![]() Situated Literacies - The Social Theory of Literacy. Throughout the following reading, authors David Barton and Mary Hamilton describe the overall theme of literacy in a form of socialism. The social aspect of literacy is seen in our everyday lives, even if we are not thinking about it. To be quite honest, before this reading I didn't think of literacy as a social practice. I would have thought that it be more of an independent practice in which you could learn from personal experience, like reading a book. This is the way that I comprehend literacy; therefore I thought that it would be one of the only ways that literacy could be portrayed. However, the author's further explain that "The notion of literacy practices offers a powerful way of conceptualizing the link between the activities of reading and writing, and the social structures in which they are embedded and which they help shape." Basically, they are arguing that literacy is a social process, which helps shape the understandings of obstacles that we may encounter throughout our lives. For example, I am an Elementary Education major. Throughout my fieldwork, I have noticed that students read and write better when they are able to relate it to some sort of social aspect in their lives. This motivates the students to want to read about something they enjoy, or to write something like a narrative about what they enjoy in their lives. Literacy can shape other's lives in the sense that it can motivate others to go out and explore life socially. Literacy will further form connections between students based upon interests and understandings. "The study of everyday literacy practices points attention to the texts of everyday life, the texts of personal life; these are distinct from other texts which are more usually studied such as educational texts, mass media texts and other published texts." The authors are explaining the importance of not only informational texts, but also the study of personal and everyday life texts. It is important to incorporate a diverse collection and understanding of different types of literacy-based texts and to understand them in a social aspect as I have discussed. I also enjoyed reading about the fact that literacy is a source of communication. I agree with this, but I never thought too in-depth about the concept prior to my reading. Every single piece of written literacy is a form of communication. This doesn't only include things like letters and post cards. It includes all literacy. If you are picking up a book to read independently, you are communicating. The author is communicating to you a story or text feature of some type. Any type of writing is a sort of communication; which is something that surprised me after my analysis of the reading. Throughout the process of learning, literacy is always changing, which means socialism is also always changing. Literacy such as reading, writing, listening, etc. will always change because of the social scene. This also goes for the opposite end of the spectrum. The social scene can also change based upon the forms of literacy in which they take. For example, educators use different types of literacy in different socially-accepted ways based on the subject and the class that they are educating. I would like to reiterate the importance of understanding that literacy is a social practice, which is something that I did not think about before my reading. Being that I will be teaching young students one day, I am going to make it a mission to help them understand that literacy is in fact consumable through social interaction. There are so many different types of learners in the elementary classroom; however, most of them benefit from some type of social interaction every day when it comes to learning a specific subject. Reading with a partner, peer editing, and many other social literacy practices as the text states will only help them achieve academic success. I pose the question if social literacy practices will work for all students. Therefore, I will make sure to observe it in a new light throughout the rest of my time as an undergraduate as well as when I am fully employed in the future. I look forward to expanding my knowledge upon literacy in a social form so that I can understand its reality one step at a time.
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AuthorMy name is Kayla Horan, here are my blog posts for Writing with Technologies. Hope you enjoy!! Archives
April 2018
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