Encyclopedia Entry: Reading, Writing, and Childhood Development

Evelyn Baldwin

Literacy Seminar

21 April 2009

Encyclopedia Entry: Reading, Writing, and Childhood Development

Of the many theories formed to explain adolescent development, five stand out as particularly important. Three of these – psychoanalytic, behavioral, and cognitive – are often called “grand” theories, as they are both attempts to encompass large sections of childhood development and have remained in study for much of the latter half of the twentieth century. The final two – sociocultural and epigenetic systems theories – are emergent theories that, despite their relative newness, are quickly gaining strength in the field and are based on multidisciplinary approaches. Childhood reading experiences can be defined in a different manner in each theory; however, remnants of all five can be seen in the various reading practices implemented in classrooms across the country.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Psychoanalytic theory argues that behavior patterns are governed by unconscious desires and feelings. These feelings both impact all decisions made by a person and contribute to the formation of distinct phases of development.

Psychoanalytic theory was first proposed by Sigmund Freud at the turn of the twentieth century. Freud’s system, which developed out of his work with mentally ill patients, outlines two specific elements to humanity: four stages of development that a child goes through and three elements of personality. As children develop they learn to modify the desires of their particular developmental stage through aspects of their personalities. Each of the developmental stages – oral, anal, phallic, and genital – is based on the child’s ability to gratify a certain bodily need. Freud argued that, as children grow, they satisfy the needs of each stage through eating, controlling defecation, receiving (or not receiving) penile stimulation, and engaging in sexual activity, respectively. Children progress through the first three stages rather quickly but remain in the genital stage throughout their adult lives. However, since human beings do not spend all of their time fulfilling these specific desires, Freud outlined a theory of personality that explains how people learn to regulate them. The personality, he suggests, is composed of three distinct parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the most basic of instincts – the impetus we have to survive and reproduce through the fulfillment of our developmental stages. The superego is the societally-imposed moral judgment that calls for a repression of instincts. The ego serves as a moderator between the two, aiding the child in fulfilling needs within culturally-acceptable boundaries.

Erik Erikson, a second-generation psychoanalyst, retooled Freud’s theory to include what he called the “developmental crisis” of each stage of life. While Freud’s stages are sexual, Erikson’s are social. Each of the Freud’s three early stages corresponds with one of Erikson’s moments of social crisis: in the oral stage, a child learns to trust or mistrust; in the anal stage, a child develops autonomy or shame (based on their success in toilet training), in the phallic stage, children understand taking initiative or developing guilt based on their desires. Erikson outlined five further stages that occur in adulthood: industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role diffusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, and integrity vs. despair.

Psychoanalytic theory looks for patterns of unconscious desires and urges within texts. Psychoanalysts are less concerned with how children write as with what they write. Children’s work, especially fiction, can indicate stages of development that they may remain trapped in, even if they appear externally to have proceeded chronologically through the stages of development. Freudian scholars look particularly for examples of uncontrolled id in a text. While a child may have, through virtue of the ego, been able to appear to have suppressed a desire, the id might expose itself through writing. For example, a psychologist would read texts like Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle as indicating an author stuck in the oral stage, even if all external forces indicate that the author has reached the genital stage. In the same manner, Erikson’s eight stages can appear in a text as well. Like child writers, child readers can identify with authors or with characters within texts who are undergoing the same stages of development.

Behavioral Theory

Behavioral theory developed in direct opposition to psychoanalytic theory; instead of suggesting that development occurs based on unseen, inherent needs and desires, it claims that training alters human behavior. Behavioral theory focuses on conditioning, the methods and processes through which behavior is learned. There are two main types of conditioning: classical and operant.

Classical conditional was first defined at the end of the nineteenth century by Ivan Pavlov, who famously trained dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell. Pavlov attempted to prove that behaviors which occur naturally can be trained to occur on command. In his dog experiment, Pavlov observed that dogs would salivate when presented with food. In his study, Pavlov began to associate food with the ringing of the bell. He discovered that once the dog had learned to associate the neutral stimulus (food causes salivation) with a meaningful stimulus (the bell), the trainer could cause the behavior to occur in the absence of the food simply by ringing the bell. The behavior has thus been conditioned to occur.

Fifty years after Pavlov, B.F. Skinner suggested that more aggressive steps could be taken to condition human behavior. Rather than simply altering patterns of association, a scientist could train a subject to perform in a particular manner through a system of rewards and punishments. If a positive behavior is reinforced, it will likely be performed again. While Skinner initially tested his theories through the use of sensory stimuli to small animals, the theory was later applied to human social behavior. If a behavior produces the praise of one’s peers or one’s instructors, it will likely be repeated. If it incurs censure, it will not.

For many years, behavioral theory was the primary training tool in teaching children how to read. Students were praised or censured, rewarded or punished based on their abilities to interact with texts. Alphabetical and numeric grading systems are both based on behavioral concepts. Recently, behavioral reading theories have fallen out of favor for a number of reasons. First, they are often counterproductive. Students who are having difficulty reading undergo punishment, which causes them to respond negatively to reading activities. Rather than to limit the undesirable behavior (such as the negative reading skill), punishment often causes students to resist reading entirely. Second, behavioral theory tends to socially stratify students unnecessarily. Students who perform well and receive praise become socially distinct from students who do not perform well. This creates a culture of negativity that encourages the behaviors it seeks to remove. Third, behavioral theory ignores the process in favor of the product. Students may be praised for reading well but might never understand how they performed that activity. Similarly, receiving punishment only looks down on the negative behavior – it does not help students achieve the desired behavior.

Cognitive Theory

Like psychoanalytical theory, cognitive theory argues that behaviors are based on internal workings, but instead of urges, it argues for the development of thought patterns. Jean Piaget, the pioneer mind in cognitive theory, proposed four major stages of thought that children go through. Children progress through these stages in search of what he called “cognitive equilibrium” – as a children grows, new information or cognitive tasks that cannot be fit into a given mindset force the mindset to grow in order to retain equilibrium.

Piaget’s stages roughly coincide with a child’s age. From birth to two years, the child is in the sensorimotor stage. Thinking occurs only so far as it connects to the concrete, physical world. Things do not exist if they are outside of the child’s immediate consciousness. From two to six years, the child is in the preoperational stage. Here, the child begins to understand symbols – that things can be represented to exist even if they are not in the immediate physical present. From seven to eleven, the child is the concrete operational stage. Principles govern the child’s understanding and experiences, allowing the child to make rational decisions based on patterns of knowing. Finally, from twelve years and onward, the child is the in formal operational stage. Here, the child is fully developed and can think about abstractions. The child can apply moral decisions and analytic reason to hypothetical concepts.

In Piaget’s theory, reading practices can begin in the preoperational phase when the child learns the use of symbols. This makes possible two acts crucial to reading: understanding that words are indicative of “things” and that letters make up words. When the child is able to understand that things exist outside of the physical word, he or she can then identify that “doll” the word stands for the object or that “run” indicates the action. Children can then understand that words are developed out of their component parts: letters. These letters work together to form the symbols of words. In the preoperational stage, most reading involves basic concepts such as engaging in direct action or experiencing simple emotions. As children progress to the concrete operational stage, Piaget argues, they are able to reason logically about the texts they engage with. They may question the absolute truth of those texts and can understand the reasons behind text construction. They can begin to classify texts, words, and the ideas they represent into categories and can articulate their own responses to texts. When children reach the formal operational stage, they can engage in metacognitive interpretations of texts, questioning their own reasoning processes and decisions regarding texts. They can also draw similarities between the construction of their own texts and the construction of others’ texts.

Sociocultural Theory

The first of the two emergent theories, sociocultural theory suggests that children develop in response to the individuals who are part of their surrounding culture. Development is not universal to all children; instead, it develops for each child individually based on the experiences that the child has with those around him or her.

Lev Vygotsky, who, though he was a contemporary of many of the grand theorists, had his work lost in Stalinist Russia until the latter half of the twentieth century. After the fall of the iron curtain, however, his theories quickly gained credence. Vygotsky proposed that cognition occurs in response to society. His theories centered on the concept of an “apprenticeship in thinking,” the idea that a child exists in a mentorship relationship with mature members of society and develops in imitation of those members. If the adult is actively engaged with the child, a situation of guided participation develops in which the adult trains the child in understanding and conforming to their society’s expectations and values.

Although what is learned differs from culture to culture, sociocultural theory suggests that all children learn in the same manner. Children exist within a range of expected performances, Vygotsky argued: that which is known, that which is not known but can be obtained, and that which is not known and cannot yet be learned. The central range, called the zone of proximal development, includes those performances which a child can do with assistance. The child can only learn those tasks which fall within this zone. If a child does not engage in guided participation with a mentor to perform the activities in this zone, the child will be unable to learn.

