Literacy Practitioners Research Articles

High-Impact Information Literacy Learning Opportunities in Postsecondary Education in Health, Civic Engagement, and Personal Finance Courses

This article extends Kuh and associates’ research describing high-impact learning as kinds and types of projects and assignments shown to benefit postsecondary students and increase rates of student retention and engagement. Given that the content and implementation of postsecondary courses have continuously evolved in recent years, this present study raises the question about whether other factors that may now make learning meaningful for students can be considered high impact. Findings have relevance to LIS faculty with expertise in the area of information literacy who create curriculum and prepare instructional librarians and information literacy practitioners to teach, as well as to other faculty across campuses. The article reports on 27 records in the academic areas of health, civic engagement, and personal finance selected following the 2009 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and the 2020 statement for reporting systematic reviews. Implications for LIS faculty are presented in a discussion of six categories of educational factors relevant to high-impact information literacy learning.

‘I just feel very dispensable’: Exploring the connections between precarity and identity for academic literacy developers

Precarious employment is a well-established feature in academia, with many lecturers, tutors and professional services staff on forms of fixed-term contract. It is especially a feature of academic development spaces, such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programmes, and academic staff and student development programmes. Precarity results in high staff turnover and undermines staff credibility and capacity; these issues may impact student success. Further, for lecturers and tutors themselves, there are implications for their professional identity and sense of legitimacy within their role, department, and university. Using data from qualitative surveys and interviews with academic literacy practitioners in South Africa, this article explores how being precariously employed affects agency and the development of a professional practitioner identity for those on fixed-term contracts. Using aspects of Archer's social realist framework to theorise agency, we show how precarity impacts a sense of purpose and professional self within the university in relation to other academics and students.

The liminal space: academic literacies practitioners’ construction of professional identity in the betwixt and between

Research on third space practitioners in higher education has gained traction since the mid-2010s. However, less research has been done on academic literacy practitioners as third space practitioners, and their often-marginalised positioning at many South African higher education institutions. This is despite their integral role in student success, and the fact that many South African academic literacy practitioners support the academic literacies development of thousands of students. At the same time, many also negotiate problematic binaries in terms of institutional conceptualisations and positionings of academic literacies development. This article explores how academic literacy practitioners construct their professional identities and manage the complex tensions that are often an inherent part of these professional identities. Using qualitative data, this research explores which institutional structures and cultures surround academic literacy practitioners, and what constraining or enabling effects these have on how they perform their roles and construct their professional identities. The findings highlight that research helps academic literacy practitioners establish a professional identity and legitimise the value of academic literacies development work. Participants also spoke about the importance of communities of practice and collaboration in shaping their professional identities. Although this paper focuses on South Africa, the findings will likely be useful in other contexts where academic literacy practitioners negotiate problematic binaries while trying to construct professional identities.

Reading and (re)writing democracy: Asian American girls claim civic space through literary inquiry

PurposeThis paper aims to trace how Asian American girls engaged with civic learning in a virtual out-of-school literacy community featuring a curriculum of diverse literary texts.Design/methodology/approachThe researcher used practitioner inquiry to construct a virtual literacy education community dedicated to the civic learning of Asian American girls.FindingsThe paper explores how participants mobilized critical practices of textual consumption and production rooted in their intersectional identities and embodied experiences to make meaning of the civic constraints and affordances of marginalized identities and to read and (re)design author choices for civic purposes. These findings – examples of youths’ critical civic meaning-making – indicate how they claimed space for Asian American civic girlhoods in literacy education.Originality/valueThis paper foregrounds how Asian American girls mobilize critical processes of text consumption and production to assert civic identities in literacy education – a significantly under-examined topic in literacy studies. This work has implications for how literacy practitioners and scholars can prioritize Asian American civic girlhoods through pedagogy and research.

