1.1. Changing technologies are recreating the meaning of literacy. Technology led to more multimodal texts and learners must use literacy in these forms.
1.2. Technology should be used to transform curricula and teaching rather than just enrich it.
1.3. Students are already capable of using much technological literacy but schools do not always enable it. Further, they must be able to design, produce, and analyze multimodal texts.
1.4. Teachers must facilitate children’s development of critical literacy skills as they relate to web-based text by scaffolding student ability to construct, deconstruct, and respond to multimodal texts.
1.5. Major Theorist: Davies
2. Sociocultural- Historical Theory
2.1. People learn by participating and interacting in relevant social, cultural, and historical contexts. Therefore, literacy is constructed within a person’s participation with others in typical daily activities and social practices.
2.2. Literacy is a tool for interpreting what people from different communities do and literacy knowledge is informed by both traditional and multimodal texts used in everyday life.
2.3. Students benefit from adult support and are active members in a community of learners and larger cultural systems that informs their knowledge.
2.4. Teachers should emphasize the learning process, not just finished products and should strive to create a community of learners by facilitating social practices within the classroom and encouraging communication. Further, teachers should support guided participation by implementing instructional strategies to help students revise, edit, and publish a variety of texts.
2.5. Major Theorist: Anne Dyson
3. Multimodal Texts
4. Authentic Literacy Instruction
5. Students as capable agents
6. New Literacy Studies
6.1. Literacy is a complex social practice shaped by every day interactions and occurs in many contexts.
6.2. New information and communication technologies changes the nature of literacy and what needs to be learned. People use multimodal literacies for a variety of purposes across domains of life.
6.3. Teachers must reflect on their own literacy practices, offer authentic literacy instruction that connects to broader social goals and practices, and should facilitate students' use of literacy with many purposes and in many contexts.
6.4. Students experience and consider the richness and complexity of literacy as it transcends across local and global contexts in order to contribute to that richness and complexity.
6.5. Major Theorist: Larson
7. Critical Literacy
7.1. Literacy requires people to be active agents in text creation and analysis and to consider and critically analyze the power dynamics embedded in a text.
7.2. Literacy can foster political awareness and social change and involves having a critical perspective on language, texts, and wider social practices.
7.3. Students do not need traditional print-based literacy skills in order to make critical insights about their world and engage in critical literacy. Students are researchers and analyzers of language.
7.4. Teachers should encourage children to draw on their own cultural practices and outside knowledge to critically analyze a text, offer curricula that challenges typical literacy practice, and stimulate students to compare their experiences to texts and social customs.
