Literacy and the new technologies in school education: Meeting the l(IT)eracy challenge?

Durrant, Cal ; Green, Bill

Introduction

Literacy is changing. Once it was entirely shaped by the technologies of the printing and publishing industries and their associated cultures. Now, however, in an age of burgeoning new media of communication, information and representation, there are more and different technologies available. These are increasingly deployed in working and playing with texts, in the practice of new and different literacies. Indeed, we are now able to recognise and acknowledge that, for schooling and education, print is simply one of a range of available technocultural resources. Accordingly, account needs to be taken of a profound media shift in literacy, schooling and society--a broad-based shift from print to digital electronics as the organising context for literate-textual practice and for learning and teaching. Although this does not mean the eclipse of print technologies and cultures, it does mean that we need to employ a rather different, more flexible and comprehensive view of literacy than teachers are used to in both their work and their lives. Print takes a new place within a reconceptualised understanding of literacy, schooling and technological practice, one which is likely to be beneficial in moving us and our children into a new millennium.

In this article, we seek to provide some guidance for teachers in thinking through and towards this `sea-change' in literacy and education, particularly as it relates to and is likely to impact on schooling in New South Wales, and in Australia more generally. This is a topic of considerable turmoil and flux at this time, and it would be foolish to try to make firm predictions for the future, or even for the day after tomorrow. However it is possible to present and examine some principles and practices and provide an introduction to what is now emerging as a significant knowledge-base in this area. We believe that such an examination is likely to be helpful in teachers' classroom planning and professional development. We shall begin with an overview of the context, and also of some of the existing terms of debate and outcomes of research. Following that, we will outline a model or framework for school practice and educational policy, consistent with and informed by both current policy initiatives in New South Wales and elsewhere, and also current scholarly and professional work towards a practical theory of literacy, IT and schooling.(1)

Changing contexts and new economies

It is estimated that there are over 43 million hosts connected to the Internet worldwide, and somewhere between 40 and 80 million adults in the United States alone have access to around 320 million unique pages of content on arguably one of the most important communication innovations in history (Hoffman & Novak 1999).

As a nation, Australia is also adopting technology-driven environments with increasing enthusiasm, as computer chips become ever more versatile and pervasive. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that in 1999, almost 23% of Australian households were connected to the Internet. Significantly, of these 1.6 million households, almost 71% were located in capital cities, and the heaviest users are the young: more than 74% of 18-24-year-olds accessed the Internet in the 12 months to August 1999 and some 52% of 25-39 year olds. For those aged between 40 and 54 years, however, the figure drops to 39% and a mere 13% for persons 55 years and over (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1999).

Over the next decade, Web usage is expected to increase dramatically. The 1999 CommerceNet/Nielson Internet Demographic Survey (CommerceNet 1999) suggests that over 90 million Americans are regular users, and this is expected to increase to over 150 million over the next couple of years. Electronic commerce is also predicted to explode. Anderson Consulting predicts that an estimated 200,000 American households are currently purchasing their food and household goods on-line (compare this with the 652,000 Australians who are ordering goods and services on-line), but by 2007, that number is expected to hit 20 million (Dirkson 1998). So where does all this new technology fit in with our hard-won and now well-established views about literacy?

Recent moves in international education policies confirm that governments the world over are becoming more and more committed to a technology-saturated future. In 1998, the United Kingdom spent 220 million [pounds sterling] (funded by the National Lottery) on technology in education. In Singapore around $2 billion was set aside to be spent over five years along similar lines. The US government also approved in 1998 a five-year, $2 billion program called the Technology Challenge Literacy Fund; its primary purposes being to encourage `computer literacy' and to connect schools to the Internet by the year 2000 (Techsetter 1998).

Here in Australia, which is second only to the United States in its per-household use of personal computers, state governments are equally intent on ensuring that Australian students of the twenty-first century are given every opportunity of participating in and benefiting from this bright new world that will demand technologically-skilled workforces if countries and nations are both to keep pace with change and position themselves favourably in an increasingly global economy.

In 1998, the Victorian government committed $51.4m for access to computers, the Internet, on-line curriculum materials, and technology training for teachers (Education Review 1998, April, p. 9). Similarly, over four years the Western Australian government pledged $100 m to similar projects (Inform 1998, June, p. 17). Tasmanian students living outside metropolitan areas are soon to be supplied with access to on-line training and education, while the Northern Territory is set to install PCs in all schools and throughout their Department. In NSW, $184 m is being spent over four years on computer and information technology in schools, including a number of new modes of delivery for development and training of teachers, like CD-ROM, Web-based training, email support and video conferencing.

