Overview of Defining Literacy in the 21st Century
Serendipity abounds in the world of technology and thought. The readings I have been doing for my Teaching Through Learning class on Adolescent Literacy have dovetailed neatly with working on a technology plan for our middle school. I’ve been working on an overview of defining literacy for our students, making use of the insights of Kylene Beers as well as the work of Kim Cofino (as discussed in my previous post) to approach the question of what it means to be literate in the 21st Century.
One of the pressing challenges of educating students for success in the 21st century is that, as technologies evolve and knowledge expands, we are aiming at constantly moving targets. It is therefore crucial that we broaden our focus from the finite information with which students need to be literate to the dynamic skills with which our students need to be literate. In this dawning age of digital delivery, ensuring that our students are truly literate requires a far more dynamic definition and approach to literacy
In her article “The Measure of Our Success” literacy expert Kylene Beers explains that “literacy is a set of skills that reflect the needs of the time. As those needs shift, then our definition of literacy shifts.” In order to explore the new demands of literacy, it is useful to revisit Beers’ outline of how far literacy has already evolved to meet the shifting needs of American society. Put simply, as the needs of society changed, so did the markers of what it meant to be literate: from being able to sign one’s name during colonial times and the Revolutionary War era, to being able to read and write handwritten letters during the Civil War era, to being able to demonstrate one’s education through the reciting poems, speeches, and other works considered central to the American culture during the years leading to World War I. Following World War I up through the end of the last century, American society went through both the industrial revolution and a technological revolution, which led to a definition of literacy that focused on people’s ability to “know, analyze, and explain” (Beers 8).
In each of these eras, literacy responded to shifts in what society needed from its citizens and in what society made available to its citizens in terms of information and tools for using that information. Literacy in the 21stcentury responds to the demands of an era in which, according to author Daniel Pink, “making meaning and connections will be valued as will focusing on the multiple possibilities of any situation over seeking one solution” (qtd. in Beers 8).
In today’s world, what society needs from its citizens and what it offers its citizens outstrips the limits of all previous definitions of literacy. In today’s world, society demands and provides opportunities for people to pursue multiple perspectives, to develop dynamic, multi-faceted solutions, to connect and collaborate in global problem-solving and creativity. In today’s world, our definition of literacy must enable us to identify and cultivate in our students the skills they need to become competent citizens, collaborative workers, and creative thinkers in the global society in which they are already living.
References:Beers, Kylene. “The Measure of Our Success.” Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promises into Practice. Ed. Beers, Kylene, Robert Probst and Linda Reif.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing, 2007.
