Cultural Studies of Technology for Education |
The following comic explores the importance of transitioning flat literacies to 4D formats
References Lotherington, H. & Jenson, J. (2011). "Teaching multimodal & digital literacy in L2 settings: New literacies, new basics, new pedagogies". Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 226-246.
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We tend to notice changes - even slight changes (that unfortunately we often tend to discount in significance.) "The medium is the message" tells us that noticing change in our societal or cultural ground conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium. Jean-François Lyotard utilized the term postmodern in order to name the changes in societal and cultural “ground conditions” of the late 1970s. What surfaced from his work was a critique of this new message of performativity and what possible effects the new medium of knowledge created and is still creating today. In Lyotard’s work, The Postmodern Condition, he defines the term postmodern as society’s shift from the ideal: grand metanarratives of the time (human emancipation, enlightenment) as tools for legitimating knowledge, to the rational: an optimization of performativity to fulfill societal needs. The consequence of an education system built on performativity criterion is that it continuously perpetuates its agenda through its students, keeping them “inactive” players of the “game.” Lyotard expresses some means of resistance to the totality of performativity, but if we accept that the postmodern condition has been woven into the fabric of educational systems for over 30 years then clearly the means of resistance seems to be failing.
How many students are asked what they would like to be when they grow up, instead of what problems they would like to solve, or what sparks their interests or perhaps what are they passionate about? Lyotard asserts that universities are a subsystem of the social system: which is inherently overcome with a performativity design. If this is the case, then universities “will have to create skills, no longer ideals…guiding the nation [not] towards its emancipation, but to supply the system with players capable of acceptably fulfilling their roles at the pragmatic posts required by institutions” (Lyotard 48). In a 21st century Canadian context, the government has spent a significant amount of funding advertising for students to join the trades, as the push towards a university education has shown a rapid decrease in those going for the trades. I can recall a government funded presentation at my elementary school when I was only 6 years old, showing us how fun and interesting a job in the trades could be. Still to this day ads run regularly on television spewing the same messages. A system “needs” players to fulfill certain roles in order for it to succeed: fixed in a certain time and place. For example, performativity seeps into the university walls when educating teachers to perpetuate the same need for rational knowledge on classroom management, lesson planning, evaluations, etc. Lyotard asked the question back in 1979, that if higher learning becomes functional, then what of the students? The changes he preconceived are now realities of the 21st century. Of course, I argue it is far from a totalizing effect. Contesting performativity exists, only it’s modes lack the wider audience and time that postmodernism has been afforded. Much has changed since the 1979 context which Lyotard describes, one being the advancement of technology; however, Lyotard explains that “an organized stock of established knowledge is the essential thing that is transmitted. The application of new technologies to this stock may have a considerable impact on the medium of communication” (Lyotard 50). What is important is that this knowledge still must be inputted to the memory banks where the awaiting outputs, i.e. students, are awaiting the transmission of the same knowledge they would have received in a lecture based form. These “data banks are the Encyclopedia of tomorrow,” however, platforms like Wikipedia dispel the technocratic input/output fear Lyotard described and predicted. Wherein students, or anyone, can input knowledge and others will hold them accountable. A shift for Lyotard’s postmodern question of those no longer asking if it is true, but asking if it is efficient. In “Paying Attention to Attention” the authors suggest that “modernist education has embraced these new capabilities afforded through text-based literacy: postmodern education begins to detect certain limitations…the easy internalization of alphabetic literacy as having effected a repression of our consciousness of the reductiveness of text—shift from 3D to 2D perceptual frames” (Castell & Jenson 2004). Castell & Jensen create an “in-between” present between modern education (utilizing 3D frames) and the postmodern condition (optimizing a 2D frame) which Lyotard describes. Castell & Jensen create a solution to combating postmodernism in the 21st century with the look at an attentional economy and putting text back in a 3D context so that it can be experienced. Lyotard presents a resistance strategy of paralogy that fits well into these new modes of resistance. Lyotard argues against consensus, as that is a mode of technocracy. Paralogy inspires conversation, creates meaning of knowledge rather than perpetuating an agreed upon body of knowledge. The same loss of consciousness that Lanham discussed in Castell & Jensen occurs in Lyotard’s work when Luhman argues that “the reduction of complexity is required to maintain the system’s capability” (Lyotard 61). Keeping players inactive was a condition of the postmodern condition and is still a plague on modern education today. Lyotard does, however, explain the temptations of performativity as it dispels fables; demands a ‘cold will’ and ‘clear mind’; provides rules and gives answers; and many more. The point I wish to highlight is that it provides a false sense of security in knowledge. The ‘unknown’ seems to be solved within the realm of performativity. Much like the dystopian novels of the 20th century: Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, these roles in society can be attractive, provide a sense of knowledge and rules in one’s life that is comfortable; however, there is always a player in the game that requires activation. That message embedded within those same novels is the solution to the postmodern condition as well, and something that can be achieved through new meaning making. The New London Group created a combination of techniques to activate members of the game and thousands of researchers are following suit to re-design a game built on