converging
to come together, approaching one another
"Convergence occurs within the brains of individual
consumers and through their social interactions with others.
Each of us constructs our own personal mythology from bits
and fragments of information extracted from the media flow
and transformed into resources through which we make sense
of our everyday lives." (Henry Jenkins, Convergence
Culture, 3-4)
literacies
literacies--versus literacy--emphasizes the multiple, socially-sanctioned, people-oriented nature of any "literate" act; literacy thus requires reading and negotiating various contextualized forces that are deeply embedded in identify formation, political affiliations, material and social conditions, and ideological frameworks.
Literate Practices, . . . , refer to those sanctioned and endorsed by others recognized as literate members of a particular
community of practice. (Carter 34)
center
a place (virtual/physical) where the chief
object of attention is literacies (converging,
multiple) as they manifest themselves in the lives of real people--authentic literacy experiences.
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Our mission is to provide the means and support for students without means and support in their private lives. Doing so requires us to discover, articulate, and
make available more relevant, authentic literacy learning experiences--and
learn from them as they learn from us.
To accomplish this mission, we are working to establish the Converging Literacies Center (CLiC), an interdisciplinary site where educators work with students and scholars work with one another (and research participants) to reimagine literacy education in ways that embrace multiple, diverse literacy experiences and multiple modes of communication
In Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures, the New London Group asks, "What constitutes appropriate literacy teaching in the context of the ever more critical factors of local diversity and global connectedness?" (3)
At it's foundation, CLiC works from the assumption that "appropriate literacy teaching" in this new context should yield rhetorical dexterity. The most appropriate method for this new context is ethnographic inquiry.
rhetorical dexterity--the ability to effectively read, understand, manipulate, and negotiate the cultural and linguistic codes of a new community of practice based on a relatively accurate assessment of another, more familiar one. (Carter 22)
ethnography--a
research method that flatly acknowledges the interestedness of the
researcher as participant observer. The researcher observes, learns, and
writes from authority derived from traditional research and from
observation of and involvement in the object of study (see Dunbar-Odom's
Working with Ideas).
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CLiC's key pedagogical moves and the primary research methodology are shaped by these principles. And, given our unique institutional and geographical context and that fact that schools like ours serving populations like ours are becoming increasingly common across the nation, such research is important--not only to those of us teaching at Texas A&M-Commerce but, indeed, across the US and abroad.
Our students must learn the verbal, visual, textual (rhetorical!) dexterity that will allow them to see how literacies can both serve them and oppress them. They must also learn the dexterity necessary to please both a larger audience and themselves.
At the same time, however, the artifacts that serve as manifestations of
successful research must also be transformed to enable and support
collaboration and multiple modes of communication.