Sociocultural reading theory has gained credence through recent movements to create “reading cultures.” Teachers are encouraged to create environments that promote reading as a positive task designed to bring one into coherence with culture. Child psychologists argue that parents who make reading an active part of their family life are training children to adopt these same practices. Furthermore, critics have suggested that the rampant popularity of teen novels is reestablishing reading as a cultural acceptable activity for children. Scholars like Deborah Brandt, who has proposed the concept of “literacy sponsors” argue that readers must be trained by more mature readers and encouraged into a community of literacy, using the kind of guided participation that Vygotsky suggests.

Epigenetic Systems Theory

Epigenetic systems theory argues that development occurs at the intersection of inherited genetic traits and environment influences. Drawing on many of the previously stated theories, epigenetic systems suggests that a combination of nature and nurture – the physical inclinations that a person is born with and the skills and patterns developed through societal interaction – work together to promote development. If a person is born with certain tendencies, cultural forces – particularly those applied by a parent – can either highlight or attempt to eradicate those tendencies. The classic epigenetic case study is that of pairs of identical twins separated at birth. Sharing the same genetic matter but raised in two different cultures, twins exhibit some similar characteristics and other radically different ones.

Just as epigenetic theory combines elements from many developmental theories, modern reading theory suggests that children’s engagement with texts is multi-dimensional. A child may use his formal operational skills to identify an oral fixation in a text through the guided participation of a mentor. Fortunately, many practioners are seeking to meet children’s unique reading needs rather than attempting to apply a single overarching theory to a classroom of diverse individuals. If reading theory remains open to the application of ideas centered on student needs rather than route adherence to antiquated theories, the future of the field looks quite bright, indeed.

Recommended Reading List

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Cushman

et al. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2001.

Dent-Read, Cathy and Patricia Zukow-Goldring, eds. Evolving Explanations of

Development. Washington DC: American Psychological Associatoin, 1997.

Erikson, Erik. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton, 1963.

Freud, Sigmind. A General Introduction to Pyschoanalysis. Trans. Joan Riviare. New

York: Modern Library, 1953.

Piaget, Jean. The Origins of Intelligence in Children. London: Routledge, 1952.

Skinner, Burrhus Frederic. Verbal Behavior. New York: Appleton-Centry-Crofts, 1957.

Vygotsky, Lev. Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.

