Factors of Influence on Classroom Literacy Practices

Previous research has indicated professional training and support, personal literacy preferences, and professional literacy attitudes have an influence on classroom literacy practices. Limited literacy related research has been conducted in agricultural education. This study sought to examine the influence of professional training and support, personal literacy preferences, and professional literacy attitudes of agriculture teachers on current classroom literacy practices. Data was collected from in-service teachers in 35 states. The researchers determined a majority of agriculture teachers have completed professional training, have positive personal literacy preferences and positive professional literacy attitudes. They also use a variety of literacy activities in their classrooms. The use of PowerPoint presentations and traditional writing activities were the only practices determined to have a significant influencer. Recommendations for practice include encouraging agriculture teachers to develop relationships with the English/Language Arts department and offering professional development related to literacy assessment.

Identity, employability and entrepreneurship: the ChANGE framework of graduate attributes

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce an evidence-based, transferable framework of graduate attributes and associated university toolkit to support the writing of level-appropriate learning outcomes that enable the university to achieve its mission to Transform Lives + Inspire Change. Design/methodology/approach An iterative process of co-design and co-development was employed to produce both the framework and the associated learning outcomes toolkit. Findings There is tangible benefit in adopting an integrated framework that enables students to develop personal literacy and graduate identity. The toolkit enables staff to write assessable learning outcomes that support student progression and enable achievement of the framework objective. Research limitations/implications While the framework has been in use for two years, institutional use of the toolkit is still in its early stages. Phase 2 of the project will explore how effectively the toolkit achieves the framework objective. Practical implications The introduction of a consistent, integrated framework enables students to develop and actively increase personal literacy through the deliberate construction of their unique graduate identity. Social implications Embedding the institutional Changemaker attributes alongside the agreed employability skills enables students to develop and articulate specifically what it means to be a “Northampton graduate”. Originality/value The uniqueness of this project is the student-centred framework and the combination of curricular, extra- and co-curricular initiatives that provide a consistent language around employability across disciplines. This is achieved through use of the learning outcomes toolkit to scaffold student progression.

Beyond Babel

This article highlights the importance of the concepts of media literacy, and digital and informational literacy to understand the multimodal meaning of multiliteracies and their interfaces. An analogy with Babel is used to understand the different ways in which this concept articulates the linguistic, visual, audio, spatial, and gestural dimensions in digital culture. In this framework, the question of convergence is highlighted in learning experiences undertaken in formal and informal contexts. To qualify the meaning of this learning for the subject, the article mentions the concept of personal literacy to locate the importance of subjectivity in the interactions that the multiliteracies offer. Finally, in an exercise of representation of the components of the multiliteracies, the article presents a diagram that highlights the importance of mediation and the forms of appropriation that express concepts and experiences in search of a transformative pedagogical practice, as an opportunity to understand the multiliteracies as a condition of dialog, expression and participation in the culture.

Navigating the Meanings of Social Justice, Teaching for Social Justice, and Multicultural Education

This article uses well-received contemporary scholarship—works by Iris Young, Nancy Fraser, Morva McDonald, Connie North, and Geneva Gay—to illuminate a high degree of coherence among the substantive meanings of social justice, teaching for social justice, and multicultural education. Based on these relationships, the article suggests that social justice is an inherent feature and goal of multicultural education, and the discourses between teaching for social justice and multicultural education should be mutually associated with one another to more effectively promote social justice. The article closes by outlining personal literacy that has the potential to enrich research and practice in multicultural education.

‘I got content with who I was’: Rural teachers’ encounters with new ways of practising literacy

In a context where Foundation Phase literacy teachers’ personal literacy often involves operational and technicist practices rather than creative, this paper argues that it is by exposing teachers to experiences of working with different genres of text for an extended time, in different fields, that teachers are able to imagine the possibilities these genres afford. Using a Bourdieusian framework of habitus, field, capital and doxa and applying imagination to the theorisation of these concepts, I examine the effect on a group of rural teachers from Limpopo province of being removed from their classrooms, and being given the opportunity to complete a 4-year Bachelor of Education degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. This case study used reflective journals and focus groups to trace shifts in the ways these teacher-students enacted literacy and thought about teaching literacy. Findings from this study suggest that teachers of literacy can change deeply entrenched ways of thinking about and valuing literacy by reflecting on the discontinuities between old and new ways of practice and, through anticipatory reflection, to imagine possibilities of teaching and enacting literacy differently. This requires critical imagination, awareness and agency. This paper discusses, in particular, Elela’s experience with poetry and Kganya’s experience with a drama script, assessing the effect this had on their personal literacy practices and how they imagine teaching literacy in the future.

Beyond Babel

This article highlights the importance of the concepts of media literacy, and digital and informational literacy to understand the multimodal meaning of multiliteracies and their interfaces. An analogy with Babel is used to understand the different ways in which this concept articulates the linguistic, visual, audio, spatial, and gestural dimensions in digital culture. In this framework, the question of convergence is highlighted in learning experiences undertaken in formal and informal contexts. To qualify the meaning of this learning for the subject, the article mentions the concept of personal literacy to locate the importance of subjectivity in the interactions that the multiliteracies offer. Finally, in an exercise of representation of the components of the multiliteracies, the article presents a diagram that highlights the importance of mediation and the forms of appropriation that express concepts and experiences in search of a transformative pedagogical practice, as an opportunity to understand the multiliteracies as a condition of dialog, expression and participation in the culture.

'Personal literacy': the vital, yet often overlooked, graduate attribute.

"There is no difference between academic skills and employment skills,"(Jackson, 2011, p1). This paper argues that there is often a false dichotomy in the minds of academics between employability, and the so-called 'skills agenda', and the teaching of academic disciplines. And even in professional courses, the view of employability can be very blinkered, limited to getting a job and working in the specific profession e.g. law, nursing, architecture. It is our argument that an explicit focus on the graduate attribute 'personal literacy' - literally the ability to 'read oneself', to be critically self-aware- can unite the academic and employability agendas and reveal them as one, joint enterprise. We also argue that both the development of employability and the learning of academic disciplines can be significantly improved through the development of students' critical self-awareness and personal literacy. Having made this case, we then go on to consider examples of how this might be achieved in practice.

Beyond Babel

This article highlights the importance of the concepts of media literacy, and digital and informational literacy to understand the multimodal meaning of multiliteracies and their interfaces. An analogy with Babel is used to understand the different ways in which this concept articulates the linguistic, visual, audio, spatial, and gestural dimensions in digital culture. In this framework, the question of convergence is highlighted in learning experiences undertaken in formal and informal contexts. To qualify the meaning of this learning for the subject, the article mentions the concept of personal literacy to locate the importance of subjectivity in the interactions that the multiliteracies offer. Finally, in an exercise of representation of the components of the multiliteracies, the article presents a diagram that highlights the importance of mediation and the forms of appropriation that express concepts and experiences in search of a transformative pedagogical practice, as an opportunity to understand the multiliteracies as a condition of dialog, expression and participation in the culture.