postmodernity. Lyotard concludes this chapter with a note on the future (i.e. our present) and how the computerization of society affects the problematic case of performativity in postmodernity. It could, as we have explored, be utilized as a dream instrument for ‘controlling and regulating the market system, extended to include knowledge itself and governed exclusively by the performativity principle’ (Lyotard 67). Or, it can be used to ‘aid groups discussing metaprescriptives by supplying them with the information they usually lack for making knowledgeable decisions’ (Lyotard 67). Clearly, computerization has taken hold of society as Lyotard predicted in 1979, and although it has and can be utilized for technocratic means and barred by the postmodern condition; it also has the ability to design, and re-design student’s social futures, to activate them as players in the game. Although Lyotard presented solutions to the postmodern condition through micro-narratives and paralogy, educational theorists in the 21st century have specified modern solutions to the postmodern condition, as explored in Castell & Jensen. Lotherington & Jensen also note how “in the everyday lives of many, the production and consumption of multimodal, digital artefacts [produces] very different kinds of knowing—the difficulty, as McLuhan (1967/2001) foresaw, is figuring out what the nature of those differences are” (Lotherington & Jensen 240). The age of computerization may have changed the medium; but the message of technocracy can and still does pervade our present day societal context. The call to contesting technocratic paradigms is to create new ways of legitimating knowledge utilizing these daily productions of our students lives. Whether we have fully exited the postmodern condition is debatable, but the presence and predominance of performativity in both higher, secondary, and primary levels of education in the 21st century in incontestable. In order to find a balance between performativity and paralogy, “education urgently requires re-vision [that] involves both critically seeing the past and present and imagining a different future” (Lotherington & Jensen 241). A future which allows for student curation, creation, and re-designing in order to produce a future that best suits the student’s needs and not society’s. The idea of a multiliterate approach to literacy pedagogy was proposed, researched, and published 20 years ago by the New London Group. The authors argue that given the changing climate of the late 90’s (multiplicity of language and diversity of culture) a broader view of literacy was needed. The development of Multiliteracies pedagogy revisits traditional paradigms and uses Lyotard’s critique of it as a tool, which pushes a technocratic agenda, and focuses on performativity to suit societal needs, developing students into what Dewey termed “instrumental” to societal benefits. The New London Group takes this notion and develops a new paradigm arguing that “the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors’ twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success through fulfilling employment” (NLG 1996). The focus has moved from students being “instrumental” to societal goals to being designers of their own social futures, defining their own level of performativity, and feeling fulfillment from employment on their own terms. This shift is essential. 20 years later, although multiliteracies pedagogy has found a platform to which its voice can be heard, more work needs to be done in implementing these ideas in schools and within teacher’s pedagogies. Where this study lacks contemporary research and analysis, Buckingham and Mills provide in full force; allowing us to find the foundational theories of multiliteracies pedagogy but build upon it with 20 years of additional research and the continuous changing climate of Digital Literacies. "Designing restores human agency and cultural dynamism to the process of meaning making" The framework of multiliteracies is built on design pedagogy. What this entails is that “literacy educators and students must see themselves as active participants in social change, as learners and students who can be active designers- makers – of social futures” (NLG 1996). Nearly 10 years later, Buckingham’s “Digital media literacies: rethinking media education in the age of the Internet” takes up the issue of the term “literacy” equating a standardized set of skills and knowledge, and arguing that digital media literacy—one of many facets of multiliteracies—“require new forms of cultural and communicative competence” (Buckingham 2007). Buckingham utilizes the “what” of Multiliteracies explored in NLG to advocate, “Literacy studies cannot be confined simply to the acquisition of skills…it must also entail a form of ‘critical framing’ that enables the learner to take a theoretical distance from what they have learned, to account for its social and cultural location, and to critique and extend it” (Buckingham 2007). Students must become “active” learners in order to design their own social future. In 2010, Mills’ “A Review of the ‘Digital Turn’ in the New Literacy Studies” recognizes that opportunities for a celebration and visibility of diverse cultures can exist in this paradigm, yet the language of multiliteracies must be learned in order to participate. Mills found that “media design projects lead to a diversification and enrichment of student’s learning ecologies…this research is yielding successful models for supporting students as globally recognized designers, authors, and critics of the digital media in official and unofficial spaces of learning” (Mills 2010). We see a repetition in terminology bridging all three texts ranging a 20-year span because the call to challenge traditional paradigms and using students as instruments to the larger “system” still remains. Mills provides practical research and examples of students becoming active participants inside and outside of schools. Becoming “active” means that a student has the tools and knowledge necessary to design their own pathways and definitions of “success” whether meeting larger society’s needs/ expectations, or not. "The key here is juxtaposition, integration, and living with tension" The “how” of Multiliteracies formulated by the NLG argues that “pedagogy is a complex integration of four factors: Situated Practice; Overt Instruction; Critical Framing; and Transformed Practice” (NLG 1996). Buckingham, as we saw earlier, explored how Critical Framing specifically can fit ‘awkwardly’ with the experiential component to media literacies, which incorporate aspects of ‘immersion’ and pleasure. As NLG suggests, these four aspects of pedagogy do not need to be in play at every moment or