Ideology and Interaction: Debating Determinisms in Literacy Studies. Issue 3 (7th April 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Collin, Ross; Street, Brian V.
• Is Part Of: Reading research quarterly. Volume 49:Issue 3(2014)
• Page Start: 351
• Page End: 359
• Publication Date: 2014-04-07
• Subjects: Reading -- Periodicals; Reading -- Research -- Periodicals; Lecture -- Périodiques; Lecture -- Recherche -- Périodiques; 428.4
• DOI: 10.1002/rrq.75
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0034-0553

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="rrq75-abs-0001"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>In this exchange, Street and Collin debate the merits of the interaction model of literacy that Collin outlined in a recent issue of <italic>Reading Research Quarterly</italic>. Built as a complement and a counter to Street's ideological model of literacy, Collin's interaction model defines literacies as technologies that coevolve with sociocultural processes. This model of literacy draws on and adapts some of Goody's arguments about literacy's technological dimensions. Building on his critique of Goody's work, Street argues that the interaction model repackages the technicist model of literacy that he and other socioculturalists refuted years ago. To make his case, Street explains why massive open online courses and other Web 2.0 initiatives cannot change student literacy through technology alone. In his response, Collin acknowledges the continued importance of sociocultural processes but warns against viewing the latter as the drivers of technological processes or any other processes. Collin works out his argument by revisiting Street's examples and calling for analyses that investigate digital literacies as complex technologies that interact with a range of sociocultural and material processes. Although the interaction and ideological models differ in important ways, they are not incompatible. In the final section of the article, Street and Collin synthesize their approaches to create a model of literacy that (a) accounts for the multiple processes that constitute literacy, (b) denies inherent priority to any one process, and (c) foregrounds sociocultural processes not as an ontological claim but as a political maneuver to forestall technicist views of literacy that are still common in the field.</p> </abstract>