Fostering Community Literacy Ann P. Bishop Bertram C. Bruce

What is Community Literacy? Community literacy is a set of activities around understanding and composing texts within a community. More broadly, it encompasses the complex of social relations and actions to making and communicating meaning around issues of common concern throughout the community.

Complementary Aspects of Community Literacy How do individuals within a community develop literacy? How does the community itself become literate?

Technologies for Community Literacy Technologies as the means for resolving problematic situations (Hickman, 1990) Tools for making and communicating meaning Material conditions New digital technologies Practices Ideas

Obstacles to Community Literacy Static model of knowledge Deficit model Experts know best Participants are passive recipients Competing perspectives: recognizing and accommodating difference within shared activity Lack of shared experience

Goals Individual development Social justice

The education of engaged citizens...involves respect for diversity, meaning that each individual should be recognized for his or her own abilities, interests, ideas, needs, and cultural identity, and the development of critical, socially engaged intelligence, which enables individuals to understand and participate effectively in the affairs of their community in a collaborative effort to achieve a common good John Dewey Project on Progressive Education John Dewey Project on Progressive Education

Theory of Experience Ordinary experience as the source of knowledge Situated knowledge Continuity of experience Social construction of knowledge Community as learning system

Fostering Community Literacy Diversity: identify and respect individual knowledge, abilities, needs, identities Interactivity: meaning derived from internal conditions & external environment Inquiry: create conditions for generative experiences Participation: afford equitable, critical, active engagement Community learning: community-wide experiences

Community Literacy in Practice Afya: participatory action research project; engages Black women in improving health services and nurtures learning about information technology Inquiry Group: members using the Inquiry Page and collaborate in developing technology to support inquiry-based teaching and learning inquiry.uiuc.eduinquiry.uiuc.edu

Validates local knowledge of Black women who serve as evaluators in SisterNet design workshops Use is design: Diversity of use defines the growth of the technology and of the community Respect for Diversity: Afya

Interactivity: Afya Assessment of community needs based on eliciting Black women’s personal narratives of problematic situations Health web site content based on personal histories as well as professional knowledge

Inquiry Model: Afya SisterNet web-searching workshop, led by Black women; engenders motivation, confidence, and skills in both computer use and community healthcare interactions

Participation: Afya Community Health Fair–Creating authentic, shared experiences to establish the conditions for future collaborations

Community Learning: Afya Sisternet web site and new social practices transform the community

Respect for Diversity: Inquiry Group Removes expert/novice distinction Curriculum development and student work as seamless aspects of the inquiry process Use is design: Diversity of use defines the growth of the technology and of the community

Interactivity: Inquiry Group Unit objectives negotiated through the inquiry process Multiple paths to knowing Ability to modify, spin-off, or re-create inquiry units No completion to the inquiry

Inquiry Model: Inquiry Group Inquiry Units as representations of the ongoing path of inquiry; spin-offs Dialogical versus gate-keeper model

Inquiry Cycle

Participation: Inquiry Group Multiple modes of participation–as users, contributors of quotes and other resources, developers of units, designers of the site

Community Learning: Inquiry Group Inquiry learning demands new forms of community Inquiry Units instantiate new practices in inquiry-based learning for teachers and students New forms of face-to-face interactions

Tensions Who participates? Who benefits? Different degrees of engagement Coordination with standard systems Conflict inevitable within the community

How can a democratic community accommodate difference?... direct the discourse of community to the maintenance of equitable relations first, and then to individual and collective work. [This] renders the progress of expertise in a community secondary to a relational and epistemological practice of confronting differences so that its participants can come to understand how the beliefs and purposes of others can call their own into question. With this as its primary practice, the project of maintaining community can accommodate both equality and difference. Gregory Clark (1993)

Conclusions Communities as learning systems: Rejection of static knowledge model Design through use Mutual constitution of literacy technologies and community