Narratives and Critical Literacy in Health Websites for Children

Nickolas Komninos

doi:10.17456/simple-137

Abstract

Narratives and Critical Literacy in Health Websites for Children

Highlights

In this paper, the findings and conclusions reached during an Italian nationally financed project called MACE (Multimodal Awareness for Child Empowerment) are presented
Skills and competence (Ala-Mutka 2011; Unsworth 2011; Jewitt 2012; Jewitt, Bezem er & O’Halloran 2016) with literacy considered as a social phenomenon (Jones & Hafner 2012) whose levels of competence are connected to levels and strategies of social participation and action and mastering a ‘multiplicity of discourses’ (Cope & Kalantzis 2014)
The analysis focuses on the critical literacy of children of different ages (Ilomäki, Kantosalo & Lakkala 2010) when dealing with informative or pedagogic multimodal texts observing the development of strategies for interpretation of meaning (Ananiadou & Claro 2009) and the strategies adopted to overcome semiotic confusion or possible misinterpretation

Summary

Introduction

The findings and conclusions reached during an Italian nationally financed project called MACE (Multimodal Awareness for Child Empowerment) are presented. The analysis focuses on the critical literacy of children of different ages (Ilomäki, Kantosalo & Lakkala 2010) when dealing with informative or pedagogic multimodal texts observing the development of strategies for interpretation of meaning (Ananiadou & Claro 2009) and the strategies adopted to overcome semiotic confusion or possible misinterpretation. These observations, analysis and results are aimed at promoting safe child autonomy and multiliteracy skills (Tyner 2014) and fostering communication ecology across generations and communities of practice by contributing to better multimodal text construction paving the way for greater child empowerment through enhanced participation and social action. Metalanguage used by children (Baldry 2011, Baldry & Thibault 2006) is considered along with how children recognise reading pathways (Hamston 2006), this is done with child digital and critical literacy development in mind

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion