What is Literacy? A Natural Evolution of the Times

---

Defining literacy is not an easy task, particularly when we seek to define it in terms of an evolving society. It is far too simplistic and narrow a view to tunnel our vision solely on reading and/or writing. Moreover, it is naïve to assume that literacy simply refers to a set of practices or skills based in large part on the process of reading or writing. Instead, like Katherine Frankel et al. (2016) wrote in “From “What is Reading?” to “What is Literacy?” we should define literacy as “the process of using reading, writing and oral language to extract, construct, integrate and critique meaning through interaction and involvement with multimodal texts in the context of socially situated practices” (p 7). What this means to educators like myself, simply put, is that literacy should be defined as using our reading, writing and spoken language as a means to define the world around us. According to this definition, literacy is not the task, or act, of reading and/or writing, nor is it the process by which one learns to do so. Rather, literacy is the process learners engage in with regards to their reading, writing and oral language to make meaning of their world. Literacy, therefore, is the employment of language-based actions, such as but not limited to reading and writing, to construct an understanding of the world around them, not vice versa. However, literacy is a reciprocal endeavor. While we construct meaning in our world through our reading and writing engagements, it is also impossible to ignore that our social, economic, political views also shape the meaning we garner from our reading, writing and oral language. This is true in a society that grows ever rich in print/text; we are never too far removed from this incessant meaning-making. Our literacy practice is ongoing as we use our own social contexts to process the information we receive via social media, postcards, ads, video clips, news articles. As educators of future facing learners, we can no longer disregard these modalities as part of our literacy construct. We must acknowledge them as a critical component of our evolving literacy needs. Literacy is no longer the act of picking up a book, fiction or otherwise, or a newspaper/journal and reading to gain an understanding. Instead, it is taking these multimodal resources and constructing meaning and understanding based on our own experiences and context. We read and interpret, challenging our existing belief systems, expanding our understanding but never in full isolation of what we originally brought with us to that reading. It is imperative that educators begin to acknowledge that to teach literacy, to be true advocates of literacy, we need to teach our students to read, write and speak in relation to these platforms. They need to be able to discern the academically valuable from the fluff. They need to be able to write for different audiences. These audiences extend beyond a traditional essay in academia. Literacy is growing through the process of interacting with practices in reading, writing and language that should extend beyond the confines of a Language Arts curriculum. We exist in a world that is bombarded with a steady stream of information. Technology, access to or lack thereof, is continually changing what literacy means today. Younger and younger, our learners are sourcing information from their engagement with social media, blogs, e-news and the like. They are increasingly responsible for discerning the credibility of this steady stream on information. They are tasked with understanding how their social constructs subconsciously impact their understanding and interpretation of information. Often, they are left to do this as if it’s an intrinsic ability one is born with because we are currently failing them in our teaching of literacy. It is the responsibility of literacy advocates, educational leaders of today and tomorrow, to acknowledge that these literacy practices need to be explicitly taught. We have an obligation to further our understanding of what literacy looks like in the 21st century and beyond and to break from the confines of outdated curriculum to encompass this ever-changing scope of what it means to be literate. ​ In “Open Up the Ceiling on the Common Core State Standards: Preparing Students for 21st Century Literacy” Sally Valentino Drew (2013) acknowledged that many of the common standards educators are bound by “…do not appear to fully capture the additional elements of online reading” (p 323). This is a grave disservice to the learners of tomorrow as we are not addressing their need to able to efficiently and appropriately access online materials. Drew’s belief is that though the CCSS acknowledge higher order thinking processes during reading, “they do not reflect higher level online skills and strategies, such as the location of information using a search engine or critical evaluation of source” (p 324). It is imperative that literacy evolves to encompass these higher-level online skills that Drew references. Without such evolvement, we are left with a society easily duped into believing every tweet, false claim and/or news source as facts with merit. Because we know reading is a socially constructed pathway to knowledge, to ensure we have a literate and informed society, we need to alter our views on literacy to encompass a multimodal arena.

---

Photo Credit: One of my dearest friends, Lisa. Featuring a pair of best buds in one of their favorite places, Maurice M. Pine Free Public Library

---

References

Frankel, K. K., Becker, B. L. C., Rowe, M. W., & Pearson, P. D. (2016). From “what is reading?” to what is literacy? Journal of Education, 196 (3), 7–17.

Drew, S. V. (2013). Open up the ceiling on the Common Core State Standards. Journal of Adolescents & Adult Literacy, 56(4), 321-330.