Multiple Literacies for the 21st Century - Brian Huot, Beth Stroble, Charles Bazerman

Huot, Brian, Beth Stroble, and Charles Bazerman. Multiple Literacies for the 21st Century.  Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2004.

"We live not only in the built world of cities and roads and electric grids, but in a built symbolic world of inscriptions." (Bazerman 437)

The editors of this book frame the collected chapters from the 2nd Watson Conference by affirming that literacy is not static and is in fact multiple.  They reject the dichotomy that gained traction in the early 20th century which impacted later educational practices that set up a dichotomy between between orality and literacy where literacy represented written forms of language and was seen as developing students' superior cognitive ability (as opposed to formal schooling training them in certain privileged forms of communication).  Instead, they see literacy as an inherently reflective practice and a tool of critical consciousness.  Bazerman points out that material technologies mediate literacy change and that elaborating activity systems lead to elaborating forms of literacy and places the authors' understanding of literacy in "the information age" resulting from the "electronic revolution."  Major sections of the book include literacy narratives; literacy as it relates to schooling, technology, and other senses/capacities; critical literacies, and reflections.