It is rather unusual to hear of such large sums of money being thrown at education, particularly for such specific goals, but technology seems to have been taken on board the education `band-wagon'. Time will tell if the hype has substance; but in the meantime, our notions of literacy are undergoing dramatic changes as we struggle to keep up with the digital revolution.

Technology: more than just an `add-on'?

Traditionally, technology has always been treated as something of an `add-on' when considered in relation to literacy. As Bruce has observed: `We don't notice the technologies of literacy because we treat our literacy technologies as natural and inevitable' (Bruce 1998, p. 47). If you stop and think about it, it is difficult to imagine using anything other than pen-and-paper or a word-processor in the act of writing; it's just what we do--though it is worth remembering that others before us found the use of sharpened stones, blackened sticks, coals, chalk, quills or fountain pens equally natural and unremarkable.

The fact that we rarely stop to think about the technologies we use in relation to literacy practices probably suggests that they are very deeply embedded in our daily routines. Indeed, some commentators have suggested that initial teacher resistance to new technologies is often a result of the fact that we, as teachers, are the products of those very technologies we once thought we simply used (Hoskin 1993, p. 27). Historically, it is clear that each new advance in technology has pushed back the boundaries of what was formerly possible. But as can be seen in Table 1 below, with every new advance has come a corresponding change in our conception of literacy and its role in society.

Table 1. Literacy transformations

primitive symbol systems
 * complex oral language
 * early writing
 * manuscript literacy
 * print literacy
 * video literacy
 * digital/multimedia/hypertext literacy
 * virtual reality

(Bruce 1998, p. 47)

What strikes us as being of particular interest about the various literacy debates in recent times is that proponents of some points of view--specifically those who argue from an exclusively print-dominant standpoint--appear to have established fixed points for their own literacy stances, in defiance of the fact that the creation of new technologies continues to change society's concept of literacy, just as it has always done.

This is not to suggest that print-literacy is old-fashioned, `dead-in-the-water', or unworthy of our most exacting attention. It simply means that we are moving beyond the constraints of literacy practices that are purely print-based. As educators, we should both recognise this and be positioning ourselves to take advantage of what is and can become possible in terms of such practices with each technological advance. Clearly, we are not saying here that teachers, schools or Departments of Education should enthusiastically and perhaps ingenuously veer into every newly enticing detour on the information superhighway. Rather, what we are suggesting is that nothing should be necessarily eliminated from our lists of items of potential usefulness just because it does not fit our current notions of literacy.

Literacy policies and new proposals

Indeed, the 1997 position paper on the teaching of literacy in New South Wales, Focus on Literacy, has clearly recognised the need for such forward thinking. In adopting the concept of literacy proposed by the writers of the companion volume to Australia's Language (1991), in which literacy is defined as being `the ability to read and use written information and to write appropriately, in a range of contexts', it also drew attention to the fact that:

 Since 1991, the very nature of what constitutes literacy has been expanded
 by the emerging multimedia and information technologies, the appearance of
 the Internet and further developments in computing and word processing.
 (NSW DSE 1997, p. 8)

As with everything else in our world, our notions about what it is to be `literate' are ever in a state of flux. While it is necessary to have explicit and systematic strategies that address the current needs of literacy teachers, it is equally imperative that we are able to clearly identify, target and adopt new literacy practices and possibilities as they arise.

What is often forgotten in debates about the new technologies and their impact on literacy is that they are indeed, by definition, new. While it is true that computers and their high-technology relatives have been used in schools at least since the early 1980s, it is equally true that, until very recently, for many teachers they were a force to be either resisted or disdainfully ignored (Bigum, 1993 p. 81). It is interesting that as recently as 1990 there could have been a book published in Australia under the futuristic title Literacy for a Changing World, edited by one of the most respected literacy educators in the country, that all but ignored technology and its role in the literacy debate (Christie 1990). While it did rate a brief mention in the opening chapter, it was only as an apologetic aside:

 While the computer, the word processor and even the fax machine certainly
 have had an impact in educational settings ... they are probably still less
 a feature of daily life there than they are in other parts of our society,
 and consequently many teachers know less about them than they might'.
 (Christie 1990, p. 22)(2)

Such a cursory reference to the relationship between technology and literacy is even more curious when we take into consideration the 1991 Christie Report, which included the following recommendation on pre-service teacher preparation:

 That all students should be required to learn to use computers in their
 course work, with the aim of attaining a basic technological proficiency in
 at least the following: word processing, principles of electronic text
 design and publication; using printers, modems and other peripheral
 devices; designing hypermedia programs; and exchanging electronic data on a
 network. (Christie et al. 1991, p. 223)