Reception Theory

Jack Ayres
Seminar: Literacy Theory
Dr. David Jolliffe
31 Mar 2009
“Reception Theory”
Far from being a monolithic or absolutely precise term, “reception theory” (or “reception study”) instead serves as an umbrella term referring to a critical approach to studying literature that places meaning within the reader, thereby concentrating on an audience’s interpretive practices, rather than authorial intention and the text itself. In other words, reception theory shifts the emphasis from “the author and the work to the text and the reader” (Holub, 1984; xii). This practice can be applied in order to speculate on the construction of meaning vis-à-vis the individual reader’s perception of a text, as seen in the work of foundational critic Wolfgang Iser (1926-2007); furthermore, reception study also tends to be highly historical, using reviews, scholarship, and other historical documents to chronicle responses to authors and texts in a given period. Additionally, the term can be used to “refer to an inquiry into a text’s effect on specific classes of readers” (Harkin 411). Since these “specific classes” often refer to groups based on gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and so forth, reception theory is frequently aligned with critical methods such as feminist theory, Marxism, post-colonialism, queer studies, and others.
Among its many affiliations, reception theory is most closely aligned with—yet also distinct from—other reader-oriented systems, most notably “reader-response theory.” Both theories are umbrella terms for literary criticism that locate text and reader as central in the construction of meaning, and Iser—one of reception theory’s originators—is often also considered a reader-response critic as well. However, Robert C. Holub distinguishes the two methodologies on the bases of unity and mutual influence. Unlike reception theory, the label “reader-response” was given to certain critics in retrospect; reception theory, on the other hand, “must be understood as a more cohesive, conscious, and collective undertaking” (Holub, 1984; xiii). This undertaking was concentrated in West Germany, particularly at the University of Constance, during the late 1960s; in fact, reception theory’s founders are generally referred to as the “Constance School”. Further, according to Holub, there is virtually no indication of mutual exchange or influence between the two camps, with the notable exception being the shared importance of Iser.
The emergence of reception theory as a purposeful and cohesive movement can be seen as a reaction to specific political, cultural, and intellectual circumstances occurring in West Germany during the 1960s. Holub argues:
Reception study arose as the result of a crisis in methods during the sixties, one which was, no doubt, closely related to larger social and political changes in Germany and the Western World at that time. The manifestations of a crisis in the literary academic sphere were evidenced in a variety of tendencies: the re-examination of the literary canon, the demand for more relevant curricula at universities, and the attempts to reform academic programs were the most notable of these signs of intense reevaluation. (1982; 83)
Reception theory emerged from this climate, and its founders—most notably Iser and Hans Robert Jauss (1921-1997)—saw their work as a corrective to theories of study they considered obsolete or elitist. In particular, the reception theorists challenged and rejected theories of literary study that saw meaning as rigidly fixed and wholly located within an ahistorical text, examples of which are the New Criticism and Formalism. The founders and early advocates of reception theory were so convinced of its monumental importance that many of them, including Jauss, would invoke Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts in science to describe the revolutionary character of their work.
Despite some of its founders’ extraordinary claims of a massive critical sea change, reception theory has a lineage that can potentially be traced back as far as classical Greece. Plato clearly understood—and warned against—poetry’s affective power on people, and subsequent artistic movements such as Romanticism stressed poetry’s emotional impact. However, reader response has its firmest roots in the philosophical traditions of phenomenology—such as the work of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Roman Ingarden (1893-1970)—and hermeneutics, whose practitioners include Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-2002). Phenomenology—the name derives from the Greek word for “appearance”—disavows “the ‘external’ world of objects [in favor of] the ways in which these objects appear to the human subject, and the subjective contribution to this process of appearing” (Habib 709). Related to this philosophical outlook is hermeneutics, especially as manifested in the work of Husserl’s student Heidegger, who indicated that “art does not simply express prior or ready-made truths: rather, it both creates and preserves them” (Habib 717). These two philosophical traditions would feed into reception theory, although it is, of course, not a straight trajectory. Before reception theory was formalized by the Constance School, its basic tenets were prefigured in the work of critics such as Louise Rosenblatt, who argued for the “transactional” nature of reading, and Wayne Booth, who stressed fiction’s rhetorical power.
Of the Constance School, Iser and Jauss are generally acknowledged as its two most influential figures. The outlines of Iser’s theory of reading are presented in a 1970 lecture, “The Affective Structure of the Text,” and two works, The Implied Reader (1972) and The Act of Reading (1976). At its most basic, Iser’s theory identifies two “poles” to a piece of literature: its artistic pole (controlled by the author) and the aesthetic pole (realized by the reader). Iser argues that reading is an active process which brings the text to life; therefore, meaning is found in the convergence of the artistic and aesthetic poles. This authority does not mean that any reading will be validated, however, as the “text uses various strategies and devices to limit its own unwritten implications” (Habib 724). Iser’s colleague Jauss also felt the active role of the reader had been incorrectly undervalued, but, unlike Iser’s tendency to concentrate on individual readings, Jauss sought to “bridge the gap between historical and aesthetic approaches to literature” (Habib 721). Jauss saw texts as dialogic, devoid of fixed or essential meanings; instead, the meaning of a text is fluid and must be “[grounded] on the history of a work’s reception, [and] on the succession of readers’ experiences of that work” (Habib 721). Jauss postulates a “horizon of expectations” for audiences: the horizon serves as a “framework of assumptions” (Habib 722) that informs reader responses to and interpretations of a text, as well as the significance the text is granted by its audience. Certainly reception theory—during its germination as well as today—encompasses many theoretical positions beyond Iser and Jauss, some of those positions being contradictory, and its application has been extended to film and media studies. However, as Iser and Jauss are generally recognized as the critical approaches most important among reception study’s foundational theorists, their work remains central. But, with the purpose of determining the relationship between reception theory and reading, between the two of them, Iser’s work is especially useful. Jauss’s work, which strived to negotiate Marxism’s recognition of historical circumstance with Formalism’s emphasis on aesthetic perception, is relevant to reading mainly with respect to his “horizon of expectations.” This formulation of a historically-bound framework of expectations for readers places the reading act in context without subordinating reading to historical factors. Doing so both points to an explanation for changing critical consensuses on texts, as well as highlights a text’s inexhaustibility. Yet, of reception theory’s two main critics, Iser is typically acknowledged as being more concerned with the micro-level issue of response, in contrast with Jauss’s macro-level concern with reception (Holub, 1984; 85); therefore, of the two, Iser’s work is more directly related to reading.
Iser’s work reacts against the traditional assumptions of literary interpretation, which held that a text contains a fixed, “hidden” meaning, and that the aim of critical reading was to decode or uncover that stable meaning. Iser attempts to correct these assumptions by pointing out that the reading process is a temporal, yet non-linear, activity, and also that reading is characterized by a search for consistency, which requires that the reader “fill in gaps” at moments of indeterminancy, for instance, when confronted with implication. In this way, then, Iser sees reading as mirroring the way we experience life: “once our preconceptions are held in abeyance, the text becomes our ‘present’ while our own ideas fade into the past” (Habib 727).
Although Iser strives to situate reading as an event in time or a “dynamic happening” (qtd in Habib 728) with the reader playing a crucial role, he anticipates and defends himself against charges of subjectivism. Iser acknowledges that, to a certain degree, meanings drawn by readers are indeed private, but that they are regulated or limited—but not controlled—by textual conventions and devices. The production of meaning is “intersubjective”: readers, guided by the text, will often respond to the same elements, yet “different readers may then draw widely diverging conclusions from this range of meanings” (Habib 729). By acknowledging this negotiation between determinacy and indeterminacy during reading, Iser seems to be following in the footsteps of Louise Rosenblatt and her transactional model of reading. Rosenblatt herself, however, suggests that although Iser and other reception studies advocates’ “theoretical phrasings at times seem transactional nevertheless concentrate primarily on analyses of the text and see the reader’s contribution only as filling in ‘the gaps’ rather than transactionally creating meaning through the aesthetic stance and the triadic relationship with all the verbal signs” (45). Certainly the distance between Rosenblatt and Iser is measured in degrees, but probably Iser’s most important—if controversial—elaborations upon Rosenblatt’s foundational work is his concept of the “implied reader.”
Apparently drawings its name from Wayne Booth’s “implied author,” the implied reader is Iser’s attempt to configure the reader’s position without relying on “real” readers—which depends upon the survival of historical documents—or “hypothetical” readers—which is often a synonym for the “ideal” reader of a critic’s mind. Iser’s implied reader is a somewhat ephemeral textual process that anticipates a recipient and then structures meaning for the reader. In other words, Iser sees his implied reader, which he deems a “transcendental model,” to be a convergence of the textual conventions that control its perspectives and “the reader’s active role in bringing together the varied perspectives offered in the text; the text itself does not bring about this convergence” (Habib 730). The implied reader, then, encompasses not only the textual structure, but also the reader’s act of processing those structures, actualizing them, and filling in the text’s negations for the sake of consistency.















