Networked literacies & agency: a

(personal) explorationBy Paul Prinsloo (University of South Africa)

Presentation at Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT), University of Cape Town, Thursday 9 April 2015

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The presenter owns the copyright of some of the images in this presentation (indicated as CC Paul Prinsloo). All other images have been sourced from Google labeled for non-commercial reuse.

This work (excluding the images) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Overview of the presentation• Positioning myself• Literacy/ies in context• Critical literacy as point of departure• A personal narrative – the importance of context/field• Literacy through a social cognitive theory lens

(Bandura)• Literacy and field theory (Bourdieu)• Functionings, capabilities, well-being and critical

agency (Sen)• A personal note on literacy-as-agentic identity as

researcher• (In)conclusions

Disclaimer: Positioning myself

There are many possible ways to approach and think about the notion of ‘literacy.’ I approach/reflect upon ‘literacy’• Acknowledging the influence of the work of Zygmunt Bauman, Albert Bandura

and a personal understanding of Actor Network Theory

• From a “critical literacy” perspective (eg Apple, 1992; Bishop, 2014; Behrman, 2006; Lankshear & McClaren, 1993; Morrell, 2004, 2007)

• Work on intersectionality and literacy as critical, situated, “boundary work” (Bishop, 2014; Budd & Lloyd, 2014; Nicholson, 2014)

What does it mean to be (il)literate? How do we define

(il)literacy?

What does it mean to be literate and agentic (literacy-as-networked-agency) when…

Who I am and the literacies and agency I have - were shaped by

• My circumstances, race, gender, context, historical-moment-in-time?

• My socio-material conditions• The choices I made• The choices that were made for me• Other people – known and unknown• Material conditions and technologies as actors• Chance, matterings and happenings?

What does it mean to be literate and agentic (literacy-as-networked-agency)…

What does it mean to “live a fully human dignified life [and] what education contributes to this, and how [do] we assess its contribution?”

(Walker, 2012, p. 384)

What does it mean to be literate (enough?) to make informed, embodied and entangled choices on a playing field that is uneven and formed and maintained by socio-material power relations?

A deluge of literacies

Information literacy

Media literacy

Digital literacy

Cyber

literacy

Information

fluency

Fluencies for a global

digital citizen

Competencies for media and digital literacy

Multiple intelligences

Five minds of the future

And the latest kid on the block - Metaliteracy (Mackey & Jacobson, 2011)

Image credit: http://metaliteracy.cdlprojects.com/what.htm

Understand format type and delivery

mode

Evaluate user feedback as active

researcher

Create a context for user-generated

information

Evaluate dynamic content critically

Produce original content in multiple

media formats

Understand personal privacy, information

ethics and intellectual property

issues

Share information in participatory environmentsMackey, T.P., & Jacobson, T.E. (2011). Reframing

information literacy as metaliteracy. College & Research Libraries, 72(1), 62-78.

Our taxonomies and typologies of literacies depend on our lens…

• The ‘digital age’ (Bawden2001; Littlejohn, Beetham, & Mcgill 2012; Knobel & Lankshear 2007)

• ‘employability’ (Fugate, Kinicki, & Ashforth 2004)

• ‘sustainability’ (Krosnick et al

2000; Major & Atwood, 2004;

Rowe, 2002; Weingart et al, 2000)

Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hand_showing_lens_demonstration.jpg

The range of individual autonomy is expanding, increasingly being “burdened with the functions that were once viewed as the responsibility of the state” (Bauman, 2011, p. 16). Individuals are increasingly faced to respond to socially produced problems…

At no other time has the necessity to make choices been so deeply felt and has choosing become so poignantly self-conscious, conducted under conditions of painful yet incurable uncertainty, of a constant threat of ‘being left behind’ and of being excluded from the game, with return barred for failure to live up to the new demands” (Bauman, 2012, p. 21)

Why do ‘literacies’ (and our lists and definitions) matter?

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Looking for a centre that holds

“…we no longer possess a home; we are repeatedly called upon to build and then rebuild one, like the three little pigs of the fairy tale, or we have to carry it along with us on our backs like snails”

(Melucci in Bauman, 2012, p. 22)

Lists as Noah’s ark…

Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noah%27s_Ark_on_Mount_Ararat_by_Simon_de_Myle.jpg

Possibly underlying our anxious search for definitions of “literacy” is an unease that the knowledge maps of the past have, to a large extent, been proven to be fragile (Barnett, 2000) and (possibly) the illegitimate offspring of unsavory liaisons between ideology, context and humanity’s gullibility in believing in promises of unconstrained scientific progress… (Prinsloo, in

press)(also seeGray, 2004; 2014).