Such apparent contradictions are not unusual for the time period (cf. Green and Bigum 1996). The investigators on the Children's Literacy National Project, Digital Rhetorics, examined the national policy climate in relation to literacy and technology in state syllabus and Commonwealth policy documents, identifying a very mixed state in the literature up until the early to mid 1990s. While various state computer/technology policies existed in the eighties, the general scene has until very recently been a largely confused one marked by:

 many different groups doing different things, apparently unaware, perhaps
 simply not interested, in the activities and pursuits of other groups,
 despite the possibility that they may share similar agendas ... The result
 has been the creation of related but essentially discrete IT policies,
 Literacy policies and Education and other policies. (Lankshear et al. 1997,
 p. 149 [Vol. 1])

Australia as an Information Society (1991), under the direction of Barry Jones, was perhaps the first national document to usher in a somewhat belated consideration of the so-called information society and its implications for the nation (Lankshear et al. 1997, p. 94 [Vol. 1]). As for clear and specific links being established between literacy and technology, little eventuated until the publication of Australian Literacies (Lo Bianco & Freebody 1997), which does take into account the uses and significance of the new technologies in literacy education. On the school education front more broadly, however, towards the middle of the 1990s there was a growing insistence on the use of the new technologies, so much so that comments and attitudes such as those expressed by leading Australian educators Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard, in the foreword to a recent book on computers and literacy (Snyder 1997), appear now to be a reflection of the norm rather than the exception:

 The essays in this collection are based on a conviction that the new
 information technologies have the capacity to fundamentally transform all
 of our cultural practices, including those associated with schooling ...
 Students are not going to wait for their teachers to catch up with the new
 textual practices that they already prefer. Teachers will have to come to
 terms with this new computer-mediated communications world. They will have
 to devise new ways of thinking about literacy in which both the page and
 the screen are brought together. (Rizvi & Lingard 1997, p. xii)

It seems to us that statements like this represent something of a dramatic turnaround in attitude. In New South Wales, such imperatives were boosted by the State Labor Government's Computers in Schools Policy [CISP] (ALP 1995) and the establishment of the Department's TILT (Technology in Learning and Teaching) program, that enabled a wide spectrum of classroom teachers across the State to both gain a working knowledge of and become enthusiastic about the use of technology in their teaching. The latter's success can be partly measured by the degree of interstate and international interest in the monitoring of its development and implementation.

Of course, we know from past experience that new technologies don't simply replace established systems of communication; rather, they produce hybrid forms. But what is perhaps different about the second-wave information technologies is the rapidity of such changes:

 The spread of alphabetic literacy took thousands of years and continues to
 this day. The development of the practices and artefacts of the printing
 press spread unevenly across Europe over a 300-year period. In less than 40
 years, television has become a principal global technology of human
 communication, commerce, political life, and public education. In two
 decades, the computer has gone from exclusive, specialised business and
 research tool to common household appliance. (Luke & Elkins 1998, p. 6)

Just how do we go about shifting our strategies for teaching more or less print-bound literacy to helping our students meet the fresh demands and challenges of literacies that spring from living in such technologised and seamless `new times'?

Before we leave this overview, however, let us reiterate something that is often lost amidst all the rhetorical hype. Firstly, the importance of the word and the printed page remains, but such importance is being transformed in relation to new technologies, new cultures, and new forms of life. Secondly, it will become increasingly more important to equip our students with a vision of the future of literacy, `a picture of the texts and discourses, skills and knowledges' that they might need, and their associated social and educational visions, rather than simple mastery of particular skills and methods (Luke & Elkins 1998, p. 4; see also Luke 1998). This has been described elsewhere as the `New Literacy Challenge' (Green 1998), and requires consideration not just of the changing circumstances and conditions of literacy, learning and schooling but also of those enduring educational and social issues to do with fair and reasonable forms of access and equity, differential opportunity, and the practical production of the future (Kress 1997).

Changing the scene of literacy

Recent emphases in literacy studies and literacy education include a recognition of sociocultural accounts and perspectives, as well as more explicit engagements with media culture and with the emergent technologies of information and communication.

Sociocultural issues are indicated in the way in which the rhetoric of `critical literacy', as it is called, has been taken up across the country, in policy at least. This development ostensibly brings together notions such as critical pedagogy and the socially-critical school, as well as the so-called `critical thinking' movement. It similarly draws on programs such as the Disadvantaged Schools Program (DSP), as well as those addressed to issues such as gender equity and multiculturalism (and also, more recently, Aboriginal and Indigenous education). In NSW, as elsewhere (e.g. South Australia), the work of Allan Luke and Peter Freebody and their various associates has been influential, as the basis for institutionalising a comprehensive sociocultural view of literacy in terms of code-breaking, text participation and usage, and textual analysis (Luke & Freebody 1997, 1999). This has involved a particular rendering of the now well-known and well-established `text-context' model of language and literacy learning--something clearly evident in, for instance, the NSW K-6 Primary English Syllabus and its associated support documents.

The growing concern with media and technologies--part of a general media-shift in education and society (Green & Bigum 1998)--is a more recent phenomenon, as we have already indicated. It is informed and even, to a significant degree, driven by increased awareness of globalisation, central to which is heightened concern for the cultural and economic effects of new technologies and new forms and dynamics of transnational communication and exchange. School education is not exempt from this. In NSW it has been mandated that, from 1999, all new teachers should have acquired specific computer `proficiencies' in the course and context of their initial teacher education and accreditation (NSW DET 1997), and a large-scale program of inservice professional development in across-the-board educational computing has been initiated. The educational convergence of literacy and IT--or, more accurately, literacies and technologies--has been a marked feature of recent policy and pedagogic proposals alike (Lankshear et al. 1997). However, this is something still to be fully accepted or understood in school and classroom practice.

A significant problem with the new policy emphases on integrating IT into school education and literacy pedagogy has been a persistent technocentrism. This means an overly technicist or technical orientation in schools and curriculum, although often tempered by a constructivist view of learning. This is indicated by the way in which, all too often, programs of computer learning and professional development seem to endorse a `natural' movement from individualised skills-development, through a more or less technicist engagement with hardware and software, to due consideration for classroom applications and implications, after which comes a more reflective concern with `values and ethics' (NSW DET 1997). Such a logic is at odds with contemporary literacy scholarship, which is sharply critical of `skills and methods' views of literacy pedagogy (Luke 1998). This presents particular challenges for those advocating curriculum integration of literacy and IT, and hence for those seeking to implement such proposals. In this paper, accordingly, we suggest ways in which currently endorsed views of literacy learning and teaching can be articulated with recent developments in education and IT, and outline a model for curriculum integration and practice which effectively brings together sociocultural perspectives on literacy, IT and schooling.

Literacy in `3D'

Perhaps the strongest and most promising development of recent times has been the emergence of what can now be called a `situated social practice' model of language, literacy and technology learning--that is, an emphasis on situated, `authentic' learning and cultural apprenticeship, within a critical-sociocultural view of discourse and practice. This brings together established work in Australia addressed specifically to language and literacy learning (e.g. Boomer 1988, 1989; Cambourne 1988) with more recent work in literacy studies and the sociocultural paradigm, such as that of Gee (1990, 1991) and Lankshear (1997). Importantly, though, it explicitly stages a dialogue with `constructionist' work in computer culture and learning (Papert 1980, 1993). This model was first developed in specific relation to subject-specific literacy learning (Green 1988), and has been successfully deployed more recently in computer education (Green 1996). The congruence between these otherwise disparate fields of practice suggests that the model in question here has a general relevance, as well as being specifically pertinent to the integration of literacy and IT in education. This was, in fact, the position adopted and endorsed in the `Digital Rhetorics' document (Lankshear et al. 1997; see also Lankshear 1998 and Morgan 1998).

In essence the model involves what can be called a `3D' view of literacy-technology learning. That is, it brings together three dimensions or aspects of learning and practice: the operational, the cultural and the critical. Rather than simply focusing on `how-to' knowledge, as it usually is understood--that is, technical competence and so-called `functional literacy'--it complements and supplements this by contextualising it, with due regard for matters of culture, history and power. This is a holistic, cultural-critical view of literacy-technology learning that takes explicitly into account contexts, contextuality and contextualisation (Lemke 1995). The crucial point to emphasise here is that none of these dimensions of discourse and practice has any necessary priority over the others. All dimensions need to be addressed simultaneously, in an integrated view of literate practice and literacy pedagogy.

Importantly, this means that it is counter-productive, to say the least, to start with issues of `skill' or `technique', outside of an authentic context of situated social practice. That basic principle holds for all learning, whether it be learning school Geography, participating in an on-line professional development conference, or becoming competent with regard to some aspect of workplace practice. The model can be depicted thus:

[Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A comprehensive school program in literacy and IT needs to include, in both policy and practice, appropriate engagements with all three dimensions. This is something therefore to be explicitly incorporated into curriculum planning, at both the school level and that of the classroom.

