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What Is 'Digital Literacy'?

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What Is 'Digital Literacy'? What is ‘digital literacy’? Douglas A.J. Belshaw What is digital literacy? A Pragmatic investigation. A thesis submitted in 2011 to the Department of Education at Durham University by Douglas Alan Jonathan Belshaw for the degree of Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) 2 Declaration This thesis is the sole and original work of Douglas A.J. Belshaw. Copyright statement The author wishes this thesis to be made available under the most permissive Creative Commons license available. This is currently CC0, which states: To the extent possible under law, Douglas A.J. Belshaw has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights to What is digital literacy? A Pragmatic investigation. This work is published from: United Kingdom. Further details on CC0 available at: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ 3 Abstract Digital literacy has been an increasingly-debated and discussed topic since the publication of Paul Gilster’s seminal Digital Literacy in 1997. It is, however, a complex term predicated on previous work in new literacies such as information literacy and computer literacy. To make sense of this complexity and uncertainty I come up with a ‘continuum of ambiguity’ and employ a Pragmatic methodology. This thesis makes three main contributions to the research area. First, I argue that considering a plurality of digital literacies helps avoid some of the problems of endlessly-redefining ‘digital literacy’. Second, I abstract eight essential elements of digital literacies from the research literature which can lead to positive action. Finally, I argue that co-constructing a definition of digital literacies (using the eight essential elements as a guide) is at least as important as the outcome. 4 Contents Table of Figures ................................................................................................................. 7 Preface ................................................................................................................................ 8 Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 13 Chapter 2: New forms of literacy worldwide ............................................................... 18 The European Union ................................................................................................................................. 20 The United Kingdom ................................................................................................................................ 24 Norway ...................................................................................................................................................... 28 Singapore .................................................................................................................................................. 32 Australia .................................................................................................................................................... 35 The USA ................................................................................................................................................... 39 Summing up .............................................................................................................................................. 43 Chapter 3: Problematising traditional (print) literacy ................................................ 47 The problem of literacy ............................................................................................................................. 52 Literacy's relationship with knowledge ..................................................................................................... 54 Literacy as a social process ....................................................................................................................... 57 Unitary and pluralist views of literacy ...................................................................................................... 64 Requirements of a ‘literacy’ ...................................................................................................................... 67 Chapter 4: The history of ‘digital literacy’ ................................................................... 70 The role and status of information literacy ............................................................................................... 79 The evolution of digital literacy ................................................................................................................ 83 Chapter 5: The ambiguities of digital literacy ............................................................. 93 Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity ...................................................................................................... 94 Generative ambiguity ................................................................................................................................ 96 Creative ambiguity .................................................................................................................................. 102 Productive ambiguity .............................................................................................................................. 105 Summing up ............................................................................................................................................ 109 Chapter 6: Methodology ............................................................................................... 113 Methodologies ......................................................................................................................................... 115 Critical Theory ........................................................................................................................................ 118 Post-Structuralism ................................................................................................................................... 121 Pragmatism .............................................................................................................................................. 125 The Pragmatic approach .......................................................................................................................... 129 Pragmatism and digital literacies ............................................................................................................ 146 Chapter 7: New Literacies ............................................................................................ 148 New Literacy Studies .............................................................................................................................. 149 Fragmentation of research ....................................................................................................................... 152 Example: JISC ......................................................................................................................................... 162 Summing up ............................................................................................................................................ 167 Chapter 8: What are (digital) literacies? .................................................................... 169 The evolution of communication ............................................................................................................ 170 Evolution or revolution? ......................................................................................................................... 174 Digital Epicycles ..................................................................................................................................... 194 Summing up ............................................................................................................................................ 199 Chapter 9: A matrix of elements ................................................................................. 200 The transience of digital literacies .......................................................................................................... 201 The eight essential elements of digital literacies ..................................................................................... 206 Chapter 10: Conclusion ................................................................................................ 220 Appendix 1 ..................................................................................................................... 225 5 Appendix 2 ..................................................................................................................... 226 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 241 6 Table of Figures Figure 1 - Levels of Digital Literacy ................................................................................ 21 Figure 2 – Diagram from Wikipedia article on Cell Respiration ...................................... 50 Figure 3 - Different approaches to equating knowledge with literacy .............................. 56 Figure 4 – Google Scholar citations for Paul Gilster’s book Digital Literacy ................. 84 Figure 5 - A simplified, overlapping version of the spectrum of ambiguities .................. 95 Figure 6 - Trajectory of ambiguities ............................................................................... 100 Figure 7 - JISCs mapping of
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