New Literacies and Community Inquiry

Community inquiry research focuses on people participating with others, on the lived experiences of feeling, thinking, acting, and communicating. It sees literacy as part of living in the world, not simply as a skill to be acquired in the classroom. Inquiry is central, because as people live, they encounter challenges. Through inquiry, people recognize a problem, mobilize resources, engage actively to resolve it, collaborate, and reflect on the experience. Making sense of experience in this way, and doing so in concert with others in embodied, historical circumstances, is fundamental to learning. This chapter reviews literature addressing the following question: What is the relationship of new literacies to community inquiry? We are concerned with how new technologies highlight enduring issues of community and, conversely, how communities change new technologies. These concerns are embedded within larger issues of participation, citizenship, cooperation, community membership, change, and collective memory. The chapter speaks from the perspective of progressive education’s emphasis on understanding the deep connections among literacy, learning, technology, and community but does not limit its view to work explicitly in that tradition.