Gee+Literacy

toc **A Situated Sociocultural Approach to Literacy and Technology** **James Paul Gee** Presented by: Positivity Gregg Leslie, Phillip Chow, Kelly Hsu, Lisa Li, Karla Aguirre

=Introduction=

James Paul Gee provides a “situated sociocultural” approach to examine the roles society and culture play in Literacy and Technology. In order to do this, he talks about several interdisciplinary movements i.e. New Literacy Studies, Situated Cognition Studies, The New Literacies Studies and the New Media Literacy Studies.

=New Literacy Studies=

Scholars from different disciplines-linguistics, anthropology, rhetoric, cultural psychology, education and other areas- wrote in different theoretical languages but were all interested in literacy.



Traditional psychology viewed literacy as a “cognitive phenomenon” defined in mental states and mental processes. Readers and writers engaged in mental processes i.e. decoding, retrieving information, comprehension, inferencing, and so forth.

NLS argues that literacy is something people do, not inside their heads, but inside society. Literacy is not primarily a mental phenomenon, but rather, a socio-cultural one. It is a social and cultural achievement -it’s about ways of participating in social and cultural groups- not just a mental achievement. Readers and writers engaged in social and cultural practices:



example 1: “ And, too, people can read the same text in different ways for different purposes, for example, they can read the Bible as theology, literature, history, or as a self-help guide.” (Gee 3)



example 2: For the American Indian Athabaskans, literacy becomes plural literacies (legal literacy, gamer literacy, country music literacy, etc). Texts are written in specific ways, determined by values and practices of different social and cultural groups.

=Situated Cognition Studies=

Situated Cognitive Studies are related viewpoints that believe thinking is connected to, and changes across, actual situations. In the 1980s, new research in cognitive psychology suggested that human memory is limitless and the mind is by records of actual experience not just abstract concepts. We store all our actual experiences in our head and use these experiences to reason about similar experiences or new ones in the future

Situated Cognitive Studies also argue that thinking is tied to people's experiences of goal-oriented action in the material and social world.Humans think, understand, and learn best when they use their prior experiences as a guide to prepare themselves for action. In addition, we “look for patterns in the elements of their experiences in the world and, as they have more and more experiences, find deeper and more subtle patterns, patterns that help predict what might happen in the future when they act to accomplish goals” (Gee 9)

//Example:// think of a typical bedroom From your experiences in the world, you might think of a room with a bed, side tables, a dresser, drapes, lamps, pictures, a clock, a carpet, and other things. These are elements in your experiences that you have come to see as patterns. If I say that there is a small refrigerator in the bedroom, you might think of a student’s bedroom in a dorm. Thus, your viewpoints or associations change as you gain more experiences



Example: “The coffee spilled, go get a mop” association with coffee as a liquid Example: “The coffee spilled, go get a broom” association with coffee as a solid

Situated Cognition Studies argues that we think through paying attention to elements of our experiences This connects back to the NLS perspective that our mind is not private but connected to a world of experience and through our participation in the practices of social and cultural groups.

=The New Literacies Studies=

The New Literacies Studies is about studying new types of literacy beyond print literacy, especially digital literacies and literacy practices embedded in popular culture. The New Literacies Studies also argues that the meanings to which these technologies give rise are determined by the social, cultural, historical, and institutional practices of different groups of people. Over the past several years, digital literacy has increased in popularity and use due to the social, cultural and institutional practices. With the rise of technology, more and more text has been via digital devices. The NLS argues that written language is considered a “technology” for giving and getting meaning.



=New Media Literacy Studies=

Before going into NMLS, lets explain what media literacy is. Media literacy are the “advertisements, newspapers, TV, films, music,” etc., that allows people to either “get or give” language through oral or written media context. The language and context can be “multimodal texts,” meaning it can be sound, images, or text integrated to make the media. The literacy within the media can be an example of how a company gives the language in a commercial to profit their product, but as a consumer, the language gotten (get) can be that the product on the commercial was made for them. Take kitchen cleaners as examples and the crows that mascot how well Windex products work for your windows, so well, that the crows keep looking through your window. This is one way of interpreting it, based off situated cognition studies, another person’s experience might be a little different. media type="custom" key="23439472"

However, the NMLS doesn't just concentrate on media literacy, but the critical and reflection of these digital medias and manipulation or manipulative measures of it. NMLS’ important task is realizing the digital tools that can implement someone to be critical and reflective. This transforms the “society and popular culture.” (Gee 14) NMLS express the transformation within these four criteria: 1) using digital tools to produce own media literacy, games, music, film, etc. “not just elites and experts” anymore. 2) The change of balance of spectator and participation. 3) The quick change of “nature of groups, social formations, and power.” (eg. facebook, twitter, instagram, tumbler, pintrest) 4) Trends leading to “Pro-Ams”. (Gee 15-16) 

Pro-Ams= A group of amateurs that decide to become experts in their passion. Pro-Ams are now found in almost all or any fields such as technology, game, civilization simulators, political commentary, math, English, science, history, robotics, anime, fashion design, etc. Pro-Ams can be experts in more than one field. With such a wide variety of built experts, Pro-Ams in that field can come together to solve bigger task and other problems with their gained knowledge from their passion.

=Popular Culture, Video Games, and Learning=

This is a specific application of the ideas presented by Gee. The goal is, not only should children learn to read early, but they need to the have the skills and the context to be able to comprehend increasingly complex language, especially in the content areas. It’s imperative for children to be ready for increasing language demands as early as possible. Complex oral vocabulary and language skills correlate with school success-not just in reading but in other content areas as well.

A child can learn complex oral language through interaction with older family members. An example from the paper presents a mother discussing dinosaurs with her preschool aged child who has an interest in dinosaurs. During the conversation, the mother uses prompts to insert higher level vocabulary into the discussion. She relates the language to a computer game the child enjoys and manages to bring in words such as; Cretaceous, oviraptor, velociraptor, and replica. The mother manages to create a “network of texts and modalities (books, games, and computers)”, that allows the child to fabricate a system and context for this new technical vocabulary and knowledge. This lines up with Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development" (Gee 23) = = = =

=Specialist Language in Popular Culture=

These are lessons learned outside the classroom, many times before a student has any formal education. These lessons provide a framework for students to use and explore specialist language that provides a framework for children to use when encountering the specific language demands of contents areas. Parents can co-opt these practices to increase the child’s specialist’s language skills.



An example from the article shows text from a “Yu Gi Oh” playing card. The cards have detailed, complex, game-specific language needed for playing the game. The cards contain the title of the character, the “Card-Type”, “Attribute”, “Type”, attack and defend parameters, and a description. The description is actually a rule that states the move that are allowed for the card. These rules contain “if-then” and “either-or” propositions that spell out in which situations the card can be activated and what the activation would be. It’s very similar to logic operators one would find in computer programming languages. This allows the child to build up knowledge and a framework for other important academic language the child will encounter in content areas in formal education.

Information on Yu Gi Oh can be be found [|HERE]

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<span style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Gee, James Paul. "A situated-sociocultural approach to literacy and technology." The new literacies: Multiple perspectives on research and practice(2010): 165-193.