EXPANDED VIEWS

OF LITERACY
REPORTER:
IRISH M. MORATILLO
BSED VALUES EDUCATION III-
A
EXPANDED VIEWS OF LITERACY

• Despite the ubiquity of the traditional

view of literacy, Roberts (1995) notes
that "in the past fifty years, hundreds
of literacy have been advanced by
sholars, adult literacy workers and
program planners".
• UNESCO (2006)- Acknowledge literacy as a
concept has proven to be complex and
dynamic, it being continually defined and
interpreted in multiple ways.
• 2004- Unesco formally defined literacy as
"The ability to identify, understand, interpret,
create, communicate and compute using
printed and written materials associated with
varying contexts. Literacy involves a
continuum of learning in enabling individuals
to achieve their goals, to develop their
knowledge and potential and to participate in
their community and wider society".
 📌Note that "Reading" does not appear in
UNESCO's definition of literacy instead,
literacy has taken on a definition more
akin to "knowing something and what to
do with it"
• 2018- Mkandwire more succintly posits
that literacy "Is a form of knowledge,
competence and skills in a particular
field or area."
• It was suppported by the following:
 UNESCO (2006)
 BARTON (2007)
 Mkandwire, Simooya-Mudenda and
Cheelo (2017)
• Conventional/Traditional literacy= Being
able to read and write rather than
supplant them as skills necessary for
survival.
• Literacy as knowledge= "skills and bodies
of knowledge", that are necessary for
survival.
• In the same vein of reasoning, the new
literacies are not "new" per se-as in the
sense that they never existed before. Rather
weh consider them to be new because the
contexts in which old skills and knowledge
are new both in nature and in scope.
• Throughout history, humans have
communicated on levels apart from the
spoken and written word. Visually, using
the long distance communication system
of smoke signals.
• In the victorian era, "Language of flowers"
where the kind, color and arrangement of a
boquet of flowers were used to
communicate messages that could not
otherwise be spoken aloud in the society.
(Greenaway, 1884)
EXAMPLE:

 Boquet of oak leaves- Strength

 Purple roses- Sorrow
 White lilies- ressurection
 Pale yellow tulips and rosemary- memory
or remembrance
• All together would communicate a
message of sympathy, usually over
the death of a loved one.
VISUAL LITERACY- are required in order to
successfully interpret these "visual
languages" being presented and to manage
the information encoded therein-skills.