Works Cited
Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.
Harkin, Patricia. “The Reception of Reader-Response Theory.” College Composition and Communication 56 (2005): 410-425. JSTOR. 13 Mar 2009. www.jstor.org.
Holub, Robert C. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Methuen, 1984.
---. “Trends in Literary Theory: The American Reception of Reception Theory.” The German Quarterly 55.1 (1982): 80-96. JSTOR. 13 Mar 2009. www.jstor.org.
Rosenblatt, Louise. “Viewpoints: Transaction Versus Interaction—A Terminological Rescue Operation.” Making Meaning with Texts: Selected Essays. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. 38-49.

Jessie Blackburn
Theories of Reading and Writing
Dr. Jolliffe
Encyclopedia Entry: Digital Literacy and New Literacy Studies

Situating Digital Literacy Studies within New Literacy Studies
Literacy Studies is currently in the midst of internal renovation. Revisiting many of the central ideas to the field—such as literacy as emancipation, literacy as imported information, and literacy as an isolated skill—Literacy Studies may be described as overhauling some of its foundational and ideological assumptions surrounding literacy, pedagogy, and outcome. We see this inward gaze of the field being motivated by a new branch of Literacy Studies, aptly known as New Literacy Studies (NLS). Born from the process movement and intersecting with the postmodernist and poststructuralist concerns of cultural studies, New Literacy Studies finds much of its scholarly roots in the works of Gee, Street, Brandt, and Heath[1]. Brian Street’s 2003 article, “What’s ‘new’ in New Literacy Studies? Critical Approaches to Literacy in Theory and Practice,” explains that NLS “build upon the foundational descriptions of out-of-school literacy events and practices developed within NLS, to return the gaze back to the relations between in and out of school, so that NLS is not seen simply as ‘anti school’ or interested only in small scale or ‘local’ literacies of resistance (Street 83). Overall, NLS understands literacy as more than the ability to read and write. Rather, NLS situates literacy as individually and culturally performed and examines the ways that competing contexts shape “the recognition of multiple literacies, varying according to time and space” (Street 77). One of the veins of New Literacy Studies is Digital Media Studies, the exploration of the multiple literacies necessary to navigate and resulting from technology today.
As computers and the Web become more robust at the same time more affordable and portable, technology’s influence on literacy is reaching a critical point of debate as to what skills modern definitions of literacy should include and exclude. Traditional notions of western literacy are typically traced to “the development of the Greek alphabet and its cumulative impact by about 450 b.c.e” (Hahn 290) and later to “the invention of the Gutenberg press in the late 1400’s” which offered mass production of the literature and meant that “many more individuals could now join the ranks of the literate” (Hahn 291). However, we are now in the midst of another technology revolution that ultimately may rival the literacy shifts caused by the printing press or moveable type. In Gail Hawisher and Cindy Selfe’s 2004 article, “Becoming Literate in the Information Age: Cultural Ecologies and Literacies of Technology,” NLS was reminded that “we can understand literacy as a set of practices and values only when we properly situate our studies within the context of a particular historical period, a particular cultural milieu, and a specific cluster of material conditions” (646). While this article was not the first to attempt the inclusion of digital literacies under the larger umbrella of literacy studies and composition studies, we must note this article’s attention to the common agenda behind digital literacy studies: exploring and appreciating technology’s role in modern literacies.
In the same article by Hawisher and Selfe, focusing on America during the years of 1978 and 2003, we learn:
During that period, personal computers—as relatively cheap and durable, mass-