on a continuum; these four factors exist simultaneously and are situational based on the student. Buckingham wants the notion of literacy to not be tied to a set of rules and regulations that influence the way students utilize digital media—drawing into a notion of “digital civilization and its discontents” wherein students are continuously placed in glass boxes and told how to produce and reproduce digital media for uses other than their own interests and passions. The critical aspect, Buckingham discusses, comes into play with the exploration of online safety and the ability to access or locate information (as with print) and be able to question “the ways in which it represents the world, and understanding how technological developments and possibilities are related to broader social and economic forces” (Buckingham 2007). Buckingham also creates his own four conceptual aspects, which are essential components to media literacy: Representation, Language, Production, and Audience (Buckingham 2007). Production fits perfectly into the NLG’s ‘design as pedagogy’ framework, as well as the ‘critical framing’ component fits into questions of ‘representation’ online. Where Mills and Buckingham dive deeper into New Media Literacy studies is their exploration of language, specifically the meta-language necessary in order for students to not only navigate diverse digital media, but in order for them to design and re-design elements of it. Mills’s work also builds upon the “how” of multiliteracies as she acknowledges the shifts away from “Traditional authority to an epistemology of shared knowledge and expertise” (Mills 2010). Allowing students to take on roles as designers allows them to develop a meta-language in a diverse set of online discourses, and as Mills focuses on, the opportunity for students to engage with their own cultural identities and diverse communities. Drawing from Kress’s study of ‘modes’: NLG, Buckingham, and Mills discuss the multimodality, intertextuality, and hybridity of New Literacy Studies which are already being created outside of school, where schools must play “catch-up” to ensure that students have opportunities to “make and re-make media rather than being make by them” (Mills 2010). Technological determinism is an arguable ‘discontent’ of digital media, and as such students must be ‘active’ participants in the digital ‘game,’ to echo Lyotard, in order to avoid becoming passive ‘instruments.’ Mills also extends NLG and Buckingham’s work to bring attention to the dominant western context of New Literacy Studies and how access to marginalized communities and countries creates a “digital divide" that must be explored and researched further. She does include examples of how multimodality and digital media helped ESL students and it provided opportunities to draw on “their interests, cultural experiences, first language, and multiple modes can promote their academic success” (Mills 2010). Mills concludes her work with notes on further research into New Literacy Studies being utilized to produce a “productive international dialogue.” "Curriculum can no longer be confined to a narrow conception of literacy that is defined solely in terms of the medium of print" Over a 20-year span, The New London Group, Buckingham, Mills, and countless others have created a theoretical framework for New Literacy Studies and Multiliteracies to break away from the traditional paradigm and develop a new one that reflects the “Digital age” of the 21st century. This paradigm, with it’s transformational shift from students as instrumental to societal gains through required skills and knowledge to designers/re-designers of their social futures reshapes the very “postmodern” system Lyotard discussed. This essential paradigm provides valuable pedagogy theory to support some of the compelling resources explored in Buckingham and Mills’s work. For example, multimodal designs motivate ESL students to find their voice and advocate for themselves. Geo-locational apps, like the one Victoria and I demonstrated in class, allow students to become designers with multimodal interfaces and interact with their surrounding communities from a critical lens; or re-design the app to meet their creative needs. That is the value in a multiliteracies pedagogy: it works to transform current traditional educational forms, policies, and practices to move beyond the solely “overt instruction”, the technocratic paradigm that sees students as empty vessels in need of outputting and inputting information to create skills and knowledge to suit the needs of a dictating body. This new paradigm seeks to dismantle these limiting traditional paradigms and to activate students as players to a game in which they have the ability to design and re-design.
There are certain moments in one’s life which, upon reflection and retrospection, you can point to as a key stage in shaping identity and forming purpose. For myself, I’ve known I wanted to be a teacher since grade one; however, I did not discover what that title truly meant, or the endless opportunities it can present until my grade seven year. I can remember specific lessons from over 10 years ago because of how they shaped me as both learner and future educator. My teacher opened up doors to me that had remained closed up until that time. He had us choose news articles weekly, utilizing them to not only summarize, but to also critically engage with them. I can still remember writing letters to my local MP regarding the potential Pit-Bull ban about to become law in Ontario at that time. I can vividly remember not just watching documentaries like Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Cost and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth , but engaging, questioning, and researching the ideas presented within them, and forming my own opinions from that research. He fostered a multimodal learning environment that allowed me to begin to connect poetry to music, history to art, math to language. He diversified my learning to reach further than the walls of my classroom and even my country. I went from stressing about my next math test to being worried that I wouldn’t raise enough money to help our new social justice committee provide water to small villages in Haiti. Technology was utilized to broaden our horizons, expand our knowledge, bridge gaps between subjects, and since then it has not only shaped my approach to teaching while fostering a multimodal learning environment, but reminds me that the diversity of opportunity to inspire positive change not only in our communities, our world, and most importantly our individual students, remains at the heart and core of all that I do.
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