Literacy has become our hope for creating a center that holds… As such we experience a “crisis of proposals and a crisis of utopias” (Max-Neef, Elizalde, & Hopenhayn, 1991, p. 1) when “the old is dying and the new cannot be born” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 110).

• “Literacy is a political battleground” (Bishop, 2014, p. 51)

• Critical literacy, then, is learning to read and write as part of the process of becoming conscious of one’s experience as historically constructed within specific power-relations” (Anderson & Irvine, 1993, p. 82)

Literacy through a critical lens

Critical consciousness –“to read the world”

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactome

I am here…Beginning date: unsureUp to present: 2015Future?

Understanding literacy as embodied, entangled, relational, networked, mediated and mediating context-specific capabilities and choices: A personal journey…

My story of becoming and being

(il)literate*…1948 – eleven years before I was born, the National Party came into power

Image credit: http://espressostalinist.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/europeans-only.jpg

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

* Adapted from Prinsloo, O. (2014). Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin : researcher identity and performance. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10500/14415

[(habitus)(capital)]

1956 – the Bantu Education Act of 1955

"There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labor ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it (sic) cannot use it in practice?“ (Hendrik Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs)

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Three years before I was born…

When I was two years old…

Image credit: http://ificould.co.za/human-rights-day-2013-commemorating-the-sharpeville-massacre/

• 69 Black South Africans murdered

• 187 people wounded• African National

Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress banned

When was born in 1959 and classified as

“white” and “European”

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

In a town with a siren that went of at 9 pm at night after which everyone who was non-White had to be outside of the boundaries of the town.

In 1961 – South Africa became a Republic – with the

majority of its population not being citizens

In 1965 – I started school – two years earlier than Black

children of the same age. White and Black children had

different syllabi – Black children were taught gardening and

music…

From 1966-1971 – 3 million South Africans resettled in

reserves

Copyright: Paul Prinsloo

I matriculated in 1976

… with Soweto burning with 575 people killed

Image credit: http://kgothatsomanale.blogspot.com/2013/06/soweto-uprising-16-june-1976.html

1976 was also the year my dad died, and I started to waiter and be a petrol attendant to make ends meet…

In 1977 I enrolled …

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_University_of_Pretoria.PNG

As Afrikaans speaker, I had 19 universities to choose (of which six had Afrikaans as language of tuition) from compared to 2 universities dedicated to colored students, 2 for the exclusive enrollment of Indian students and 6 for the exclusive use of Black students…

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Acknowledging white privilege and the way it shaped my education and provided me with opportunities is not surrendering to the notion of victimhood and suffering that is prevalent in the much of the current white, Afrikaner discourse. There is a vast difference between recognising the “historic burden of whiteness” and self-abasement or lame apologies (O’Hehir, 2014). Personally, it is impossible and disingenuous to ignore how my race and gender shaped my opportunities, and provided me with social, cultural and economic capital. My race and gender, and the socioeconomic circumstances of my family allowed me to play on a field while many others were excluded from playing. (Also see Bowler, 2014; Crosley-Corcoran, 2014; Gedye, 2014)

Prinsloo (2014)

Literacies

Knowledge

Resources

Tools

Capabilities

Capital

Literacy, agency, & structure – two approaches

Choices

Being agentic as an embodied, entangled, relational, networked, mediated and mediating context-specific capability and choice

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Acting and responding to the world

Literacy through a social cognitive theory lens

“People do not operate as autonomous agents. Nor is their behaviour wholly determined by situational influences. Rather, human functioning is a product of a reciprocal interplay of intrapersonal, behavioural, and environmental determinants.. This triadic interaction includes the exercise of self-influence as part of the causal structure” (Bandura, 2006, p. 165; emphasis added).

Human agency Structural arrangements in a particular context

Human agency Structural arrangements in a particular context

Three modes of agency (Bandura, 2006)

Three modes of agency namely individual, proxy and collective. These three modes do not function separately or independently, but “everyday functioning requires an agentic blend of these three forms of agency” (Bandura, 2006, p. 165)

Proxy agency as being required when “people do not have direct control over conditions that affect their lives… They do so by influencing others who have the resources, knowledge, and means to act on their behalf to secure the outcomes they desire” (Bandura, p. 165; emphasis added)

Individual agency in fluid times…

“Given that individuals are producers as well as products of their life circumstances, they are partial authors of the past conditions that developed them, as well as the future courses their lives take” (p. 165).

