Abstract
This article sets out a framework for a critical digital literacy curriculum derived from the four resources, or reader roles, model of critical literacy developed by Luke and Freebody (1990). We suggest that specific problematics in academic engagement with and curriculum development for digital literacy have occurred through an overly technocratic and acritical framing and that this situation calls for a critical perspective, drawing on theories and pedagogies from critical literacy and media education. The article explores the consonance and dissonance between the forms, scope and requirements of traditional print/media and the current digital environment, emphasising the knowledge and operational dimensions that inform literacy in digital contexts. It offers a re-interpretation of the four resources framed as critical digital literacy (Decoding, Meaning Making, Using and Analysing) and elaborates the model further with a fifth resource (Persona). The article concludes by identifying implications for institutional practice.Keywords: curriculum development; academic development; digital identity(Published: 31 January 2014)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2014, 21: 21334 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21.21334
Highlights
In considering an approach to curriculum integration of digital literacy, we were conscious of a number of problematics, contexts and contradictions
The JISC, sponsors of the national UK Developing Digital Literacies Programme, calls for professional development to: focus less on the adoption of specific new technologies and more on how meaningful tasks which explore authentic academic digital practices can be embedded in curriculum learning and how emerging digital practices might be usefully recontextualised in an academic setting. (Payton 2012, p. 2)
This work was located in a national project on digital literacy, part of which required curriculum mapping of digital literacies
Summary
In considering an approach to curriculum integration of digital literacy, we were conscious of a number of problematics, contexts and contradictions. Analyses of the terms used in the arena of digital literacy and its associated terms (see Goodfellow 2011), including media literacy/cies (Buckingham 2006; Livingstone 2004); digital scholarship (Pearce et al 2010); new literacy studies and multiliteracies (Street 2003) and multiple technoliteracies (Kahn and Kellner 2005) reveal complexity, variation and disputation Across these different positions it is possible to identify a consistent tension between perceptions of technology as either neutral or culturally situated, along with the implications each view has for policy, practice and curriculum. By deconstructing or ‘reading’ technology such influences and meanings can be made more explicit; for example, the gendering of technology (Cockburn 1985, 1991; Wahlstrom 1994), surveillance (Lyon 1994) or consumption (Haddon 1991) This mirrors oppositions in literacy studies between functional and critical perspectives, or autonomous and ideological positions (Street 2003). Whilst it is accepted that there is iteration and interaction between culture and technology, arguably a more deterministic or functional perspective has remained dominant at policy and institutional levels (Kahn and Kellner 2005; Lea 2013; Lea and Goodfellow 2009)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