Pre-service teacher investment through dialogic action learning

Background: A lack of student ‘buy-in’ and engagement are often major obstacles in academic literacy courses. To create a dialogic learning environment which encourages student investment and challenges traditional student-lecturer hierarchies of power, the curriculum of a first-year academic literacy course at a South African university was reconceptualised around an action-learning project.Objectives: The aim is to determine whether the reconceptualised course enabled dialogic learning that fostered a sense of investment in students.Method: An interpretivist paradigm was followed, drawing on a qualitative research approach. To explore the nature of student investment, discourse analysis was used to analyse group reflections submitted at the end of the 21-week course. Student reflections were coded thematically using an inductive approach.Results: These reflections indicate that specific mechanisms need to be in place for effective dialogic engagement. If in place, findings suggest that the dialogic approach could encourage critical thinking, help students to develop problem-solving skills, lead to cognisance of multiple perspectives, deepen understanding of course material and expectations, promote inclusivity, and encourage reflection on the learning process.Conclusion: This study indicates that purposefully embedding a dialogic approach into a curriculum through purpose-driven group activities, can lead to more engaged learning.Contribution: The paper contributes to the field of academic literacy studies by showing how academic literacy practitioners may use the now-established pedagogies of action-learning and dialogic teaching and learning to design courses that create an enabling environment for students to draw on deep approaches to learning.

Sept 2023 Editorial

The Covid-19 pandemic brought about a profound transformation in the landscape of higher education. This special issue delves into the complex and far-reaching impact of the pandemic on academic continuity, with a particular focus on the challenges faced by academic literacy practitioners during this extraordinary period.
 
 The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented and rapid shift in higher education. Universities and colleges worldwide were compelled to abandon traditional in-person teaching methods and pivot to online learning modalities. This abrupt transition disrupted established academic routines and posed numerous challenges for educators, students, and institutions alike.

Ocean literacies: the promise of regional approaches integrating ocean histories and psychologies

The current concept of ocean literacy reflects a prerequisite for achieving ocean sustainability. Existing ocean literacy reflects a fundamentally western view of oceans that works in tension with ocean literacy goals. Although ocean literacy practitioners and researchers are, laudably, starting to incorporate Indigenous knowledges and perspectives from BIPOC communities, attention to historical change continues to be left out of ocean literacy, to the detriment of ocean literacy goals. This article points out that, given the reality that human-ocean relationships have changed over time, and differed among cultural groups in the past as well as in the present, ocean literacy needs to incorporate ocean history at a foundational level. Because there are historical differences in human relationships with oceans, it stands to reason that regional ocean literacies must be more effective than a universal and timeless ocean literacy framework. Following the logical efficacy of a regional approach to ocean literacy, this article further argues that regional ocean literacies should involve the systematic inclusion of emotional elements. Regional ocean literacies should be constructed through knowledge co-production, involving diverse types of expertise, knowledge and actors to produce context-specific knowledge and pathways towards a sustainable future. To fully exploit the potential of ocean literacy, there is a need for the UN Ocean Decade to work towards regional and place-based approaches that incorporate history as well as culture in an iterative and collaborative process involving diverse types of expertise, knowledge and actors.

Designing Semester Insturctional Plan of Reading Course at English Education Department

This study to design Semester Instructional Plan and instructional materials of reading courses for English Education Department (further glossed by EED), UIN Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin Banten. To design good Semester Instructional Plan and develop reading materials, this study used Research and Development method by utilizing ADDIE Model. Meanwhile, to gather data this study was used a variety of instruments such as distributed questionnaire to students, conducted interviews, analyzed curriculum document of EED, did consultation to curriculum experts and literacy practitioners. In terms of developing Semester Instructional Plan and instructional materials, this study also referred to manual guideline of developing curriculum from RISTEKDIKTI and learning outcomes in Indonesia Nasional Qualification Framework. The results of this study reveal that in designing Semester Instructional Plan of reading courses, the lecturer must determine learning outcomes which refer to the regulations in National Standard of Higher Education. Moreover, reading strategies and instructional materials at each reading course should be arranged gradually by paying attention to students’ language development and thinking level in order students acquire some reading skills and facilitate them to be skilled readers.