Literacy: integrating language, technology and learning

It is necessary to provide a more elaborated account of the model at this stage. To begin with, it derives from an integrated, sociocultural view of both language learning and technology learning. Following the work of Michael Halliday, language learning is seen as consisting of learning language, learning through language and learning about language. This integrated view has been readily extended to technology learning (Boomer 1987). A comprehensive school program addressed to the most effective and meaningful across-the-curriculum technology learning is one that emphasises equally learning technology (i.e. how to use technology), learning through technology, and learning about technology. It is for this reason we propose that literacy in this context is best understood as bringing together considerations of language, technology and learning. What needs to be emphasised is the importance of what Cambourne (1989, p. 20) describes as `acquisition learning' and Gee (1990) presents as the proper relationship between `acquisition' and `learning'. The emphasis, then, must be on the priority of an experience- and activity-oriented curriculum over an instructional curriculum, or of teaching for learning over learning from teaching. Indeed, as Papert (1980, p. 6) observed some time ago, such a view has the potential to transform the way we understand and go about learning and teaching more generally. More importantly for our purposes here, it is consistent with the broadly constructivist view of curriculum and learning that has featured in progressive educational thinking in Australia since the 1970s.

The `3D' model assists us to conceptualise and plan such a curriculum. The operational dimension includes but also goes beyond received or usual notions of technical competence and `how-to' knowledge. Operational knowledge applies as much to literacy practice and learning as it does to IT practice and learning, and hence of course it applies with particular force to literacy-technology learning (or, rather, as it might be more appropriately expressed, l(IT)eracy learning). The issue here becomes how--literally--to operate the language system; how to make it work for one's own meaning-making purposes; how to `turn it on', etc. In the case of written language, the operational dimension involves understanding how the alphabet works and what it is, how graphemes and phonemes correspond, and to what extent, recognising the letters and subsequent formulations and conventions, and so on. It also involves learning the `mechanics' of handwriting and keyboarding, etc. For l(IT)eracy learning, the emphasis is on finding out how to make a computer operational, how to `turn it on' and make it `work', from the basics of making sure the cables are connected and switching it on to opening up files and documents, along with related activities such as opening and searching a database or using a CD-ROM.

Understanding and deploying the cultural dimension involves recognising and acknowledging that l(IT)erate practice and learning is always more than simply a matter of being able to operate language and technology systems, rather, such operational capacities are always in the specific service of authentic forms of meaning and practice. That is, we always use texts and technologies to do things in the world, and to achieve our own (and others') purposes, whether this be in the context of school or of work and everyday life. It follows that the emphasis is most appropriately placed on authentic contexts, forms and purposes of learning. To focus on the cultural dimension, therefore, is to focus on and give priority to matters of practice and meaning--the practice of meaning, or meaning-making, and the conduct and achievement of meaningful, effective practice.

The critical dimension draws in explicit consideration of context and history, and also of power. It takes into account that school knowledges are always partial and selective. They are always someone's `story', in the sense that the curriculum always represents some interests rather than others, and that it is a complex socio-historical construction. Rather than a single, universal Truth, the practice of curriculum and schooling follows lines of social division and is structured according to the prevailing principles of social organisation and power. Currently, a major concern for curriculum development and change is how to better or more appropriately represent the interests and experiences of Aboriginal and Indigenous populations and communities, in the spirit of reconciliation and social justice. This has definite implications for school literacy programs, whether it be in terms of beginning reading materials or social studies textbooks. For l(IT)eracy learning, teachers and students need similarly to be able to assess and evaluate software and other technology resources (e.g. databases, interactive CD-ROMs, the World Wide Web) in a spirit of informed scepticism. They need, that is, not only to be able to use such resources and to participate effectively and creatively in their associated cultures, but also to critique them, to read and use them against the grain, to appropriate and even re-design them.

Literacy models and frameworks: re-mapping the territory

At this point it is important to make more explicit the terms of the articulation we are proposing here between literacy and IT in education and schooling, in accordance with the current state of policy and scholarship in NSW and elsewhere in Australia. As already mentioned, the NSW Literacy Strategy, along with contemporary English and literacy syllabus development in this State, clearly and firmly endorses a view of literacy curriculum that values explicitness, flexibility and comprehensiveness. As we have noted above, a central feature of that literacy curriculum is a socio-cultural approach to literacy learning. This is built around not only the notion that literacy is itself `an emergent technology--that is, a technology that changes the environment in which it is used' (Freebody 1993, p. 48) but also that it is best understood in terms of an available repertoire of four `reading' roles or stances, each moreover with its own associated `technology'. As Freebody (1993, p. 49) writes: `[A] successful reader needs to develop and sustain the resources to play four related roles: code-breaker, text-participant, text-user, and text-analyst'. Further:

 [A]ll of these roles form part of successful reading as our culture
 currently demands it and ... therefore any program of instruction in
 literacy, whether it be at kindergarten, in adult ESL classes, in
 university courses or at any points in between, needs to confront these
 roles systematically, explicitly, and at all developmental points.
 (Freebody 1993, p. 58).

