For our first assignment, we read Situated Literacies, by Barton and Hamilton. Throughout this article, the authors frequently reference back to literacy being a social practice. What they mean by this, is that literacy, and reading itself, creates a connection between the people, environment, and culture surrounding it "In the simplest sense literacy practices are what people do with literacy, " They used the term practice as a reference to the different ways the cultures create and use literacy. Literacy is what brings people together. It's embraced within cultures to share stories, experiences, and news. It creates a social network within the culture. Literacy also generates connections and communication between cultures by enabling the sharing of cultures. With the connections that come with literacy, there are also discourses. Barton and Hamilton describe discourse communities as the differences in literacy that separate groups of people within a culture based on their domain.
What brings these groups together are what they have in common. For example, the "primary domain" in people's lives is their home. Another domain in one's life might be at work or school, where the literacy, relationships, and resources are more structured. The environment, or the domain, will affect the literacy that is available and utilized. A social group that I personally connect to is at school. At Rowan University I study Elementary Education and Literacy Studies. I've been taking classes with a lot of the same people for a couple of years now, so I connect with the other students in my major. We frequently use a mix of print, and digital literacy practices. For example, digital literacy has allowed us to communicate and work online without having to be next to one another. However, we also use print literacy practices when creating and collaborating on lesson plans for our students. As future elementary school teachers, we will be eventually teaching students to read. this means that we spend a lot of time discussing and sharing materials, plans, games, and ideas on how to potentially do this task. My social group and practices reflect the social nature of literacy because we became a social group through the classes, materials, and experiences that we have shared. Our major is described as "Literacy Studies", so we have, theoretically, spent the last three years connecting over the study of literacy itself.
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Jada GriggsI'm a college student attending Rowan University, and I will be attending my first Disney College Program this summer ! Categories
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