Emergent Metaliteracies: What the Xbox has to Offer the EQAO☆

Abstract The conservative government of Ontario has mandated province-wide, standardized literacy testing across Grades 3, 6 and 10, and instituted a bureaucratic machinery to effect this, viz., the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO). EQAO’s testing mechanisms tap pedagogically and politically selected aspects of children’s literacies, driven by a cultural literacy agenda. The concept of literacy tested in gate-keeping EQAO assessment does not include the sophisticated digital literacies children are developing in peer-mediated, screen-based, pop culture interactive media, though such media are increasingly influencing classroom materials and practices. This article questions fundamentally the epistemology of literacy in a postmodern society. Drawing on data gathered in case studies conducted in and around public schools within the greater Toronto area, and framed within provincial paradigms of literacy education, this paper asks: What literacies are children developing through pop culture interactive media and are these emerging postmodern metaliteracies being acknowledged in school literacy education and assessment?

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