It is important to note that this account has itself been constantly revised. Importantly the notion of `roles' has tended to be subsumed in that of `resources', with this in turn to be understood more appropriately as referring in each instance to `a family of practices'. What remains crucial however is the emphasis on covering and integrating a repertoire of capabilities, in sufficient breadth, depth and novelty (Luke & Freebody 1999).

Two observations can be made here. Firstly, it is notable that the Luke and Freebody model implicitly associates `literacy' with `reading', and it has done so from the outset. The reference more particularly is to textual practice, to `texts', and to `what our culture expects, here and now, from people in their management of texts' (Freebody 1993, p. 49). It can be argued that we need to emphasise writing more in literacy programs than is commonly the case. Certainly, recent scholarship suggests that writing--or, as it might be more properly expressed, production and design--needs to be foregrounded in the literacy curriculum (Lemke 1989; Kress 1995, 1997), especially in the context of the digital world and the networked society (Snyder 1997). The second point to be made about the association here of literacy and reading is that such an account might be seen as mortgaged to print culture and literacy, that is, both print-bound and logocentric, in the sense that it is oriented to the language system and to written textuality. Although it certainly refers to the technologies of literacy, this is in more of a metaphorical sense than a literal one (cf. Green 1993; McWilliam 1996; Bruce 1997). Hence there is a resultant tendency to either take technology as such for granted or to imply an unwarranted neutrality for technology systems and technological practice. Among other things, this effectively closes off engagement with new and emergent literacies, which are increasingly organised and realised in mixed-mode, multimedia forms and contexts.

The value and advantage of the `3D' model proposed here is that, firstly, it was originally developed with specific regard to literacy, writing and school learning (Green 1998), and secondly, it has been further developed with specific regard to computer learning, IT and education. In addition, it needs to be stressed that it is entirely consistent with the Freebody and Luke model and the critical-sociocultural paradigm. Just as that model has sought to put a socially-critical perspective on the literacy agenda, the `3D' model does this for l(IT)eracy, and indeed the two have been developed concurrently and often in explicit dialogue with each other. It is useful, accordingly, to map the two on to each other:

[Figure 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The important point to note is that, despite their congruence, the two models do not in actual fact exactly map onto each other: for instance, `operational' does not simply equate to `code-breaker'. The relationship between the two is isomorphic and asymmetrical, with `roles' overlapping with `dimensions'. In both cases, however, the principle of (ideal) simultaneity holds: literate practice is, ideally, an integrated expression of all the roles and dimensions in question here, as two sides of the one conceptual coin. The implications for programming and planning, and indeed for assessment and evaluation, are considerable.

Literacy activities, across the various media, are always to be understood and practised across the full range of roles, resources, practices and dimensions. All too often, in sharp contrast, literacy programs are either unduly piecemeal and eclectic in this regard, or biased in actual practice and effect towards the operational and lower-order forms of `code-breaking', skills-development and text-participation, only occasionally or sporadically moving into the realm of text-usage. That was one of the key findings of the `Digital Rhetorics' project, in fact: most classrooms and most educational practice concentrated on operational activities, only sometimes taking effective account of the cultural dimension and rarely addressing the critical. This is notwithstanding policy and scholarly proposals to work with and across the full repertoire of literate-textual practice.

Classroom practice: implications and applications

So how does this model translate into classroom practice? As with all such proposals and frameworks, there are no hard-and-fast rules or strict algorithms that make implementation and application either a simple or a straightforward matter. Teachers will always need to bring to bear their own professional expertise, their local knowledge, and their own programming skills, which is always therefore a matter of re-making personal-professional meaning of the model outlined here, so that it works for them. Moreover, as noted in the `Digital Rhetorics' report:

