Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context By David Barton, Mary Hamilton and Roz Ivanic, eds

• Published in: Radical Teacher no. 60; p. 37
• Main Author: Carey, Shannon
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Brooklyn Center for Critical Education of NY 31.03.2001
• Subjects: Cultural identity; Curricula; Early literacy; Education; Elementary education; Elementary School Teachers; English as a second language learning; Grade 2; Grade 5; Language attitudes; Literature; Multiple Literacies; Native language acquisition; Negotiation; Nonfiction; Preservice Teachers; Prisons; Reading Programs; Second language teachers; Second language writing; Self concept; Space; Student teacher relationship; United States > US; California
• ISSN: 0191-4847; 1941-0832

Enter Situated Literacies and the good people of the New Literacy Studies. Like a breath of reason and reality, the authors of these 12 essays sweep down from the University of Lancaster in forward thinking Britain to patiently and calmly tell us that literacy is actually plural, and that there are many literacies, depending on what you do, where you are, and who you are. They show us that all literacies are social practices, or that they necessarily occur within webs of people and institutions. They tell us that literacies are dynamic, and that they are intimately related to relations of geographies of power. They would tell us, I think, if they had delved into an Oakland second grade classroom, that a Muslim girl and a daughter of a pig-farmer would understand the "S" book very differently. In order to understand these children's acquisition of and attitude towards school literacies, I can imagine that these New Literacy scholars might suggest looking at the Muslim's use of literacy in her religious practices, and into the whys and hows of literacy within the business of raising and slaughtering hogs. The essays do not all revolve around classroom literacies, though, and this is exactly the point: literacies in the twenty-first century cannot and are not confined to classrooms, either in practice or in theory. Like a different version of a raunchy bumper sticker, this book seems to say: literacy happens, whether you like it or not. Literacy--or rather, different literacies--happen in the car, at the sheep auction, in cyber-space, and within dingy prison cells. It is up to us, as educators, bearers of traditional standards in literacy, to decide how we fit into this complex web of literacies, not how we can make this unruly explosion of literacy conform to our static frameworks. In her essay entitled `There is No Escape from Third Space Theory' Anita Wilson, examines literacies inside prisons. Prisoners use literacy, she contends, in order to create a "third space," a realm that draws from the worlds both inside and outside of prisons but is not wholly "of" either world. Prisoner's notes to one another, covert sharing of newspapers, and even their "reading" of the penciled-on brand name logos on their athletic shoes integrate elements of the outside worlds within realities of their physical confinement. The parallels to the classroom here are clear to all but the most inattentive teachers: students customize their desks and notebooks with heavily drawn pencil drawings of signs and symbols from pop and subaltern culture, they pass notes concerning who they love and hate, and they find time and space within the classroom to bring in their own personal experiences, somehow morphed to the language and/or physical confines and routines of the classroom. By recognizing the potential of these "third space" acts (many of which are literacy events), teachers can open up possibilities to create new spaces within a school environment that many students find restrictive and foreign. Renata de Pourbaix's article on "Emergent Literacy Practices in an Electronic Community," looks at a group of second language learner's cyber-chats as such a "third space." She documents the ways in which second language learners, use this computer email technology to create an entirely new discourse community, negotiate rules of the exchanges, set textual conventions, and slowly reveal literary and personal identities using their emerging English literacy.