Pseudo social media classrooms Sharing control with “the audience” as an academic literacy practitioner on an online platform

Pseudo social media classrooms Sharing control with “the audience” as an academic literacy practitioner on an online platform

Students, academic reading and information literacy in a time of COVID

Reports on a panel discussion held at LILAC 2022 on student academic reading during the COVID-19 pandemic. Draws on data from two surveys, but also discusses the implications of this research for teachers and information literacy (IL) practitioners. In summary, students carried out almost all their academic reading in electronic format, due to the restrictions in place. However, in common with research conducted prior to the pandemic, their preferences for reading in print format remained. Students also report doing less of their assigned readings, feeling more tired as well as reporting other negative health benefits from excess use of screens and devices. The study has implications for librarians, learning developers and for academic staff assigning course readings to students. Ongoing research in this area is recommended.

Crash Encounters: Negotiating Science Literacy and Its Sponsorship in a Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Generational MOOC

This article examines how scientists, classroom teachers, poetry educators, and youth negotiated the domains of science through their engagement in a two-year Massive Open Online Collaboration (MOOC) funded by the National Science Foundation. To make sense of learners' unconventional and interdisciplinary writing and the cultural and disciplinary conflicts that emerged around it, I offer a reframing of science literacy as a series of crash encounters. Such a reframing prompts literacy practitioners to anticipate fallout when diverse bodies, objects, and rhetorics collide and, therefore, to better design and participate in interdisciplinary networks to create more dynamic and vibrant approaches to science literacy.

'What's Going on Here?' Reflections on Brian Street's Contribution to Literacy Education

As a teacher and researcher of literacy, Brian Street introduced ethnographic inquiry to two quite different communities: adult literacy practitioners in India, Ethiopia and Uganda, and university students in the UK and USA. Through re-visiting his teaching materials and approaches, the article explores how he mediated key concepts within anthropology - such as ‘context’ and an ‘ethnographic frame of mind’ - through practical activities with university students and adult educators. Within higher education, Street’s research on academic literacies both emerged from and built on engagement with students and colleagues around the notion of literacy as a social practice shaped by institutional hierarchies and cultures. In development projects, Street extended his early (1984) research in Iran on multiple literacies, including what he termed UNESCO ‘essay-text’ literacy, into a ‘hands-on’ programme for literacy trainers to investigate everyday literacies often overlooked by formal adult literacy initiatives. Street’s active engagement in literacy teaching and learning resulted in methodological innovation, particularly the development of ‘ethnographic style’ methods. Arguing that applied anthropology was often seen as having a one-directional relationship with education, Street demonstrated that education could also make an intellectual contribution to anthropology in terms of deepening understanding of literacy, language and learning within the discipline.

Feature: Seeking Teacher-Scholar-Activists: A Thematic Analysis of Postsecondary Literacy Practitioner Professional Identity in Practice

This article is the first of a two-part thematic analysis of interviews reporting on the professional identity enactment of developmental literacy practitioners; we argue for intentional, explicit inclusion of developmental literacy disciplinary perspectives as essential for further expanding the two-year college English community of practice.

The problem with pigeons in research and practice: communicating early literacy essentials and foundations in curriculum and instruction

AbstractThe long‐standing research to practice gap and increased interest in scientific literacy instruction has contributed to the oversimplification of what is deemed as foundational skills in US early literacy classrooms. Invoking a homing pigeon metaphor, this article describes the distilling of decades of reading research into a message being received by literacy practitioners, policymakers and families which prioritises phonics instruction, drowning‐out complex and nuanced findings supporting a more comprehensive approach. Grounded in an emergent literacy paradigm and applying a sociocultural approach to literacy in the 21st century with an eye towards equity, this article reframes what is considered ‘foundational’ early literacy teaching and learning to reflect the research base that supports proportional attention to constrained and unconstrained skills through integrated and contextualised instruction. To narrow the enduring research‐to‐practice gap, researchers must build authentic research partnerships with schools and support teacher educators' and teachers' enactment of comprehensive approaches to literacy instruction, curricula and assessment.

The sophisticated literacy practitioner and the global pandemic.

