Key Information
About the content
This course opens with an exploration of the social context and aims of literacy teaching and learning. It goes on to describe a range of historical and contemporary approaches to literacy pedagogy, including didactic, authentic, functional, and critical approaches. The course takes has a 'Multiliteracies' perspective, which aims to expand the definition of literacy to encompass today's multimodal communications, and the diversity of literacies across different social and culltural contexts. A Multiliteracies approach also suggests a broad range of activity types—experiential, conceptual, analytical and critical. -------------------------------- Recommended Background -------------------------------- This course is designed for people interested in literacy teaching and learning, including people who may wish to join education as a profession, practicing teachers interested in exploring future directions for a vocation that is currently undergoing transformation, and community and workplace leaders who regard their mission to be in part "educative." -------------------------------- Take this Course for Credit at the University of Illinois. -------------------------------- This course has the same content and anticipates the same level of contribution by students in the 'New Media and Literacies' course offered to graduate certificate, masters and doctoral level students in the College of Education at the University of Illinois. Of course, in the nature of MOOCs many people will just want to view the videos and casually join some of the discussions. Some people say that these limited kinds of participation offer evidence that MOOCs suffer from low retention rates. Far from it - we say that any level of engagement is good engagement. On the other hand, if you would like to take this course for credit at the University of Illinois, apply here: http://education.illinois.edu/online-offcampus/programs-degrees/ldl-online If you have already taken this course in Coursera, you can prepare a portfolio of work created there and request that this work is taken into account for your University of Illinois course.
Syllabus
- Week 1 - The Aims of Literacy
This module explores the notion of "literacies" in the plural, and in particular the concept of "Multiliteracies" coined by the presenters in this course as part of the New London Group. Literacy in the singular consists of the rigid rules of official standard... - Week 2 - Theory and Practice of Literacies Learning and Teaching
In this module, we discuss the nature of pedagogy as the conscious design of learning activities. We introduce the idea of "knowledge processes" or activity types: experiential, conceptual, critical, and applied. In the case of literacies learning, experientia... - Week 3 - Didactic + Authentic Approaches to Literacy
This module begins with an overview of the range of activity types that might be found in literacies pedagogy. These are illustrated with some examples of literacies learning modules. It goes on to examine two major models of literacy pedagogy: didactic and au... - Week 4 - Functional + Critical Approaches to Literacy
Now we explore the remaining two of the four major traditions in literacy teaching and learning: functional and critical approaches to literacy. Our purpose in introducing these four major approaches has been to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each app...
Instructors
Dr William Cope
Professor
Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, College of Education
Dr Mary Kalantzis
Professor
College of Education
Content Designer
Platform
Coursera is a digital company offering massive open online course founded by computer teachers Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller Stanford University, located in Mountain View, California.
Coursera works with top universities and organizations to make some of their courses available online, and offers courses in many subjects, including: physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, data science, and other subjects.
