What Does It Mean For An Adolescent To Be Literate These Days?
Imagine with me for a minute. Picture yourself on the streets of a busy city with a microphone in your hand, and a camera crew at your heel. Your mission is to catch the attention of pedestrians and ask them one simple, candid question: “what does it mean for a teenager to be literate?” What do you suppose the average answer might be? I would venture to say that the majority, if not all of the people interviewed would say something along the lines of “a literate teenager is a teenager who has the ability to read and write.” I would venture even further and say that the mental images that would arise in most people’s minds upon hearing the question would be images of print text, written words on physical sheets of paper, and maybe even a school building.
Is literacy merely an academic skill? Or, perhaps, is literacy something much broader and more consuming? Does it transcend the boundaries of academia and permeate all aspects of life? To put it another way, is literacy dynamic? Does it change and evolve as the world changes and evolves, or is it stagnant and confined to words on a page within the context of an academic institution? This writing will seek to demonstrate that for adolescents to be literate, they need to be able to analyze and synthesize information across a wide variety of texts, namely digital texts. Thus, literacy is indeed a dynamic practice that effects every aspect of life.
As Donna Alvermann and Rhett Hutchins (2012) have observed, in their article “Adolescents’ Engagement with Web 2.0 and Social Media”a brief look at the average classroom in the United States reveals a prioritization and favoring towards print-text. While print-text certainly has its place in the classroom, to view print-text as the sole determinate of an adolescent’s literate abilities is to live in what Nick Sousanis (2005) has identified in his book Unflattening, as a one-dimensional flatland that confines seeing. As Sousanis has further illustrated, the danger of the flatland consists in the integral relationship that seeing has to thinking:
Fixing our viewpoint interrupts the dynamic relation that is seeing. Perception is not dispensable. It’s not mere decoration or afterthought, but integral to thought. A fundamental partner in making meaning. In reuniting thinking and seeing, we expand our thinking and concept of what thinking is (p.81).
A one-dimensional view of literacy restricts a student’s ability to see and think about the world around them. As Eliza Anyangwe captures in her 2012 article, “20 Ways of Thinking About Digital Literacy in Higher Education”, “New ways of seeing and thinking about the world become possible as new cognitive and processing ‘tools’ come into play.” This argument is built off Claire Belsile’s argument for seeing literacy as a dynamic, rather than static practice. In her article, “Literacy and the Digital Knowledge Revolution,” Belsile (2006) further clarifies the idea of texts serving as powerful cognitive tools, by arguing that “intellectual empowerment happens whenever mankind endows itself with new cognitive tools, such as writing, or with new technical instruments, such as those that digital technology has made possible (p.54–55).”
In order to escape the flatland and truly understand what it means for an adolescent to be literate, a wider perspective is necessary. Technology and online spaces are changing the ways in which adolescents read and communicate. Outside of school, adolescents are bombarded with information expressed through a variety of modes and mediums. The digital age continues to influence how adolescents think and live, creating a new culture and context for communication. The following video produced by the University of Derby further illustrates why a wider perspective of adolescent literacy is necessary.
Adolescents need to be digitally literate. In order prepare students for life in the 21st century, they must learn to analyze and evaluate how information is represented though a variety of texts. As Jennifer Roswell and Anne Burke (2009) have demonstrated in their article “Reading by Design: Two Case Studies of Digital Reading Practices,” digital media invites additional skills when compared with print-text. With the rise of technology comes the rise of cognitive tools that students need to learn how to navigate, act upon, analyze and evaluate.
Alvermann, D., & Hutchins, R. (2012). Adolescents’ Engagement with Web 2.0 and Social Media: Research, Theory, and Practice. Research in Schools, 19(1), 30–44.
Anyangwe, E. (2012, May 15). 20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education. Retrieved September, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2012/may/15/digital-literacy-in-universities
Bélisle, C. (2006) Literacy and the Digital Knowledge Revolution. In: Martin, A. and Madigan, D. (eds.) Digital Literacies for Learning. London: Facet Publishing.
Rowsell, J., & Burke, A. (2009). Reading by Design: Two Case Studies of Digital Reading Practices. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(2), 106–118. doi:10.1598/jaal.53.2.2
Sousanis, N. (2015). Unflattening. Harvard University Press.
For further inquiry in digital literacy
