Critque of Situated Approach to Literacy, Essay Example

Introduction

Literacy is a central cornerstone of our society. Education is a powerful tool that supports elevating one’s status. The tools of education can help to gain privileges and responsibilities in helping to transform the world around them. Education can be a powerful mechanism that creates a sustainable community. The aims of education are to teach the fundamentals that gives individuals an opportunity to further their knowledge so they can achieve the unachievable. Students are able to gain knowledge and transfer it in other areas in which they can prepare themselves to be productive members of society, or more importantly the global environment. While the aims of education were used to oppressed disadvantaged members of society in the past, education is now seen as a way in which empowers students to help them develop in a timely action an orientation towards wisdom, compassion, critical thinking, and overall their passions.

A situated approach to literacy is a concept that explores new ways in which address the influence of technology in reaching students. Literacy is aimed at reading and writing, and helping students to communicate and understand each other, as well as concepts of things around them. The capabilities of having a higher comprehension of literacy is correlated to probability of sustaining a successful future, decent earnings, and overall good life. However, the new approaches to literacy represents a new method in which consider not only the nature of literacy, but also looks at the social practice, not just the acquisition of skills. The problem with this situational approach to literacy is that while it takes into account social practices, it does not make the distinction into which literacies are more dominate. So the core question is if this method of teaching literacy is the most appropriate in involving the social and cultural contexts?

This standard view of teaching literacy is through development programs and schooling in which takes an autonomous approach that will impact the cognitive and social practices. For those that are literate in poorer neighborhoods, teaching literacy is enhancing their status in the community, improving economically, and enhancing their cognitive skills. The standard view to literacy helps in ignoring the ideological and cultural assumptions that can become problematic in teaching literacy, but instead choose to more universal or neutral so that these assumptions will have little influence. While a situated or new approach takes to a more ideological view in which take into account the differences in each culture in which implemented a more standard approach is imposing the concepts of western society on to other cultures. The ideological model follows are more sensitive perspective to cultures, as their practices in literacy varies from in each context. (Street, 2003) Brandt and Clinton (2002) echo this:

“This perspective developed as a challenge to “Great Divide” or “autonomous model” theories that treat literacy as a decontextualized and decontextualizing technology imparting unique influences on human culture and cognition (Gee, 1990; Street, 1884).” (Brandt and Clinton 2002)

Considering these differences, it is important to critique what this new approach to literacy entails, due to the presence of introducing new literacy programs not only to different countries, but also different cultures within the United States, as a way to increase the literacy rates in low performing schools. By taking account to the differences in the New Literacy Studies (NLS) or situated approach to literacy, and the standard or autonomous model, is important to the linguistic, sociology, education, and psychology that is converged to form a new literacy approach. Gee (2002) emphasizes, “people adopt different ways with printed words within different sociocultural practices for different purposes and functions…” (Gee, 2002) This essay is tasked with critiquing the situated approach which incorporates the sociocultural aspects of teaching literacy, answer the question of is this approach the best method in teaching literacy, and finally the overall concerns of the situated approach.

Literature Review

New Literacy Studies is of course no longer new, it was coined by James Gee in Sociolinguistics and Literacies (1990), and has since then been integrated in to the linguistics and sociology world, in which helped to joined together scholars from education, cultural psychology, composition and rhetoric studies, anthropology, history, linguistics, and several other fields. Classified as an alternative approach to literacy, it was defined in its initial movement as a sociocultural phenomenon, as opposed to a cognitive phenomenon. (Gee 2008) This situated approach to literacy considered the cultural and social groups, as well as mental achievement, that understood not only cognitively, but also institutional, historical, cultural, and social. While not only does this situated approach taken into the highly contextual aspects of writing and reading, which are interwoven to the ways of life locally, which are sustained through communication, but also is sensitive to the complexities ideologically of place and time. (Brandt and Clinton 2002) The situated approach, mainly seen as a social practice paradigm or social-practice perspective that is different from the standard of approach, of one size fits all. In that way ignoring the social and cultural aspects that could or does influence the learning of individuals. In this age in which technology has provided easier ways in which to incorporate different ways to teach students, it can create a blending of technology, literacy, and language that deal with the situated cognition of learning and the mind.