Agentic management of fortuity - “People are often inaugurated into new life trajectories, marriages, and careers through fortuitous circumstances” (p. 166)

“They can make chance happen by pursuing an active life that increases the number and type of fortuitous encounters they will experience” (p. 166)

Image credit: http://www.allstaractivities.com/images/soccer-positions.gif

In order to be literate/ a player in the 21st century I need to understand the field, the game, and my position, and

my skills

• Boundaried site• Players have set/

predetermined positions• Rules are predetermined• Written and unwritten

rules• Players have different

skills• What players can do is

determined by their position on the field

• The physical condition of the field impacts play

CAPITAL: What type of “capital” I

have or don’t have • Economic• Cultural• Social• Symbolic

HABITUS: Who and how my past shaped/shapes me:• Genetic makeup• Gender• Race• Socio-economic circumstances• Parental background• Geopolitical location• Educational experiences• Health• The choices I made in the past…• My dispositions• Etc.

These are durable and transposable (Maton, 2012)

In order to be literate in a networked and (un)flat world I need to know…

THE FIELD:How does the field in which I find myself in, shape me?

What/who shapes the field?

Who are the (other) players in the field:• Who are they?• How come they are

shapers?• What are the rules?• Who are the referees?

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_soccer

Looking at metaliteracy from a field theory (Bourdieu) perspective

The “field” is not a benign, pastoral space, but rather le champ – a battle field, where players have set positions, predetermined paces, specific rules which novice players must learn together with basic skills.

“What players can do, and where they can go during the game, depends on their field position. The actual physical condition of the field (whether it is wet, dry, well grassed or full of potholes), also has an effect on what players can do and this how the game is played” (Thompson, 2012, p. 66)

[(habitus)(capital)] + field = practice/agency

(Maton, 2012, p. 50)

A field theory perspective on agency

My dispositions - how my past and present (and my understanding thereof) shaped and still shape me

The capital that I have acquired in the process (or not)

The field – the context in which I find myself in. This is not a neutral space, but is, itself, shaped by various structures, and agencies of individuals and collectives

My practice/agency and my understanding thereof…

We are not “pre-programmed automatons acting out the implications of our upbringings” (Maton, 2012, p. 50).

Functionings: Things over which I have command –literacies, skills, shaped by choice, habitus, context, need

Capabilities: A selection of functionalities in a particular context, need

Well-being:Being able to make choices (in recognition that choices are constrained by others, values and context)

Critical agency:The freedom to act but also the freedom to question and reassess

A personal understanding: Literacies, agency, well-being – Amartya Sen

Functionings: Things over which I have command –literacies, skills, shaped by choice, habitus, context, need

Capabilities: A selection of functionalities in a particular context, need

Well-being:Being able to make choices (in recognition that choices are constrained by others, values and context)

Critical agency:The freedom to act but also the freedom to question and reassess

A personal understanding: Literacies…

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactome

I am here…Beginning date: unsureUp to present: 2015

Understanding my researcher literacy as embodied, entangled, relational, networked, mediated and mediating context-specific capabilities and choices: A personal journey…

Understanding the field of becoming and being a researcher

1.The broader higher education context2.The move to digital and networked

identities3.The (changing) rules of performing

research

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The field: The broader higher education context

Image credit: http://www.socialmediasmarketing.com/

The field: The move to digital and networked identities

I am (somewhere) here…

The field: The rules of performing research• The Unisa context• My performance agreement• Other rules: Not all journals are created equalConcerns about the quality in ‘A’ rated

journalsThe minefield of choosing a journalBreaking into the global North…

Understanding the field of becoming and being a researcher: [(habitus)(capital)] + field = agency

Agentic researcher identity & as plural, dynamic construct…

Researcher identity

How we measure/what we value and who values…

AgeHome language

Researcher performanceRace

Gender

Researcher identity as performance

Location

Health

Culture

THANK YOU

Paul Prinsloo (Prof)Research Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL)College of Economic and Management Sciences, Office number 3-15, Club 1, Hazelwood, P O Box 392Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa

T: +27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)T: +27 (0) 82 3954 113 (mobile)

prinsp@unisa.ac.zaSkype: paul.prinsloo59

Personal blog: http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com

Twitter profile: @14prinsp