 [H]ow we come to understand technology-mediated practices, and how we
 integrate new technologies into literacy-mediated practices, will depend on
 what we encounter in the way of practice--wherever and whenever we
 encounter it. Whatever our intentions as teachers may be about `covering'
 each of the operational, cultural and critical dimensions of literacy
 within our programs and relating them to each other as integral aspects of
 literacy, it is how literacy practices are experienced by learners that
 really matters. Similarly, the fact that a social practice involving new
 technologies is experienced by learners under very difficult and
 challenging conditions does not obviate the fact that what is experienced
 (under these conditions) will have a very important impact on what that
 social practice is seen to comprise--and hence, what `it' is learned as.
 (Lankshear et al. 1997, p. 110 [Vol. 2])

This is an important cautionary note to keep in mind. Learning and teaching are always situated and situating, productive, generating their own local, distinctive effects. Nonetheless it is possible to make some suggestions here about how to go about integrating the `3D' model into classroom and school life.

The first of these is the priority, in practice, of the cultural dimension. This means putting the emphasis firmly and clearly on authentic meaning-making and meaningful, appropriate action within a given community of practice. In the case of classrooms and schools, this puts the focus on meaningful and appropriate school and classroom learning--on `doing school', as best one can, something that applies equally to students and to teachers. Ideally, and preferably, `doing school' is always linked to and in the service of `real-life' and `life-like' social practices. Moreover, in the context of what is admittedly an expanded view of literacy pedagogy:

 In a sociocultural approach, the focus of learning and education is not
 children, nor schools, but human lives viewed as trajectories through
 multiple social practices in various social institutions. If learning is to
 be efficacious, then what a child or an adult does now as a learner must be
 connected in meaningful and motivating ways with `mature' (insider)
 versions of related social practices, (Gee, Hull & Lankshear 1996, p. 4)

The challenge here lies in making schools and classrooms, as much as possible, into `worldly', socially meaningful and relevant places, characterised by what Jo-Anne Reid (1997, p. 150) has described as generic practice: `the engaged production of social texts for real purposes'. That has always been the strength, in fact, of recent `progressive' proposals for Australian literacy education, featured in the work of educators such as Brian Cambourne and Garth Boomer as much as that of Peter Freebody, Pam Gilbert and Barbara Comber.

Putting the emphasis on the cultural dimension of school l(IT)eracy practices means taking full account of the specificity of the educational activity in question, whether it be subject-area learning (e.g. Mathematics or Social Studies) or learning how to read (and having fun!) through an engagement with e-books and CD-ROMs (e.g. the `Living Books' series). This remains the case, of course, even when there are no `new technologies' involved--which only accentuates the point that what we are concerned with here, above all else, is authentic educational practice. Whatever the lesson or unit of work, or the level of schooling, the teaching task and the challenge is finding ways of enabling and encouraging learners to enter into particular communities of practice, discourse and inquiry: how to become an `insider' in the culture of the Science classroom, for instance, and how to be an effective member of and active participant in that culture, able to engage productively in its textual and other practices. In Gee's terms, this involves entering into the secondary Discourse of the subject-area or the educational activity in question. It involves becoming identified and identifying oneself as 'a member of a socially meaningful group, or "social network", ... to signal (that one is playing) a socially meaningful "role" within that Discourse community' (Gee 1990, p. 143).(3)

The value of such a view of learning and teaching is firstly that it puts education firmly up front, and that means emphasising literacy and curriculum issues in the classroom and in one's teaching, rather than technology or technical issues. In such a view, the latter are always secondary, or supplementary, although importantly never neutral. Technologies support learning and teaching, which always remains the main game, and indeed the point of the whole exercise. Hence it is teachers' educational expertise that needs to be foregrounded and strengthened, along with their professional knowledge, skills and dispositions, which they then bring to bear on the challenge of the new technologies for schooling and for education more generally. Among other things, this restores the role and the significance of good teaching, and of the teacher as `expert' in his or her own classroom, charged with drawing children into the culture of learning.

Hence, integrating IT into the Key Learning Areas (KLAs) always, and of necessity, involves drawing on the specific subject-area expertise of teachers. Similarly, constructing coherent, informed, effective literacy programs requires that teachers' professional judgement and their own theories of literacy and pedagogy become crucial, first-order resources for curriculum and professional development. Policy-wise, it follows that strategic alliances need to be forged, within schools, between different but related communities of interest and expertise, and new opportunities generated for across-the-curriculum professional dialogue.

Secondly, such a view both contextualises and prepares the ground for more effective realisations of both the operational and the critical dimensions of literacy. In the case of the operational dimension, what emerges from such an approach is that skills development can now more readily be seen as meaningful and relevant, because it becomes clear that having appropriate, socially-recognisable `skills' and the like is imperative in order to function effectively within that particular Discourse context. In today's world, perhaps more so than ever before, this especially means communication or `symbolic-analytic' skills--not just those such as spelling or keyboarding but also those associated with design, critical analysis and electronic and other forms of information access and handling.

