Literacy: Schematizing the Conversation

Sometimes in group projects, people have largely the same vision and understanding for the end product. Sometimes they're wildly different, and major compromises take place. Both of those models of group work are fairly static, however, and when Tyreek and I worked together this week, our collaboration instead slowly shifted the ways I was thinking about the readings as a whole.

Our prezi presents literacy by schematizing the conversations of literacy; linking together the theorists for this week in a model that connects ideas of what literacy is with images of what it is not, placing influences, arguments, and outcomes into a model that emphasizes the key ideas of this turn.

As I read the articles for this week, before meeting with Tyreek, the mental structure I created of literacy was one model, an attempt to create a coherent, whole image of literacy as defined by our authors that accounted for their nuances. I vaguely imagined situating "literacy" situated within ideas of social context, drawing from Johnson-Eilola's emphasis on the connections arising from texts and Brandt's theory of literacy as accumulation, spreading back and forth across generations (659), across learning contexts (666), and throughout everyday life (653). Leading into that from the left would be the "legacies" of literacy (Ohman 677)--economic domination (Ohman 677), the various literacy theories Bizzell identifies, Brandt's various transformations throughout history (654), and so on. Some aspects of our schema do evidence traces of my early thought process, particularly the four circles of influence we identify, which represent patterns of thought shared by our authors as they examine the various forces and realities bound up inextricably with ideas of literacy.

As we began to create the map, we added ideas from our authors. We populated the giant circle of context with the voices and ideas the articles from this week were speaking back to, arguing with, drawing from, and complicating. We extended out beyond the circle the ways the authors envisioned their perspectives on literacy applying in the classrooms. And we created a circle to identify what literacy is/should be, according to our authors.

In creating and going back over our schema, I realized that it had become something different than what I imagined back when I was reading. Because of all the history, tensions, and traces our authors identify, to create a coherent idea of literacy, no matter how nuanced, would end up flattening and hiding aspects that these authors wanted to highlight, such as the aspects of identity and ways of knowing (Richardson 100), the dynamic standards and connotations of literacy (Brandt 654), and particularly the rhetoricity and audience-situated-ness of these debates (Bizzell 150). By conceptualizing literacy the way we did, and by populating our circles with ideas from various authors rather than synthesizing one coherent definition of literacy or pedagogical ideal, our schema represents the multi-voiced conversation, with its various priorities, perspectives, and individual arguments. Literacy, as a concept and practice, resides in the various voices making it up.

Works cited: 
Bizzell, Patricia. “Arguing about Literacy.” College English 50.2 (1988): 141-153.
Brandt, Deborah. “Accumulating Literacy: Writing and Learning to Write in the Twentieth Century.” College English 57.6 (1995): 649-667.
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. “Negative Spaces: From Production to Connection in Composition.” Computers in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Sidler, Michelle, Richard Morris, and Elizabeth Overman Smith. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2007. 454-468.
Ohmann, Richard. “Literacy, Technology, and Monopoly Capital.” College English 47.7 (1985):675-688.
Richardson, Elaine. “’English Only,’ African American Contributions to Standardized Communication Structures, and the Potential for Social Transformation.” Cross-Language Relations in Composition. Eds. Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, and Paul Kei Matsuda. Southern Illinois Press, 2010. 97-110.