Challenging Texts: Challenging Texts (and Other Assumptions) in a Digital Age

Sonst. Personen	Thomas, P. L. (Hrsg.)
Titel	Challenging Texts: Challenging Texts (and Other Assumptions) in a Digital Age
Quelle	In: English Journal, 98 (2009) 5, S.99-102 (4 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0013-8274
Schlagwörter	Stellungnahme; English Instruction; Influence of Technology; Computer Uses in Education; Cooperative Learning; Literacy; Ethics + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? English langauage lessons; Englischunterricht; Computernutzung; Kooperatives Lernen; Alphabetisierung; Schreib- und Lesefähigkeit; Ethik
Abstract	Two decades have passed since Frank Smith's "Joining the Literacy Club: Further Essays into Education," and educators can make two relatively safe comments: (1) Smith's call for recognizing and honoring the social nature of literacy growth has been largely overshadowed by pursuits of accountability, and (2) Smith is right: Literacy "learning is unconscious, effortless, incidental, vicarious, and essentially collaborative". Smith's discussion poses challenges for educators who teach English language arts as they approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century--making a broad commitment to learning communities and embracing the promise of the digital age while also avoiding the traps that computers, the Internet, and electronic media of all kinds pose. As teachers committed to critical literacy, how can they create community in their classes in a digital age while also acknowledging the dangers posed by both "community" and "technology"? First, they must acknowledge the inherent tension between "community" and "tradition". Smith ends his book with a call: "Then teachers must persuade each other and the administrators who control so much of what they do in classrooms that ethnography rather than experimental psychology is the right horse for education to back". That call signals the perennial tensions between the critical classrooms educators pursue and the forces working against them. In the early decades of the 21st century, it remains within their power to choose the promise and to reject the threat. Their moral obligation, it seems, is to create the classrooms their students need, for "[e]ducation will unfit anyone to be a slave"--if that education is one that allows teachers and students to "[t]alk back, speak up, be heard". (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	National Council of Teachers of English. 1111 West Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096. Tel: 877-369-6283; Tel: 217-328-3870; Web site: http://www.ncte.org/journals
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10