With regard to the critical dimension, it is important to bear in mind that social and educational practices need to be `meaningful' before they can become `critical', or be made so. This is often forgotten, or overlooked. Becoming an informed, effective `insider of a given community of practice is crucial, and that is achieved most powerfully through immersion, usage and engagement--through generic, cultural practice and `naturalistic', authentic learning. But it is arguably not enough simply to be an `insider' in this fashion, however effective one might be in that regard. James Gee and others note that this needs to be supplemented and extended by a critical perspective, one which asks reflexive questions about that culture and that community, and about who one is expected to be and become accordingly. As Freebody (1993, p. 57) writes:

 [E]ven if you, as reader, can successfully decode [a] text, can
 successfully comprehend it, relating it to your social knowledge, and can
 successfully take part in literacy activities that may be based on such a
 text, a fully successful reading ... calls for nothing less than an
 analysis of the ways in which the text constructs a version of you, the
 reader.

And, by extension, of the community you are participating in and thereby helping to construct and to sustain. Moreover, this is something that holds, whatever the level of schooling or the nature of the literate activity in question. But it is also the case that one needs to be able to use texts effectively and participate in their associated cultures--from the `inside', as it were--if critique and analysis is to be meaningful and relevant, and grounded in practice.

Conclusion

As a final note, we want to point briefly to the example of the home page, both as representative of a new l(IT)eracy practice and as a possible curriculum focus for teachers' programming and students' learning (cf. Morgan 1998, pp. 149-151). There seems little doubt, as education becomes increasingly technologised and globally referenced, that the always editable practice of the home page will feature more and more in classroom and school practice, as a gateway to the world and as a marker of on-going identity-work. Not only does it constitute a new `text type'--individual and collective, local and global--and a distinctive new literacy challenge, bringing together rhetoric and design, but it also opens up new possibilities for learning and exchange--and also, of course, new dangers, such as those associated with the market and the image. Teachers need to see themselves as artful intermediaries in this regard, negotiating the transition between residual, dominant and emergent textual cultures, ushering our young people in a principled, mindful way into new wor(l)d orders, and equipping them to understand and critique them. This requires a holistic, integrated view of literacy and learning in new times, one which brings operational, cultural and critical knowledges, in the service of active meaning-making and a just and sustainable future for all of us.

Meeting the challenge of new forms of textual practice and media culture and new relations between literacy and IT is likely to play an ever-increasingly significant role in teachers' professional lives, as indeed in society more generally. Already today's young people are moving confidently into the future in this regard, more often than not influenced and resourced by media practices and networks and by the entertainment industry--to date much more so, it can be argued, than by their schooling. There is definitely a task here for teachers and for schools, and an obligation. However, we are just beginning to find appropriate, informed ways of being both pro-active and critically pragmatic in rising to and meeting this challenge, and it is likely that this will continue to exercise the profession and the education industry for some time to come. Frameworks, overviews and proposals such as outlined in this article hopefully can contribute to the work of rethinking and `re-tooling' that is required, of educators generally and also of the wider community.

(1.) This paper was originally prepared as a Discussion Paper for the NSW Department of Education and Training--hence some of its references and sources.

(2.) Note, in contrast, a more recently edited volume (eds. Christie and Misson 1998), which is much more explicit and focused in its attention to IT with regard to literacy and schooling.

(3.) As Gee writes (1990, p. 143): `A Discourse is a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and of acting' -- for instance, for our purposes here, as a primary-school student, an adult ESL student, or a student of HSC Geography. See also Lankshear (1998, pp. 51-53).

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Cal Durrant lectures in English Curriculum and Media Education at Murdoch University in Perth. He has published widely in the area of English literacy and technology, and was a member of the national research team that produced the recent DEETYA report, Digital Rhetorics: Literacies and Technologies in Education--Current Practices and Future Directions (1997).

Address: Cal Durrant, Australian Institute of Education, Murdoch University, Murdoch, WA 6150 Email: [email protected]

Bill Green is Professor of Curriculum Studies at the University of New England, with a particular focus on literacy, IT and English teaching. Recent publications include `More than Just Literacy?' (SADETE, 2000), co-written with Barbara Comber, and an edited collection of Garth Boomer's last essays on curriculum and teaching (Designs on Learning, ACSA, 1999).

Address: School of Curriculum Studies, Milton Building, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351 Email: [email protected]