Content area
Full Text
You are literate. How do we know? Because you are reading this. Being literate, at least in common speech of daily conversation, means being able to read and write. The specific language does not matter, only that someone can read and write some language captured in some script. And we usually are not very precise about degrees of literacy in that same common speech. We speak of illiterate or literate - and perhaps sometimes semi-literate - but in general, if someone can make his or her way through a magazine or newspaper or even comic book, and understand the words, and write some of her or his own words, we grant the status of "literate". However, the way we use words in common speech does not necessarily mean we all understand them in the same way, or even the right way, nor does it mean that words will not be co-opted to mean things other than what they were originally intended. Over time, their meanings may expand, contract or change altogether what they signify.
The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2005) provides a working definition of literacy that defines it as ..the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve his or her goals, develop his or her knowledge and potential and participate fully in community and wider society" (p. 21). When Browne and Neil (1991), Friere and Macedo (1997), and Fernandez- Balboa (1997), for example, refer to literacy as being something more than just being able to read and write words on a page at some agreed-upon level, they broaden the understanding of the word. By using the word "literacy" to mean more than the ability to read and write at some baseline level, the notion of multiple literacies changes in practical terms the expectation one must meet to claim legitimately that one is literate. And it changes in practical terms the kind and degree of learning that a teacher of language would have to help students achieve for them to become literate.
A Horse Of A Different Colour?
In the world of physical education and sport, the word "literacy"...