Popular culture and literacy practices: Traditional and New Literacies

New Literacies are new ways of communication which have developed with the introduction of new technologies. With New Literacies, literacy is no longer focussed solely on reading and writing skills as in traditional literacy. “By drawing attention to the need to communicate using multiple modes of representation, not just language, in a world grown increasingly diverse and dependent on new information communication technologies, the New London Group envisioned a design of literate futures that calls for more than simply print-oriented instruction” (Alvermann, 6). New Literacies thus focusses on the social aspects of literacy and the wide range in which one can communicate such as musically, visually, orally, digitally, through gestures and linguistics; it is no longer only focussed on print the way traditional literacies are.

As future educators how can we use these New Literacies to harness popular culture practices in the classroom? In the second debate (a question of transfer), of Alvermann’s reading, in a study of New England’s literacy curriculum, Marsh found that teachers rarely made used of their students’ interests in popular culture. Popular culture however, is a huge part of student’s lives that often does not get integrated into the curriculum. This second debate suggests that there needs to be a bridge between informal and formal environments. If students’ interest and involvement in popular culture through new literacies is so apparent in their informal environment, why not bring that into their formal environment. Using New Literacies could pose great opportunities when used in the classroom. Take Black’s ethnography of online writing among female English language learners who had a common interest in fanfiction. The use of their interest in popular culture(fanfiction) combined with new literacies (instant-messaging, chatrooms and discussion boards) allowed them to successfully write/create different situations using key elements of fanfiction such as setting and characters while also creating remixes of different genres and media. Allowing students to use their interests in popular culture combined with new literacies such as technology, makes education more relatable to students and helps to bridge that gap between the informal and formal environment.