Critical Literacies in Digital Age Contexts

• In Event: Transnational Critical Literacies for the Public Good

Abstract

Objectives
Despite widespread enthusiasm for the use of digital technologies in education, a growing body of scholarship has begun to reveal how certain adoptions of digital tools have had more of a regressive, rather than a revolutionary impact, serving to reproduce or exacerbate existing socioeconomic inequities (Noble, 2018; Hicks, 2017; Toyama, 2015; O'Neil, 2016). To address some of these challenges, this presentation explores a conceptual synthesis examining contemporary online and offline literacy practices that highlight issues of power, authority, agency, control, and representation - which we collectively refer to as critical digital literacies.
Theoretical Framework
Critical Digital Literacies (CDL) combines several perspectives on what it means to be literate, what it means to be critical, and what it means to live and learn in a digital age. This project emphasizes a pluralistic definition of literacies as representationally-mediated social practices situated in sociocultural contexts (Rowsell, Kress, Pahl, & Street, 2013). Building on these foundations, critical literacies can be understood as the use of print and other media to analyze, critique, and transform the social norms, rule systems, and practices of everyday life (Luke, 2012). Finally, when we talk about critical literacies in a digital age, we emphasize both the “new technical stuff” and the “new ethos stuff” that characterize shifts in literacy engagement between print and digital media (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). CDL positions all humans as readers and writers of the virtual and physical worlds we inhabit, with the potential to transform our societies through the ways that we engage with literacies.
Methods, Data Sources, & Initial Findings
This conceptual synthesis draws on an analysis of empirical research on critical digital literacies in the 21st century. Findings presented in this paper focus on theoretical and practice-based approaches to CDL. Consistent with Street’s ethnography of literacy (Street, 2009), this allows for rich accounts of cultural forms, and their situated literacy practices, as well as abstract explorations of the power structures and relationships that define and rank such practices.
Significance
In keeping with the theme of this year’s AERA meeting, this project takes up the call for deliberate reconnection to the communities about whom we write in the service of the broader public good. By examining issues of literacy, epistemology, and digital media within a critical perspective, we seek to center these as essential aspects of educational research in a modern era. We argue that this work will be of interest to AERA members interested in addressing some of the very literal disconnections that can come with life work, and learning in a digital age, toward which critical digital literacies may provide some important tools.

Authors

• Earl Aguilera, California State University - Fresno

• Alex Bacalja, The University of Melbourne