produced and mass-marketed machines—became commercially available for the first

time to many families, entered composition classrooms across the nation in large numbers,

and were broadly accepted by many school-aged children as the composing tool of choice.

Since that time, these machines have become so ubiquitous that their many effects are

becoming increasingly invisible” and it is during this time that computers “first found their

way into—and altered—the fabric of our culture. (645)
As we begin to see NLS develop and envelop some of the concerns explored by Digital Literacy Studies, we witness firsthand the evolutionary capacity of reading/writing alongside changes in civilization, and we see NLS widen its lens of inclusion to consider emerging digital literacies.
Some of the new literacies that are celebrated by Digital Literacy Studies may even seem beyond the traditional understanding of alphabetic literacies, but to NLS in the 21st century, ideas such as web surfing, text messaging, social networking, digital reading, remixing, digital composing, web designing, video essaying, and even gaming all fit into the practices seen as significant literacy performances. For example, Sara Glazer’s 2004 article, “Video Games: Do They Have Educational Value?”, asks us to consider gaming literacies and their relevance to traditional literacies. Glazer suggests that “indeed, the argument that video and computer games are superior to school in helping children learn is gaining currency in academic circles. Claimed benefits include improved problem-solving, mastery of scientific investigation and the ability to apply information learned to real-life situations.” (937) We learn from Glazer and other gaming literacy researchers like her, that “as video games become more sophisticated and broaden their audience” we must ask “whether educators will adapt those techniques to make school as engaging and complex as the best video games” (951). Placing Glazer’s article within the larger discourse surrounding NLS, it is important to note that she is currently one of many literacy scholars asking similar pedagogical questions surrounding popular literacy practices and the potential for those practices to either be incorporated into academia or, in some cases, what extracurricular literacy practices say about 21st century literacy in general[2].
Perhaps even more debatable to the current conversations on digital literacy is the definition of composition that is now witnessing its own re-visioning by NLS. Jeff Rice, in his article entitled “Networks and New Media” writes:
English studies maintains a fixed point of view through a singular notion of writing as

static, fixed, and individually composed (typically via the essay or the exam), taking place

in a unified realm of thought deemed ‘English.’ The definition of ‘writing’ produced in this

economy of thought (response essay, analytical paper, personal essay) no longer serve the

media society of networks and connections contemporary culture generates as these

definitions of writing are now performed. The time has come to rethink the metaphor of