Critiques of Situated Literacy

While the situated approach to literacy is, an ideological way of customizing literacy programs based on the social and cultural context. There has been several critiques in which construe the challenges, as well as, the problems associated with implementing this literacy approach. According to Nancy Homberger (2010), “the issue of which literacies and vernacular literacies is central to how literacy is defined and situated from the outset.” (Homberger, 2010) Brandt and Clinton (2002) once again echo similar critiques in which this approach presents the locals with limits in which, Collins and Blot also agree that, “literacy usually comes from outside of a particular community’s local experience.” (Collins and Blot, 2002) The situated approach, while tries to account for the literacies of out of school and in-school literacies, it takes a more inward perspective, which places to much emphasizes on the local community, but ignores the larger impact of the global community. Additionally the critiques of situated literacy deals with the practices and capabilities of the progressive forms of the production of agency and social change, in which it still doesn’t recognize the influence of the outside force. In acknowledging these external forces, it could be used in helping to position people in these poorer communities to take on more progressive context of the global environment, as well as enhance their local economic status. Other critiques come from Lewis, Enciso, and Moje (2007), called for the approach to account more for the issues of social agency, identity, and power. (Lewis, Enciso, and Moje 2007)

Literacy is more than just reading words on a text, but instead involves the global community, in which there needs to be more emphases on relationships, as well as the cognitive skills learned. Looking at Freire (2001), “to acquire literacy is more than to psychologically and mechanically dominate reading and writing techniques.” (Freire, 2001) In explaining how this critique this approach, literacy should connect to the different social and cultural contexts, and the existential universe. With the advances of technology, it has forced students and teachers to develop a more ethnographic literate thinking in which uses a collaborative interaction with the student, uses expressive writing and communication, the teacher playing an active role, inquiry into fundamental questions, and epistemic engagement of text. (Warschauer, 1997) The contention about social literacy proposes that captivating with literacy is dependably a social demonstration even from the start. Surely, even supposed “target” aptitudes connected with literacy, for example, numeracy abilities can be arranged socially.

Situated Approach to Literacy Concerns

Brandt and Collin raised the initial concern over the approach and its selective view. “However, we wonder if the new paradigm sometimes veers too far in a reactive direction, exaggerating the power of local contexts to set or reveal the forms and meanings that literacy takes.” (Brandt and Collin, 2008) Practitioners/teachers do not normally design literate practices. Nor are they autonomously picked or supported by them. Literacy being usually used serves numerous diversions, consolidating individual operators also their districts into bigger ventures that play out far from the quick scene. Further, literate practices rely on upon effective and uniting technologies – technologies that are themselves helpless to here and there unexpected changes that can destabilize the capacities, uses, qualities and implications of literacy anywhere. In truth, in the event that perusing and composing are means by which individuals reach – and are arrived at by – other connections, then a bigger number of is going on provincially than simply the local community.Reveles, Cordova, and Kelly (2004) utilized a situated approach to contend that when learners recognize as logically literate parts of their classroom group, they find themselves able to develop academic identities, as well as maintain their identity affiliations.  They contended that desultory personality must be utilized as an explanatory device to enlighten the association and estrangement connected with the assignment of disciplinary talks. They fought that understudies’ capacities to wind up some piece of a scholastic or classroom talk group may rely on upon how they are permitted to position themselves in connection to the topic, talk practices, and community membership. (Brown, Reveles, and Kelly, 2005).

More essentially the concerns of the theory in which teaches literacy to all types of students is the limitations on using the situated approach. Utilizing a situated approach should take into consideration the relevant autonomous features as well as challenging the features of the flaws that have been documented. According to Brandt and Clinton (2002), “recognizing the extent to which literacy does often come to “local” situations rom outside and brings with it both skills and meanings that are larger than the emic perspective favored by NLS can always detect.” (Street 2003) In this concern, critics of the situated approach wonder if the new theory will go too far off into a direction that is reactive, that exaggerates the influence of local contexts to reveal or set the meanings and forms that literacy takes. (Brandt and Clinton 2002) The consolidation of technologies plays a major and substantial role in destabilizing the meanings, values, uses, and functions of literacy at any place.

Future Critiques

Freire’s attention on bringing thee sociocultural realities of the student into the learning methodology itself and after that utilizing the learning procedure to test these substances focuses on the capability of the processes for learning and teaching. Pivotal to his teaching method is the idea of discriminating literacy, partially, however captivating with books and other composed writings, be that as it may, all the more significantly, through perusing (i.e. deciphering, pondering, cross examining, speculating, exploring, investigating, testing, addressing and so forth.) and composing (following up on and changing diagonally)society (Roberts, 2000). This methodology is not, nevertheless, without its pundits. Resistance to Freirean teaching methods has essentially originated from the women’s activist hall (who assert that the strategies themselves are to a degree gendered, however Freire began to address this in his later work) and postmodern reactions of universalistic thought.

Core Question and ESL

While it is apparent that the autonomous method isn’t the most appropriate in reaching students and individuals today, since they do not all fit the standard model of one size fits all. The core question of this research is if this method of teaching literacy is the most appropriate in involving the social and cultural contexts? By examining the critiques made from research and scholars we can see that utilizing a situated approach can be beneficial in integrating the social and cultural contexts of each individual, but it also has its challenges and issues in not taking into account a larger global factor. This can also be analyzed in examining using this approach in foreign language teaching in which as been conceptualized as the necessary skills of decoding and coding. Using a situated approach to literacy doesn’t take the importance of decoding and coding literature, but implements the specific skill in the practices of the context of social literacy. Utilizing a situated approach could be useful in integrating forms of technology, such as software or other computer programs in which help to assist in teaching foreign language to individuals, as it allows for text manipulation or the engagement of on-going dialogue.

