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Interdisciplinarity Essay

Two arrows. One points inwards and one points outwards. This image was my initial

perception of literacy, which referred to an interactive dynamic characterized by input and

output. However, what are the objects pointed by the arrows? I was not able to clarify my

imagery at that time. Neither did I truly understand what literacy meant.

Literacy was a strange behemoth to me. It was juxtaposed with reading and writing, and

had become the lengthy name of our program, which strongly implied that reading and

writing was not a sufficient explanation of literacy. As opposed to “reading” and “writing”, it

seems that the term “literacy” had seldom penetrated my life. It was not until one day that I

suddenly realized: literacy might be life itself. In other words, it is a concept rather close to

life or living. It is strongly related to “environment”. If the arrow points outward to

environment, the arrow points inward to people. Literacy is the exact connotation and

extension of the arrows themselves.

From literacy to environment

Freire’s (1987, p. 30) memories of literacy started from his childhood, when he was born

and brought up in a general Recife house encircled by trees. A close connection between

literacy and environment was afterwards revealed by his following statement:

“The texts, words, letters of that context were incarnated in the song of the birds —

tanager, flycatcher, thrush — in the dance of boughs blown by the strong winds announcing

storms; in the thunder and lightning; in the rain waters playing with geography, creating lakes,

islands, rivers, streams” (Freire, 1987, p. 30).

Indeed, reading the word means reading the word-world (Freire, 1987, p. 32), and
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reading the word is preceded not only by reading the world, but also by a certain form of

writing and rewriting it (Freire, 1987, p. 35). The environment that Freire referred to as

“world” or the “word-world” is the object of reading, writing, and rewriting in practical work.

Many environments are embedded in life. Freire’s family house encircled by trees, for

example, can be one type of environments. Another typical environment for literacy is a

classroom. As Kohn (2010, p.16) described: “what a teacher can do — all a teacher can do

is work with students to create a classroom culture, a climate, a curriculum that will nourish

and sustain the fundamental inclinations that everyone starts out with: to make sense of

oneself and the world, to become increasingly competent at tasks that are regarded as

consequential, to connect with (and express oneself to) other people”. He argued that learning

motivation can not be instilled, but needs to be supported by a classroom environment that

nurtures students’ autonomy (Kohn, 2010, p.19). In this sense, Kohn’s stance also indicates

the importance of the classroom environment as a cradle of literacy.

For environment in the new era: digital literacy

While multimedia relinquishes some of the precision of claim and evidence associated

with traditional argumentation, it assumes a special performative power and an aesthetic

dimension (Hull, 2003, p. 231). In this new era, the power of visualization had attracted many

people. For Generation-Z, “with the advent of Netflix and Hulu, there is no reason to watch a

show live on television” (Seemiller, & Grace, 2016, p. 28). Moreover, Instagram, YouTube,

Tiktok, Steam, etc. have immersed them in their fragmented time. In the context of the

pandemic, teachers and students also need to utilize digital environments in schools, such as

Canvas. It is an example of “alternative learning spaces” (Hull, 2003, p. 233). These

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applications and websites are virtual yet real literacy environments to modern people.

One characteristic that differentiates a digital literacy environment from a traditional one

is that it provides a new reading pattern of “bouncing” (University College London, 2008, pp.

9-10), reading hopping from one source to another. For example, when doing academic

readings, people jump from one citation link of one article to the next. While watching videos,

people also usually jump from one to the next by the websites’ personalized recommendation

algorithm. A digital literacy environment is not only providing pure information, but also

shaping people’s thoughts (McLuhan, 1964, p. 9). Research (Bennett et al., 1964) in

neuroscience has produced the scientific evidence that brain can change with experience

(neuroplasticity), and the new digital environment might be weakening people’s ways of deep

reading as compared with it in traditional environment (Wolf, 2007) through this mechanism.

Though it seems to be inconclusive that whether such a phenomenon is good or bad, it is no

doubt a new environment that constantly interacts and intertwines with people’s life through

literacy, inside or outside schools alike.

To create an emotionally safe literacy environment

“The self — rather than being a taken for granted or pre-given identity —is produced

through a variety of discourses, languages shaped by authoritative communities and voices”

(Boler, & Zembylas, 2003, p. 120). The interaction between people and environment through

these discourses or literacy, is essentially a process of self-development, among which a

critical construct is conflict. Conflict between new information and individual’s existing

knowledge structure can trigger cognitive changes. For example, Piaget (1952, p. 6) proposed

that if such a conflict happens, people will reconcile it in two mechanisms: assimilation and
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accommodation. Assimilation refers to reshaping new information to fit the existing structure.

Adaptation refers to changing the structure to adapt to information. Literacy is likely to

contribute to the transformation of people’s cognition (thoughts, beliefs, etc.) by these two

approaches.

Dewey (1952, as cited in Boler, & Zembylas, 2003, p. 127) maintained that beliefs are

habits, not simply cognitive statements, and belief, body, and emotion is probably the same

single construct — habit (Garrison, 1997). In other words, they may all be different names

for an invisible reaction pattern to information. In the formation of children’s habits or

reaction patterns, what an ideal education can do is to provide them with such an environment:

“an emotionally open and safe environment that nurtures emotions of anger or guilt but

challenges them with compassion and courage” (Boler, & Zembylas, 2003, p. 130). Boler and

Zembylas described the approach to such an environment as “a pedagogy of discomfort”

(2003, p. 131), which implies that students need to be surrounded by a literacy environment

that welcomes them to step out of their comfort zones, so that they learn to actively embrace

certain less positive emotions, in order to deepen self-explorations.

Reflection

The metaphor of the two arrows has become more explicit as my cognition is constantly

shaped by diverse disciplines. They are carriers of mutual impacts between human cognition

and the environment in which they live, that is, literacy. Whether it is the language we read

and write in, or Piaget’s assimilation and adaptation, they all belong to the paradigm that

literacy is carrying.
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References

Bennett, E. L., Diamond, M. C., Krech, D., & Rosenzweig, M. R. (1964). Chemical and

Anatomical Plasticity of Brain: Changes in brain through experience, demanded by

learning theories, are found in experiments with rats. Science, 146(3644), 610–619.

Boler, M., & Zembylas, M. (2003). Discomforting Truths: The Emotional Terrain of

Understanding Difference. In P. Trifonas (Ed.), Pedagogies of Difference: Rethinking

Education for Social Change: Rethinking Education for Social Justice (1st ed., pp.

109–136). Routledge.

Freire, P. (1987). The Importance of the Act of Reading. In D. Macedo, Literacy: Reading the

Word & the World (pp. 29–36). Westport.

Garrison, J. (1997). Dewey And Eros: Wisdom And Desire In The Art Of Teaching. New

York: Teachers College Press.

Hull, Glynda. (2003). Youth Culture and Digital Media: New Literacies for New

Times. Research in the Teaching of English. 38(2), 229-233.

Kohn, A. (2010). How to Create Nonreaders: Reflections on Motivation, Learning, and

Sharing Power. The English Journal, 100(1), 16-22.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill.

Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. (M. Cook, Trans.). W. W. Norton &

Co.

Seemiller, C., & Grace, M. (2016). Generation Z goes to College. Wiley.

University College London. (2008). The Google Generation: information behaviour of the

researcher of the future.

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Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Harper

Perennial.