writing because its image is too structured around fixity.” (129 emphasis in original)
For perhaps not very obvious reasons, it is worth mentioning that Rice’s 2006 article was published in College English—a not so subtle reminder to Literacy Studies that Digital Literacy Studies and NLS are increasingly reshaping the term ‘composition’ into a broader application that fits the 21st century and beyond. Specifically, we now witness the inclusion of video design and remixing as forms of composing in the literacy classroom. This modern mode of composing addresses many of the traditional concerns found in alphabetic-based literacy classrooms; however, it also includes multi-modal possibilities that illustrate literary devices such as mood, tone, style, and imagery. Many digital literacy educators now teach the video essay in an effort assess a student’s ability to write for the 21st century reader. Assessing this form of multi-modal composing, NLS pedagogues look for the writer’s attention to visual elements of mood through close up, long shot, fade in, or pan in an effort to achieve multiple effects. Likewise, a digital composer’s attention to story line and plot is often assessed through choices in camera views, times, and shot sequence. NLS classrooms tend to rely upon the PC and university provided computer labs that are increasingly fitted with editing software enabling students to film splice with digital editing—skills which many students practice extracurricularly for self-motivated purposes (i.e., YouTube). In keeping with the NLS concerns of local literacies and literacies as contextual performances, digital composing skills are validated, encouraged, and taught within 21 century literacy classrooms; likewise, the inclusion of digital composition in literacy studies now allows music, sound effects, and voice tracks to be remixed into a student’s paper or over the top of an existing text. Dennis Baron’s article “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies” points out that as literacy technology evolves, “it also goes beyond the previous technology in innovative, often compelling ways. For example, while writing cannot replace many speech functions, it allows us to communicate in ways that speech does not. Writing lacks such tonal cues of the human voice as pitch and stress, not to mention the physical cues that accompany face to face communication” (122). Essentially, Baron’s point is that when we trace literacy technologies—in the case of his article, the pencil and the pixel—we see where speech acts eventually led to alphabetic writing and now to multimodal composing. Built specifically to support these academic interests within the literacy classroom but also used by the general public is the possibility provided by the open-sourced, multi-media, and free publishing environments found through the robust, web-based Sophie book (http://iml.usc.edu/flashVideoPlayer/sophie/sophie_video.mp4). The Sophie book, developed by academic institutions for academic literacies, is just one example of the Web’s impinging influence on the way the 21st century literacy students, and therefore literacy scholars, see composing as a multimodal task.
While many of these multimodal composition techniques achieve the basic rhetorical elements valued in traditional literacy classrooms (e.g., narrator, audience, ethos, pathos, and logos, etc.), Digital Literacy Studies hope to expand the definition of literacy to bridge the traditional composition skills with the modern digital literacies to enrich a text and maximize its rhetorical potential. In the article “Web Literacy: Challenges and Opportunities for Research in a New Medium” (Sorapure, et al.) we learn that “many scholars in [literacy studies] believe that the viability of composition depends on such an expanded definition of literary. Aside from benefitting students by expanding their repertoire of skills in evaluating different modes and media of communication, a broader conception of literacy invites us as scholars to make connections to other disciplines” (335). Again, we see NLS folding digital literacy into its broadening goals and objectives to meet the shifting cultural ecology surrounding literacy practices.
Another cue that the dialogue of NLS now includes conversations on digital media and literacy is the journal Computers and Composition (http://computersandcomposition.osu.edu/html/history.htm). Devoted to publishing diverse articles focused on digital writing pedagogy; writing programs; rhetorical critique of computer software and the visual, textual digital media; and technology’s relevance to socio-economic conditions, Computers and Composition interrogates the current trends in digital media and composition studies while astutely anticipating the imminent shifts in the culturally symbiotic relationship that has developed between technology and literacy. Typical for the Journal and the field of Digital Media Studies, any edition might cover topics ranging in scope from composition pedagogy to digital rhetoric in society and politics to software programming to online portfolios to video gaming to community web design or the video essay.
Providing further proof of the widening concerns of literacy studies is the 2004 National Council for the Teachers of English (NCTE) position statement regarding 21st century literacies. NCTE states:
Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments,
the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to (1) develop proficiency with the tools of technology; (2) build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally; (3) design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes; (4) manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information; (5) create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts; and (6) attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.(http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition)
We see that as of 2004, the national organization devoted to the advancement of college level literacy education has officially and publically embraced the studies of digital literacy into its own agendas. Additionally, the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) has also issued its position regarding digital composing in college composition courses. According to WPA:
By the end of first-year composition, students should (1) use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts; (2) locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources; and (3) understand and exploit the differences in the rhetorical strategies and in the affordances available for both print and electronic composing processes and texts. (http://www.wpacouncil.org/positions/outcomes.html)
Undoubtedly, the inclusion of digital literacy into the concerns of NCTE and WPA regarding the state of America’s higher education literacy classrooms is yet another indicator that as NLS examines its role in the 21st century, multimodal composing is a chief concern. The February 2009 Report from the National Council of Teachers of English features an article written by the former NCTE president, Kathleen Blake Yancey, entitled “Writing in the 21st Century.” In this article, Yancey traces the shifting literacy acts that took place in the 20th century into those that occur now in the 21st century. Yancy writes:
Historically, like today, we compose on all the available materials. Whether those

materials are rocks or computer screens, composing is a material as well as social practice;

composing is situated within and informed by specific kinds of materials as well as by its

