Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material and Sensory Lenses

New Perspectives on Language and Education #45

by Kathy A. Mills

Winner of the 2017 Edward Fry Book Award from the Literacy Research Association. Literacy Theories for the Digital Age  insightfully brings together six essential approaches to literacy research and educational practice. The book provides powerful and accessible theories for readers, including Socio-cultural, Critical, Multimodal, Socio-spatial, Socio-material and Sensory Literacies. The brand new Sensory Literacies approach is an original and visionary contribution to the field, coupled with a provocative foreword from leading sensory anthropologist David Howes. This dynamic collection explores a legacy of literacy research while showing the relationships between each paradigm, highlighting their complementarity and distinctions. This highly relevant compendium will inspire researchers and teachers to explore new frontiers of thought and practice in times of diversity and technological change.

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

Published December 3, 2015

Reviews

[Marie Seltenrych · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bringing together literacy theories for our digital age, Mills' research is thorough and thought provokin. Applying visionary aplomb she delves into this research and brings our attention to the necessity of change of direction for learning, perception and altered lenses to provoke thoughtful navigation to places in literacy research that are old and new.
Is there something new in literacy research?
Like the new fish in the pond, her sensory lenses are focussed and ready to leap to a new place in literacy research -
An educator's Bible, Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material and Sensory Lenses (New Perspectives on Language and Education) is the insightful pilot for a flight path that can be navigated to suit the researcher and educator's destiny.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes. So Yes. This is a fantastic book, theoretically rigorous, conceptually complex and historically considered. Monographs on literacy theories frequently demonstrate great ideas, but the arguments are under-cooked and uneven. This book by Kathy Mills - finally - shows the scale and scope of literacy theories and how they can enable public and private learning, formal scholarship and informed citizenship.

A ripper. Read it immediately. Change your life. Change your theories of learning.