Negative portrayals in the Australian media situate teachers as a problem and teaching as a deficit practice. Society is positioning teachers, especially teachers of literacy, as the reason for poor student performance. In addition, negative media discourse around deficit initial teacher education, especially with regard to the teaching of reading and writing, is adding to the overall assumption that teachers of literacy are failing. This article highlights instances of teacher practice by literacy teachers during the global pandemic of COVID-19 which oppose the ‘problem teacher’ discourse. Snowball sampling was used to garner seven early years and primary school teachers for interviews, focussing on teacher perceptions of multimodal texts. A Foucaultian lens of governmentality and power and Fairclough’s approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) were used as lens and method of analysis. The findings of this study indicate that these participant teachers have been sophisticated practitioners in their planning and practice during the pandemic, despite the institutional barriers and extreme disruptions experienced. On reflection, therefore, the constructed societal discourse around ‘problem teachers’ needs to be reviewed and adjusted.

Who Consumes New Media Content More Wisely? Examining Personality Factors, SNS Use, and New Media Literacy in the Era of Misinformation

With the emergence of new media technologies, being new media literate and able to critically analyze new media information are important to young adults, a group of individuals that are particularly active on social media. However, since the development of new media literacy, no study to date examined demographic characteristics, personality factors, and social network site (SNS) use related to it. More importantly, no research examined the relationship between new media literacy and perceptions and actions related to controversial issues. These under-explored facets deter practitioners from tailoring future new media literacy curricula and identifying the targeted audience. With a survey of 551 young adults, our study revealed that media literacy practitioners should devote more attention to (a) Caucasian males with low SNS use, (b) non-Caucasian females with low SNS use, and (c) individuals with low Need for Cognition and SNS use. Our study further showed that increasing new media literacy can help reduce misperceptions induced by misinformation that is rampant in the new media environment.

Making Sense of Research

Making Sense of Research

Playful learning for information literacy development

Play is often seen as frivolous, childish, suitable only for young children. In contrast, this paper will discuss the idea that using playful learning approaches is often a good fit for the development of information literacy in all ages. To do this, it will outline the meaning of information literacy that the author takes, explain where playful learning is placed within learning theories and pedagogies, and show why and how they fit together. Examples of playful practice in library and information literacy training will be given to illustrate current practice, together with gaps within that practice. It will briefly address some of the barriers to using playful learning approaches in information literacy development, and offer some ways forward for information literacy practitioners.

Listening with šǝqačib: Writing Support and Community Listening

This essay examines writing partnerships in 2016 and 2017 that invited community nonprofit volunteers and employees into šǝqačib, which is a Seattle youth (middle school and high school) Native cultural literacy classroom community. As a white settler employed by the nonprofit during the events described, I emphasize the wisdom of šǝqačib students who reflect on the collaboration. Drawing on Rachel Jackson's work on community listening, I find that šǝqačib students demonstrate the importance of cultivating listening practices when community literacy practitioners enter identity-safe scholarly communities such as šǝqačib. I urge academic and literacy supporters in similar contexts to center Native and Native youth voices in their own terms.

Children’s learning from a Smokefree Sports programme: Implications for health education

Objective: This article reports on a qualitative evaluation of the Love Life, Smokefree Sports primary school pilot intervention. This 8-week programme used sports and physical activity sessions to convey Smokefree messages to 120 children aged 10 and 11 in two primary schools in Sheffield in 2018. The study aimed to understand children’s experiences of participating in the programme. Its objectives were to explore children’s recall of the health promotion messages associated with each of the learning sessions; explore children’s perceptions of the meaningfulness of those messages in the context of their everyday lives; and identify and understand any contextual factors that might impact upon children’s recall and/or the meaningfulness of the Smokefree messages. Method: Qualitative data were generated with 25 children through focus groups after the programme concluded. Data were analysed thematically using cross-sectional, categorical indexing. Results: Learning from the programme was particularly likely to be described as meaningful by children when they could interact with material and visual representations of complex ideas and when sessions involved strongly embodied experiences. However, children did not always find it easy to relate learning to their everyday lives and sometimes struggled to reconcile pre-existing, contextualised understandings with intervention messages. We mobilise the concept of critical health literacy as a theoretical lens through which to interpret these findings. Conclusion: Health education should be meaningful in the context of children’s everyday lives. Starting from the premise that children are active critical health literacy practitioners and working with them to design and evaluate health education initiatives can promote this.