So you want to teach Digital Literacies?
This week I received a shiny copy of a new publication ‘Digital Literacies in Education: Teaching, Learning and Assessment in 21st Century Classrooms’ edited by Clare Dowdall and Cathy Burnett. However long in the tooth we get as academics, the arrival of a new book, a labour of love, is cause for celebration. We’ve come a long way in the last ten years, exploring and discussing how new theories of literacy might impact on teaching and learning in schools. This book, published by the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) feels like an important milestone. An answer to the question: how might I teach digital literacies?
My membership of the UKLA started when I presented a pilot study from my Phd research focused on children’s film at UKLA’s international conference. I was grateful to my supervisors for attending because there were only about six other people in the room and most of the questions were about the most recently released ‘Shrek’ film, rather than my carefully prepared findings. Only a few years later, and due to lively and imaginative leadership of the organisation by Professor Jackie Marsh, a substantive shift of focus took place. Indeed, in 2013 my PhD, research focused on children’s engagements with film, won the annual student research award. What is more, I was able to connect with many other researchers and teachers focused on literacy who also recognised the important role of media in changing the ways children were doing ‘literacy.’
Since then UKLA has been a key protagonist in national and international debates about the impact of digital technologies on children’s literacies, leading to the establishment by Professor Cathy Burnett and Dr Clare Dowdall of a digital literacies special interest group for researchers. From this, a task group was formed with a remit to provide teachers with more guidance about what we mean by digital literacies, what our approaches to teaching might be and how we would approach assessment. It has been a joy to work with this task group. Under Cathy and Clare’s leadership we have devised a set of pedagogic principles for teaching digital literacies, undertaken classroom activity in schools and then formulated guidance for assessment.
This work has now been written up into this new UKLA publication which I am so proud of. For me, it exemplifies the huge value of UKLA to enable researchers to connect to teachers so that our work is ‘close to practice’. Working in this way has also enabled us to take our field forward and be responsive to the issues of teaching in our times. My own contribution was written with my long-time collaborator Dr Lucy Taylor and Primary Deputy Head, Tim Bradley. We focused on children using Twine to create interactive stories, inspired by my work with the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield.
You can read more about this work in the book and also in these publications:
Parry BL & Taylor L (2020) Emergent digital authoring: playful tinkering with mode, media, and technology. Theory Into Practice.
Parry R, Howard F & Penfold L (2020) Negotiated, contested and political: the disruptive Third Spaces of youth media production. Learning, Media and Technology.
You can also find out more about our work using Twine on the NVM website who we worked with to create home learning experiences for children and families during lockdown: https://thenvm.org/learning/learn-at-home/
I have recently taken over leadership of the Digital Task Group with my colleague, Louise Wheatcroft. Our proposed next steps are to host a conference where we can share our work with a wider audience and decide some vital next steps. Clare and Cathy’s shoes are big ones to fill but Louise and I aspire to support both teachers and researchers who recognise that government mandated curriculum is holding back the development of a culturally resonant and creatively engaged approach to teaching literacy. We thanks them and, of course, Professor Jackie Marsh, for paving the way for this work.
So if the question in the title has been preoccupying you too, you are in good company.
This aim is also at the heart of our new MA programme Digital Literacies, Culture and Education. Please get in touch if you would like to know more about our proposed online version of the course.
Dr Becky Parry, is a lecturer in Digital Literacies and the Programme lead for MA Digital Literacies, Culture and Education. She will be presenting a paper entitled, Everyday Magical Moments in Children’s Text Production, on Wednesday 22nd Sept at 17.00.
