Critical Perspectives On Global Literacies

This book offers critical perspectives on global literacies, connecting research, theory, and practice. An emerging concept in the literacy field, many scholars agree on the need for students to develop global literacies, yet few agree on a widely accepted definition. Based on a synthesis of the literature, the editors formulate a definition of global literacies with four dimensions, including: literacy as a human right in all nations around the world; critical reading and creation of multimodal texts about global issues; intercultural communication and reciprocal collaboration with globally diverse others; and transformative action for social and environmental justice that traverses borders. Taking this shared, proposed definition as a starting point, the chapters then offer contextualized examples of global literacies from K-12 and teacher education classrooms to make explicit links between research and practice. The contributors interact with and interrogate the book’s definition of global literacies using a common framework of critical theory. As such, this book provides both emerging and established scholars with critical frameworks for positioning global literacies in ways that are relevant, dynamic, and forward thinking.

"This book offers critical perspectives on global literacies, connecting research, theory, and practice. An emerging concept in the literacy field, many scholars agree on the need for students to develop global literacies, yet few agree on a widely accepted definition. Based on a synthesis of the literature, the editors formulate a definition of global literacies with four dimensions, including: literacy as a human right in all nations around the world; critical consumption and creation of multimodal texts about global issues; intercultural communication and reciprocal collaboration with globally diverse others; and transformative action for social and environmental justice that traverses borders. Taking this shared, proposed definition as a starting point, the chapters then offer contextualized examples of global literacies from K-12 and teacher education classrooms to make explicit links between research and practice. The contributors interact with and interrogate the book's definition of global literacies using a common framework of critical theory. As such, this book provides both emerging and established scholars with critical frameworks for positioning global literacies in ways that are relevant, dynamic, and forward thinking"--

This book offers comprehensive coverage of critical literacies by pursuing a balanced approach to theory, research, and practice. By clarifying the gaps among the frameworks of critical literacies, the author discusses new ways of approaching them from global and multicultural perspectives and provides an instructional model of critical global literacies that draws on her own experience and an extensive literature review. This insightful book also documents teachers’ case studies, focusing on their voices and instructional approaches in diverse classrooms. The author critically analyses the case studies and offers important suggestions for future research and practice.

Testifying to the maturity of the youth literacy education field, this collection of papers displays the increasing sophistication of research on the subject, and at the same time offers pointers to its potential for development in the next decade. The contributors track the rapid proliferation of youth literacies in today’s digital age, from video games to social media and film production. Drawing on detailed research and an intimate knowledge of youth communities in nations as diverse as Canada and Uganda, they provide notable examples of digital literacies in situ, and challenge conventional wisdom about literacy education. The chapters do more, however, than merely offer reportage of a crisis in literacy education. The authors embrace the core challenge faced by educators everywhere: how to incorporate and utilize new modes of literacy in education, and how to realize the potential benefits of heterogeneous modern media in youth literacy education, especially in marginalized, remote, and disadvantaged communities. This volume expands our view of digital communications technologies and digital literacies to include complex understandings of how media such as translated videos can serve as learning tools for youths whose access to literacy education is limited. In particular, a number of contributing scholars provide important new information about the praxis of teachers and the literacies adopted by young people in Africa, a continent largely neglected by literacy researchers. This book’s global perspective, and its ground-level viewpoint of youth literacy practices in a variety of locations, problematizes normative assumptions about researching literacy as well as about literacy itself.

Critical Literacies in Action: Social Perspectives and Teaching Practices asks how educators can become more experienced in order to truly support literacy, particularly for children of poverty or for those who have been labeled “at-risk”. This is especially important in current times, since a literate individual is one who is more successfully able to situate him- or herself within a continuum of lifelong learning in order to fulfill personal goals and to participate fully within the wider societyal context.

This book explores the conceptual framework, opportunities for learning, as a transaction between literacy learners, mediating agents, and the literacy content to be learned within social, cultural, and historical contexts. With contributions from top scholars from around the world, the chapters in this book provide a window into the varied ways learners, their families, educators, and researchers have co-constructed opportunities for learning in a range of PK-12 classrooms, community settings, and university classrooms across the globe. Building on decades of existing scholarship, contributors conceptualize literacy as social practice and discuss a variety of literacies—including engineering literacies, community literacies, and bilingual and multicultural literacies and more—through real-world and insightful examples. By situating literacy learning in the complex social, cultural, and historical contexts in which students, teachers, and families live and work, chapter authors provide nuanced, qualitative, and deeply profound views of literacy learning. Critical and informative, with a myriad of examples on co-constructed opportunities for learning, this volume is an essential text for graduate courses on literacy education, and for literacy researchers, teacher educators, and teachers.

The World Wide Web is transforming the way that information is distributed, received and acted upon. Global Literacies and the World Wide Web provides a critical examination of the new on line literacy practices and values, and how these are determined by national, cultural and educational contexts. Gail Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe have brought together scholars from around the world, including: Mexico, Hungary, Australia, Palau, Cuba, Scotland, Greece, Japan, Africa and the United States. Each represents and examines on line literacy practices in their specific culture. Global Literacies and the World Wide Web resists a romanticised and inaccurate vision of global oneness. Instead, this book celebrates the dynamic capacity of these new self defined literacy communities to challenge the global village myth with robust, hybrid redefintions of identity that honour ethnic, cultural, economic, historical, and ideological differences. This is a lively and original challenge to conventional notions of the relationship between literacy and technology.

The studies in this volume investigate how multilingual education involves a critical engagement with questions of identity and culture, and a movement towards new ways of being and belonging. It addresses previously under-explored issues, in particular the integration of theories like ‘thirdness’, and practices of language education and maintenance with relevance to the Asia-Pacific region. The analyses reveal the delicate balance of interests of all stakeholders and offer detailed insights into the reality of multilingual education, with specific examples of Chinese, English, Japanese and Tamil. In a globalised world, effective language education has become increasingly important, and the studies presented here have the potential to inform and advance evidence-based multilingual education through adding important dimensions of theoretical exploration and refreshing empirical resources.