Literacies and Identities of the Web Site 'Go Super Model' - Possibilities and Restraints

Author(s):

Catarina Schmidt(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Paper

Session Information

19 SES 08, Parallel Paper Session

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-20

09:00-10:30

Room:

ESI 2 - Aula 3

Chair:

Karen Borgnakke

Contribution

A decade from the millennium shift it stands clear that advanced levels of literacy are asked for globally within a multicultural, multilingual and multimodal educational setting. Through literacy children participate and create meaning in different settings, contexts, medias and genres. At the same time they encounter a wide range of challenges in terms of being able to analyze, draw conclusions, summarize and be critical. Kress (1997) accentuates how information comes dressed in many clothes; in numbers, images, technologies and languages. Childhood is, for sure, formed by different conditions and experiences that in its turn challenge the double mission of knowledge and democracy in education. Drawing on an ethnographical study in and out of school, this presentation focuses on some nine year old girl’s use of the European web site ‘Go Super Model’ (GSM). Through GSM comes not only information, a package of ideologies also arrives. What do the literacy practices (Barton, 2007) of GSM mean and which are the literacy events (Heath, 1982, 1983) shaping them? In this presentation I will discuss the possibilities of decoding the world through the use of GSM. The presentation takes a hermeneutic (Gadamer, 1975) and postcolonial point of departure (Bhabha, 1994; Hernandez Zamora, 2010) together with theories from the field of Critical Literacy (Freire, 1972; Freebody & Luke, 1990; Janks, 1997) . The possibilities of literacies and identities within GSM – and school – will be problematized in terms of meaning making, identity making, participation and marginalization.

Method

Through ethnographical fieldwork of nine children’s everyday life, in and out of school, literacy events have been observed and documented for over a year. With a reflexive approach through participant observations, group interviews, group activities and individual interviews of multiple views (Wolcott, 1999), the ambition is to document and analyze the complexity of children’s literacy events in different settings, media, languages and genres. In the next step these literacy events will be linked with literacy practices and eventually to meaning-making. The importance of recognition of multiple literacies and expressions are highlighted in this paper in order to meet future challenges in literacy education locally and globally. Through existing resources like GSM and other literacy practices children explore their own environments and make sense of the world (Kress, 1997).

Expected Outcomes

Possibilities of identities and literacies through GSM will be discussed and problematized in line with the above theoretical underpinnings. The aim is to highlight possibilities and restraints in different literacy practices in and out of school in relation to conditions for participation and democracy in education.

References

Barton, David (2007). Literacy. An Introduction of the Ecology of Written Language. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell. Bhabha, Homi (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1975). Truth and Method. London, New York: Continuum. Freebody, Peter & Luke, Alan (1990). Literacies programmes: Debates and demands in cultural contexts. Prospect: A Journal of Australian TESOL, 5 (3), 7-16. Freire, Paulo (1972). Cultural action for freedom. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Heath, Shirley Brice (1982). ‘Protean shapes in literacy events: ever shifting oral and literate traditions’, in Tannen, Deborah (red.). Spoken and Written Language. Exploring Orality and Literacy. Norwood: ABLEX Publishing Corporation. s. 168-196. Heath, Shirley Brice (1983). Ways with words. Language, life and work in communities and classrooms.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hernandez-Zamora, Gregorio (2010). Decolonizing literacy. Mexican lives in the era of global capitalism. Bristol, New York, Ontario: Multilingual Matters. Janks, Hilary (2010). Literacy and Power. New York: Routledge. Kress, Gunther (1997). Before writing. Rethinking the paths of literacy. London, New York: Routledge. Wolcott, Harry F. (1999). Ethnography. A way of seeing. London: Altamira Press

Author Information

Catarina Schmidt (presenting / submitting)

Örebro University

HumUS

Örebro

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