Literacy, literacies, and the digital in higher education

This paper is a critical review of some recent literature around the ‘literacies of the digital’ in Schools and Higher Education. It discusses the question: ‘what does the conjoining of the terms “digital” and “literacy” add to our understanding of teaching and learning in higher education’? It explores the continuing role of critical literacy in relation to the idea that digital literacies are transformative for pedagogy in this sector. Introduction – terminology and the expanding concepts of ‘literacy’ and ‘the digital’ ‘Digital’ is the latest descriptive term used in education to express the incorporation into its activities of new information and communications media. It succeeds ‘computer’ (-based, -assisted, -mediated), ‘online’, ‘networked’, ‘web-based’, and the now ubiquitous ‘e-‘. Whilst there may not be much to be gained from analysing the specific connotations of these terms (although there have been fashions in educational technology for doing this) it is worth noting that there has been an escalation in the scale and implied significance of the entities they qualify. Where ‘computer-based’ was once used mainly to characterise certain kinds of teaching materials, ‘digital’ is now rhetorically constitutive of whole institutions (‘the digital university’, Hazemi, Hailes & Wilbur 1998), and indeed of entire eras (a ‘digital world’, Collis 1996; ‘the digital age’, Borgman 2008). Despite a growing tendency in general discussion for the term ‘literacy’ to be used synonymously with ‘competence’ or ‘ability’ (as in ‘musical literacy’, ‘scientific literacy’, ‘emotional literacy’ etc.), in everyday contexts it is still largely taken to mean the ability to read and write in a predominantly print context (forms, notices, newspapers etc.). Adults who are not literate in this fundamental sense are often considered unable to function as fully autonomous social beings. The association of literacy with social capital is central to the everyday meaning of the term, as Martin puts it: ‘...the idea of literacy expresses one of the fundamental characteristics of participation in society’ (Martin 2008: 155). Literacy education has traditionally been concerned with developing the skills in reading and writing that enable such participation, either in young children, where it is considered to be part of general cognitive and cultural development, or in unschooled adults for whom it is associated with job prospects, social mobility and personal achievement (Street 1995:17). Hence the persistent popular perception of literacy as a singular ability and individual attribute that confers social ‘normality’ on its owner. And hence, also, a disposition in the educational technology literature to present ‘digital literacy’ as a requirement for survival in the technological age (e.g. Eshet-Alkalai 2004, quoted in Bawden 2008:27). Literacy in association with new technology in education has been similarly marked by terminological shifts: ‘electronic literacy’ (Warschauer 1998), ‘silicon literacy’ (Snyder 2002), ‘e-literacy’ (Martin 2003), ‘techno-literacy’ (Lankshear, Snyder & Green 2000). Most recently the literature has converged on ‘digital’ (Lankshear & Knobel (eds) 2008, Gillen & Barton 2010, Martin & Madigan 2006),