English as a Second Language (ESL) learners, are approached differently than foreign language learners in the aspects of having more daily contact opportunities with the language and the culture. Types of ESL students can be further divided into two groups such as international students and immigrants. Utilizing a situated approach now is useful in the academic environment, as this approach accounts for the cultural, linguistic, and social contexts, unlike the autonomous method. Particularly, a situated approach to literacy recommends that writing and reading, whether in the second language or native language. It includes significantly more than the basic unraveling of text being coded or decoded. Rather, literacy is a complex social practice adapted through apprenticeship and dialogic communication into communicates of literate discourse. It includes aptitudes of critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving, cross-cultural understanding, interpretation, analysis, reflection, and abstraction.

Counter-arguing Critiques

While the situated approach has had its critiques, what this literacy approach does is instruct a perspective to students, as a viewing in which apprentices the students into the social practices and discourses of literate communities. A situated approach is necessary in allowing students and individuals to gain admission to communities of discourse through reflection, apprenticeship, analysis, and practice. The aims of education are deeply entrenched in self-cultivation as it incorporates a unified relationship with sustaining a culture of opportunity, and the advancements of knowledge, technology, and improving the overall environment. A situated are sociocultural approach to literacy is the best method in incorporating all of the local or significant cultural and social factors that influence how an individual learns.

Literacy and language education are not narrowly viewed, but rather as a helping process which permits students to fully participate in economic, community, and public life. The situated approach considers the future and present economic and public life in which takes into account the meta-linguistic awareness, cross-cultural awareness, critical thinking, and symbolic analysis. (Warschauer, 1997) It also implies that this approach allows for better communication in multiple dialects and languages, which provides the capabilities of mastering numerous medial. This approach is also becoming a progressive force combined with technology, in which classrooms have integrated into their learning plans. It involves more than just the interpretation of the text, but by implementing a situated approach to the classroom, it fosters the development of skills of analysis, interpretation, and thinking. (Gee 2008) Critics, as opposed to privileging the specific literacy practices recognizable in their society, now suspend judgment in respect to what constitutes literacy among the individuals they are working with until they find themselves able to comprehend what it intends to the individuals themselves, and which social connections perusing and composing get their importance from. Numerous individuals marked “illiterate” inside the self-sufficient model of literacy may, from an even more socially touchy perspective, be seen to make critical utilization of literacy.

Patterns and Themes

The patterns and themes that have been illustrated from these various sources is the call for the situated approach to include the external or worldwide view in which influences the social and cultural aspect of each individual. Brandt and Clinton, both critique and have concerns about the pressures or challenges that a situated approach takes to considering the local community. The local community is not a depiction nor should be a representation of the global environment. Brandt and Clinton are not along in using these themes to critique using a situated approach to literacy. Also included is Gee (1990; 2008), Warschauer (1997), Brown, Reveles, and Kelly, 2005; and Lewis, Enciso, and Moje (2007), just to name a few critics. The patterns that emerge in their research, is seeing a situated approach as a ideological method in teaching literacy, which deviates from the autonomous or standard method in which doesn’t take into account the impact of the social and cultural differences. While they do consider taking an ideological approach as the more beneficial and appropriate method. Especially in the age of digitizing media, and using technology as a method of teaching literacy, it is apparent that new approach needs to be adopted. However, what is common additionally in their research is a need to incorporate a global perspective, as well as, not fostering to the contexts of the surrounding communities.

Discussion

Regarding the core question of the limitations as well as the benefits of using a situated approach to literacy, taking into accounts of the critiques, it is still the most prevalent and recommended approach. Literacy is important, and in the age of technology, it is even more essential in reaching different types of individuals across national and international borders. Using an autonomous or standard approach has not taken into account the external or even internal influences that impact someone’s ability to learn. In looking at the counterarguments, and critiques of utilizing a situated approach, the one prevalent theme is the need for the approach to take into account a global perspective. Albeit, ignoring the larger context can hinder the individual, however, the ideological framework allows for customization, as well as a more sociocultural approach.

Conclusion

Learning literacy a lifelong process in which individuals continually learn, even unknowingly, to gain a foundational root of understanding. In looking at the standard and the situated approach it is fundamental, to consider the global influences. Not only does the social and cultural contexts play a significant role in influencing the capabilities of learning, but also the global environment helps to prepare individuals for going beyond their local communities. In looking at the limitations, just by the research that has been conducted, more needs to be researched that shows data on which methods are better. As well as data that can be traced in order to come up with better approaches in different communities. The future implications for this research is to see which approach is better in teaching others literacy, as well as the need to teach within the means in which they are familiar, or more comfortable so they can pass it on.

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