A space for conversation and debate around the future(s) of literacy in the 21st century.
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Intersection #1: Nell Duke and Colin Harrison
Duke and Harrison both express concern about the slow pace of change in K-12 education. Their view is that, in the face of rapid change in students’ literacy lives and literacy needs, many schools are not providing the curriculum and instruction students need in order to thrive in the 21st century–as citizens, as workers, and as self-actualizing individuals. We therefore put to them the following question:
What are the most promising ideas you know of to galvanize change in K-12 curriculum and instruction–and to galvanize change in schools’ existing processes for henceforth continually updating and upgrading curriculum and instruction? What key changes will help teachers keep pace with rapid change and do an overall better job of preparing our students for the 21st century?
Duke
Colin’s chapter, like ours, raises pressing questions about how teachers can learn to take greatest advantage of the educational affordances of technology and continually update and upgrade curriculum and instruction as technologies evolve. How did [teachers at the Stephenson School] come to teach and learn with technology in the ways that they are? How do teachers come to teach and learn effectively about source evaluation, search, and graphical comprehension, as my co-authors and I argue is essential? And how can teachers evolve their teaching as technology itself evolves?
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Harrison
All this leads me to feel that it is as important for children to be taught to challenge the trustworthiness of school textbooks as determinedly as the Internet sources available through Google. But at what age can children make such judgments? This chapter reports the important Zhang and Duke (2011) study of fourth graders learning to use the WWWDOT protocol, the first question of which is ‘Who wrote this and what credentials do they have?”, but at what age are students really capable of judging the trustworthiness of an Internet source such as a neo-Nazi white supremacist site? Ellen Markman’s (1979) groundbreaking work showed just how insecure was sixth-graders’ ability to make judgments about the trustworthiness of a text, even when it contained startling inconsistencies.
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Intersection #2: David Reinking & Jamie Colwell and Doug Hartman & Paul Morsink
Reinking & Colwell and Hartman & Morsink both take a historical perspective and speculate about the future evolution of reading practices and reading culture. They appear to agree that rapid and deep change is underway in these areas and will continue for the foreseeable future. Yet their views appear to diverge regarding the degree of consensus and homogeneity that will emerge in the future around reading practices and reading culture. We therefore asked them the following question:
Looking to the future, what key factors or forces do you see shaping reading culture? How might these factors or forces increase homogeneity, increase diversity, or, even possibly lead to balkanization?
Reinking
Colwell
An issue that pertains to the question posed and that both chapters address, although ours less directly, is the issue of technological determinism. Specifically, are the available technological affordances of reading and writing the driving force that shape a literate culture? Or, are those affordances only the raw material molded by more fundamental socio-cultural forces? Like most such dichotomies (nature/nurture; person making/being made by history), we believe it is a false one.
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Hartman
Morsink
We greatly enjoyed reading your chapter with its clever conceit of looking back on the present from the perspective of the 22nd century. At the same time, we were struck by the fact that … you seem to envision a world in which everyone has universal and instant access to information on any and every imaginable topic, and in which everyone is able to transact skillfully with texts to “protect … democratic ideals” and for other laudable goals. In other words, you seem to predict a future whose reading culture is characterized by a high level of equity, homogeneity, and consensus.
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Intersection #3: Coming Soon