location in community. We have simply never seen it quite so clearly as we do now. (8)
She concludes her article by revisiting the NLS commitment to literacy pedagogies that match the times in which they are taught. She claims this most recent publication is a call to action for the field to “articulate the new models of composing developing right in front of our eyes” and to “ design a new model of a writing curriculum K–graduate school” (8). While Yancey does not speak for all literacy scholars, she certainly situates her concerns at the feet of NLS and Digital Literacy Studies in her emphatic quest to acknowledge and explore the influence of digital media on the literacy practices of the 21st century composer.
With the inclusion of Digital Literacy Studies into the larger concerns of New Literacy Studies, we see the field’s continued commitment to “tak[ing] nothing for granted with respect to literacy and the social practices with which it becomes associated, problematizing what counts as literacy at any time and place and asking ‘whose literacies’ are dominant and whose are marginalized or resistant (Street 77). The direction of NLS is sure to be defined by the constantly shifting identities of literacy performers as well as the evolving contexts in with literacy acts take place. NLS has entered into the early 21st century, and it seems only to be gaining momentum among literacy scholars—especially those interested in emerging digital literacies.


Works Cited
Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies.” Computers in
the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Sidler, Michelle, Richard Morris, and Elizabeth Smith, eds. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008.
The Council of Writing Program Administrators. Glazer, Sarah. "Video Games." CQ Researcher 16.40 (2006): 937-960. CQ Researcher Online. CQ Press. 10 April 2009

Hahn, Dan. F. Political Communication: Rhetoric, Government, and Citizens. State College:
Strata Publishing, 2003.
National Council of the Teachers of English. “The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies.”
NCTE Position Statement. February 15, 2008.

Rice, Jeff . "Networks and New Media. " College English 69.2 (2006): 127-133. 10 Apr.
2009.
Selfe, Cynthia L., and Gail E. Hawisher. “Becoming Literate in the Information Age: Cultural
Ecologies and the Literacaies of Technology.” CCC. 55.4 (2004): 642-692.
Selfe, Cynthia L., and Gail E. Hawisher. Literate Lives in the Information Age: Narratives of
Literacy from the United States. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. Sidler, Michelle, Elizabeth O. Smith, and Richard Morris. Computers in the Composition
Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. “Sophie Book.” <>
Sorapure, Madeleine, et al. “Web Literacy: Challenges and Opportunities for Reasearch in a New
Medium.” Computers in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Sidler,
Street, Brian. “What’s ‘new’ in New Literacy Studies? Critical Approaches to Literacy in
Theory and Practice.” Current Issues in Comparative Education, 5.2 (2003): 77-91.
Michelle, Richard Morris, and Elizabeth Smith, eds. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Writing in the 21st Century.” Report from the National Council of Teachers of English. February 2009 NCTE.
[1] For more on this, see Gee’s Social Linguistics: Ideology in Discourses (1991) and “The New Literacy Studies” (2000); Brandt’s Literacy in American Lives (2001); and Street’s "Literacy Events and Literacy Practices" (2000) and Social Literacies (1995).
[2] For more on gaming literacy, see James Gee’s text, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003), in which Gee asks similar questions and proposes simliar implications for the literacy classroom.

Instructions for presentations

Hello all,

As promised, here are a few simple instructions for the presentations, which begin next week. First of all, plan to talk for no more than 10 minutes. Say what your central question is, what you are learning that might lead to an answer to that question, and then what you think the implications of that answer/those answers might be. After each presentation, rather than having a free-form discussion, I propose that we "ink-shed" a bit. I'll explain how to do that in class tonight.

DAJ

GQ's Top 20 Graphic Novels

I hesitate to directly post GQ's content, so here is the link. It has a cool slideshow of the covers of its selections. Looks like a pretty good list.


http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_8577

Enjoy!

Guidelines for the proposal

Hello all,

Sometime between now and when I see you again on March 24, could you please email me a two-page (maximum) proposal in which you do the following things?

1. Say, in the form of a sentence or two rather than a phrase, what your seminar paper will be about.

2. Explain in a paragraph or so why this is an important topic for you to write about.

3. Explain, again in a paragraph or so, what you already know about this topic.

4. Explain, again in a paragraph or so, what you think you'll need to learn in order to complete your project--a couple of salient, challenging questions you still have.

If you'd like to let me know what you've already read on the topic and ask questions about bibliography you might like to consult, feel free to do that as well.

As always, write to me via email with questions.

DAJ

For those who missed the viewing

Does anyone know how to upload movies from DVD to YouTube? Is there another way to post the movie for everyone in our class to access? The YouTube method required opening the D drive file and uploading each DVD file one at a time? Is there an easier way?