In the 21st century, it is insufficient for one to just be print literate; literacy today means communicating in a highly diversified and digital media landscape. According to the World Bank (2020), almost two-thirds of the world’s population has access to the Internet yet many still struggle to use the information effectively and responsibly – this all depends on their media and digital literacy. Guest editor of this issue of SingTeach, Associate Professor Csilla Weninger who is also heading NIE’s English Language & Literature Academic Group, shares with us more about the shift from media to digital literacy, and why being digitally literate is increasingly crucial in today’s world.

From Media to Digital Literacy

“The notion of media literacy was born almost simultaneously with new technological developments in broadcast media about a hundred years ago. Today it is generally understood as the ability to access, analyse, evaluate and also create media in diverse form as a member of a community of users,” Csilla, whose research interests fall in the area of critical digital literacy, explains.

In the early stages of media literacy, educational initiatives emphasized building up students’ critical reading and viewing skills in order to counter the many harmful media messages they were frequently exposed to. However, with the emergence of the Internet in the 1990s and subsequent diversification of online platforms, this protectionist educational stance started to shift. More and more, scholars and educators thought of students in the more agentive roles of user and/or participant who were not just passively viewing and/or listening to media.

“This shift reflects the fact that these new forms of media transformed the communication flow from one-to-many (as in broadcast media) toward one of networks with nodes of what James Gee called ‘affinity spaces’. Today, the questions educators should ask in relation to digital media are ‘What does it take to navigate this networked digital terrain with competence, both for individual empowerment as well as for the greater common good?’” Csilla shares.

This evolution of media over the past century thus resulted in the change of definition of the term “media literacy” to also now include digital media. However, despite the shift from media literacy to digital literacy, one thing remains the same between the two: communication. “Rather than reading or writing, which focus on individual cognitive capacity, both media and digital literacy focus on communication, which stresses the social and interactive nature of engaging with media, digital or not,” Csilla adds.

Digital Literacy in Singapore Homes

As part of the Education Ministry’s efforts to strengthen digital literacy among youths in Singapore, the National Digital Literacy Programme was launched in 2020 (MOE, 2020). The programme aims to equip students – at different stages of their education journey – with four digital skills: Find (search and evaluate information effectively); Think (discern the information as valid, reliable and authentic); Apply (use digital tools); and Create (produce digital products and collaborate online).

According to President Halimah Yacob, the national programme, which also helped every secondary school student to become owners of a personal learning device by 2021, has enabled students to have access to digital devices amid the COVID-19 pandemic (Ang, 2022). This means that a much higher number of young people will participate in a range of digital literacy practices outside of school.

“Schools have the responsibility to prepare students for life. Most importantly though, this responsibility is shared with parents and this is no different when it comes to digital literacy,” Csilla remarks. “Parents must be engaged with (though not necessarily in!) their kids’ life online. Parents of school-age children did not grow up with mobile Internet and social media, which means we do not have our tried-and-tested parental model for how to deal with kids’ digital access and activities.”

However, Csilla notes that parents can still show curiosity and encourage their children to talk to them about what they do, what they see and who they talk to, and as part of these conversations guide them to be discerning media users.

“Start this as soon as you place a device in the child’s hands! It is crucial that these conversations are built on trust and care rather than policing. By the time kids are teens, they will find a way to hide their activities from us if they want to,” she shares.

Challenges of Incorporating Digital Literacy in Schools

In the school setting, digital literacy ideally should not be something that is restricted to a single subject. “,”Certainly, technological skills can and should be fostered in ICT lessons. But even then, given our complex definition of digital literacy (as also reflected in the MOE framework of Find, Think, Apply and Create), it would be best to not separate technical and other aspects of digital literacy Csilla explains.

However, she also understands that digital literacy in itself is not a skill that can simply be taught and that doing so requires several considerations at the systems level. She highlights three main challenges of incorporating digital literacy in schools.

“First, because digital literacy is a relatively new phenomenon, the professional development of teachers needs to be ongoing. To address this, we now have Digital Literacy as a core course for our pre-service teachers to take at NIE.”

The second challenge lies in the fact that digital literacy is not a decontextualized set of skills and as such, it becomes crucial that digital literacy is situated as a social practice within the context of the school. Csilla shares some questions teachers can ask themselves: What are some meaningful uses of digital media for purposes of teaching and learning? How can we enhance students’ digital literacy specifically in relation to enhancing their learning?

The third and last challenge is that in a formal school context where subject knowledge, pedagogy and assessment are mostly print-focused, it becomes difficult to teach digital literacy. “As a result, we have to think big about the adjustments needed when it comes to effective school-based digital literacy education,” Csilla says.

Understanding Students’ Digital Literacy Practices

While there is a variety of research that focuses on media and digital literacy conducted at NIE (read more about a research study on multimodal literacy by NIE Assistant Professor Victor Lim Fei here), Csilla feels that more can be done to understand students’ perspectives and experiences with regards to their out-of-school and school-based digital literacy activities and competencies.

“There is a long line of research in literacy studies that has probed what is called the ‘home-school’ divide,” she shares. “I would love to see more research that maps in a more connected way how students navigate digital spaces in their different social contexts in terms of literacy. I think this would be valuable because it would provide us with a more holistic understanding of young people’s lives online, their communicative practices, needs and aspirations from which to build informed curricular approaches to digital literacy instruction in schools.”

At the end of the day, for Csilla, digital literacy is not simply a set of technical skills, nor a set of rules of “do this, don’t do that”, but rather a complex amalgam of competencies and dispositions intimately tied to identities, values and social groups that our students claim affiliations with.

References
Ang, H. M. (2022, January 25). National digital literacy programme has enabled students to have access to digital devices amid COVID-19: Halimah Yacob. CNA. Retrieved from https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/national-digitalliteracy-programme-has-enabled-students-have-access-digital-devicesamid-covid-19-halimah-yacob-2457851

Ministry of Education. (2020). Strengthening digital literacy. Retrieved from: https://www.moe.gov.sg/microsites/cos2020/refreshing-our-curriculum/strengthen-digital-literacy.html

The World Bank. (2020). Individuals using the Internet (% of population). Retrieved from: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS