A revised definition of literacy: always a work in progress?

By Eva Rozkosz under CC BY-SA 2.0 license

In a previous post about literacy, I provided an analogy: becoming literate would be akin to generating life with all the different forms and variables that both entail. For a revised definition of literacy, I considered the importance of determining what type of literacy one is involved with so that desired results can be verified. This encompassed the idea that there are limits to what literacy can define and that experience with each of the cultural variants that literacy may be inherent to is largely determined by the deliberate practice that one engages in. Both definitions still hold true to me when one considers the importance of defining the stages of development and consequently the kind of learning that one is apt to engage in. This is what I intend to expand on here.

If one considers the term ‘active’ and derives from it the literal meaning that it conveys, that which is performed through physical exertion, then only when movement and buzzing are seen can one be taken for learning. That to me makes no sense at all. First, because active we are when we are engaged in a challenge, actually dispersing resources – physical, emotional, cognitive – to understand what is being learned. To come to a stage where this action reaches its fullest potential, though, development – in ages and stages – should be carefully regarded. In the beginning years, i.e. infancy, we already know that memories are being formed in a protracted fashion due to differing maturing stages of brain structures (Dehaene-Lambertz & Spelke, 2015). The same can be said about emotions and their interpretation (Aamodt & Yang, 2011; Tottenham, 2017). Therefore, it is reasonable to expect more physical involvement in the process of knowing, experimenting and effectively apprehending meaning from something. As we all go through that stage, and as scholars like Piaget have already determined, there seems little difficulty in following this line of reasoning. 

But another important concept that must also be understood at this stage is that much of what we still have to develop is dependent on experience and being exposed to and invited to interact with these experiences will enrich and solidify that learning. Later, when our higher cognitive processes and executive functioning have strengthened their operative systems and can thus rely on experience to progress, we would do well in rising demand for other processes to become more ‘active’, such as thinking and reasoning. Whereas movement and hands-on tasks are indeed essential steps in learning, they are – by no means – the only steps to accomplish goals. We have to respect the place of silent reflection, active inner talk and hypothesis generation that takes place in minds that have to be engaged to learn. And in here I’ll rely in an analogy to bring another essential element to fore: cognitive load. When I coordinated teachers in the last position I held, many of the questions I raised about their planning and execution where directed at the amount of demand that they were placing in each realm (cognitive/non-cognitive). If the content to be taught had a very low cognitive demand, then they could raise the bar for physical demands or emotion laden tasks. If, on the other hand, the content to be dealt with brought a high cognitive demand, then they had better select activities that could be easily performed by students to ‘spare’ their attention and memory for something more difficult. 

The fact is that we cannot demand a lot from different realms – cognitive and non-cognitive processing – at the same time. It is like asking a person to sail down a river with each foot in a different boat. The legs will only stretch so much…and then boats and sailor alike will go adrift. 

Therein lies a contend I have with the fact that much in Education nowadays seems directed towards active methodologies. What is active and what is to be gained (or lost) in all that activity? To me it seems clearer that there is a place and a time for chalk and talk (Dobson, 2018; Donnelly, 2014) as there is also time for active learning (even if I disagree with how the term is being used). Demanding a lot from one when the time is ripe with possibilities for another is where good literacy development should be analyzed. Developing literacy should not rely primarily on approaches or methodologies but rather on developmental stages and readiness, on motivation and meaning, taking full account of cognitive and non-cognitive processes that are interrelated with the environment where literacy takes place (Benevot, 2015).

References

Benevot, A. (2015). Literacy in the 21st century: Towards a dynamic nexus of social relations. International Review of Education, 61, 273-294. doi:10.1007/s11159-015-9463-3

Dehaene-Lambertz, G., & Spelke, E. S. (2015). The infancy of the human brain. Neuron, 88(1), 93-109.

Dobson, M. (2018). Literacy an Inclusion in Times of Change. Proceedings of the 2018 IAFOR European Conference on Education, 9-18, ISSN: 2188-1162. Available at http://papers.iafor.org/wp-content/uploads/conference-proceedings/ECE/ECE2018_proceedings.pdf 

Donnelly, Kevin. “'Chalk and Talk' Teaching Might Be the Best Way after All.” The Conversation, The Conversation, 3 Sept. 2018, https://theconversation.com/chalk-and-talk-teaching-might-be-the-best-way-after-all-34478

Tottenham, N. (2017). The brain’s emotional development. Cerebrum. Retrieved from http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2017/The_Brain_s_Emotional_Development/