions of How to Support Students’ Literacy Development in Higher Education.” Canadian Journal of Action Research 15 (2): 3–20], in which the teachers engaged in a continuous dialogue where experience-based and research-based knowledge could meet. The two-year long process was divided into three phases: exchange of experiences and knowledge, small-scale empirical investigations in the participants own teaching, and presentations of the outcome of the research circle work. The main focus in this article is the second phase. The choice of small-scale-investigations, and how they were discussed and developed in the collaborative work, will be foregrounded as well as the changes that occurred in the participants’ teaching practices and how the participants value the outcome of the research circle work.     

Reclaiming literacies: competing textual practices in a digital higher education

This essay examines the implications of the ubiquitous use of the term ‘digital literacies’ in higher education and its increasing alignment with institutional and organisational imperatives. It suggests that the term has been stripped of its provenance and association with disciplinary knowledge production and textual practice. Instead it is called into service rhetorically in order to promote competency-based agendas both in and outside the academy. The piece also points to a tendency to position teachers in deficit with regard to their technological capabilities and pay scant attention to their own disciplinary and scholarly practices in a digital world. It concludes that there is a case for building on established theoretical and conceptual frameworks from literacy studies if we wish to integrate advantages of the digital landscape with thoughtful teaching practice.     

Cultural studies meets academic literacies: exploring students’ resources through symbolic objects

This paper reflects on a first year communication project in a South African engineering foundation programme which attempted to bring a cultural studies perspective to the teaching of academic literacy practices. In the project, students identify everyday objects that have symbolic meanings and examine these in a range of physical, cultural and communicational contexts. These objects are seen as catalysts for enabling student narratives and understandings to emerge. Objects also become a way of exploring notions of culture and cultural practices in the classroom and the tensions between convention and change they often index. This paper focuses on a particular manifestation of this tension, in the form of a moralistic discourse, or a discourse of ‘propriety’. The pedagogical implications of this kind of cultural studies project are explored, including the importance of opening up less regulated spaces to allow different competencies to be validated and, crucially, ways of framing and critiquing students’ resources in order to harness these constructively.     

‘I actually listened,I'm proud of myself.’ The effects of a participatory pedagogy on students' constructions of academic identities

Academic literacy practices can be alienating for new undergraduates, yet academic success depends on writing in ways that the academy deems acceptable and is related to the identity positions available to students. I describe an intervention in which aspects of academic practice were made visible and students participated collaboratively in academic writing in a first-year, first-semester, Education Studies module. Student-managed audio recordings show that, in contrast to much research evidence, students did not reject academic identities but rather used their talk to ‘tell themselves’ as academic. I discuss methodological and pedagogical implications arising from the findings and conclude that collaborative participation in academic practice and the associated talk require students to position themselves as participants in that practice and may be a way to reduce alienation and enable students to construct the self as ‘academic’.     

文化强国视域下的文化旅游发展研究

文化是一个民族进步的灵魂,一个国家的精神纽带和重要的战略资源。中国上下五千年的悠久历史孕育了博大精深的优秀文化,但与经济发展相比,我国的文化软实力任重道远。应充分利用文化资源大国的优势,积极发展文化产业,推进文化强国的建设。文化旅游作为国家文化产业和实现文化强国的重要组成部分,肩负着继承和传播中华文化的艰巨任务。对我国文化旅游的发展现状、开发模式、以及诸多矛盾进行分析,引导文化旅游以社会主义核心价值观为指导,发挥文化强国与文化旅游的相互促进作用,从而提高中华文化的国际战略地位是非常必要的。     

Finding a Voice: Freedom through Digital Literacies

Abstract

This article examines how the use of multimedia sources can deepen student engagement, comprehension, and questioning of a variety of texts. Through an American literature project, The Art of War, high school juniors work in collaboration to read, analyze, and create original digital texts using Animoto.com. As a result, educators are able to see academic strengths in students that might otherwise go unnoticed with the sole use of traditional teaching practices and print text.     

A means of personalising learning: incorporating old and new literacies in the curriculum with mobile phones

This article explores a notion of ‘personalising learning’ which puts the learner at the centre, supported by mobile technology and teacher mediation. It reports a small study in the Northern Territory of Australia, with indigenous students who were given mobile camera phones to capture aspects of their everyday lives and bring them into school. It found that they created a range of narratives that linked their traditional literacies with ‘new literacies’. The article argues that, using tools like these, students can contribute to their curriculum. However, it raises issues of cultural differences between teachers and students, and the importance of developing critical literacy in conjunction with new communication forms and other new literacies. Finally it points to the important role of teachers in leading change in school cultures, and particularly assessment, that will allow these personal contributions to learners' curricula.     

“It's That Easy”: Designing Assignments That Blend Old and New Literacies

This article recounts what happened when one of the authors, a pre-service teacher, introduced a digital multimodal composition project in her 9th-grade inclusion English classes to support junior high students as they read the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather than regard new literacies as competing with print literacy for attention, the authors argue that teachers serve students best when they design assignments that blend old and new literacies in ways that allow them to coexist and inform one another.     

Leadership Succession

One of the most significant events in the life of a school is a change in its leadership. Yet few things in education succeed less than leadership succession. Failure to care for leadership succession is sometimes a result of manipulation or self-centeredness; but more often it is oversight, neglect, or the pressures of crisis management that are to blame.