Leading the New Literacies (Contemporary Perspectives on Literacy)

by Nitasha Chaudhuri

The intersection of digital, media, and global literacies is not only for curriculum and instructional design and communication enhancement. By openly modeling the use of the three literacies in administrative and professional tasks, leaders can create a culture conducive to growth.

In order to avoid the inconsequential and superficial trend-of-the-week initiative, leaders need solid pedagogical reasons for making changes and adjustments to a program.

propose that leaders begin by upgrading their own tasks, projects, and practices to incorporate digital, media, and global literacies.

What we wanted to explain was that a decades-old comfort zone should not impede learning. We wanted to tell this teenager that it was really her teacher who was cheating, passing off preparation for the 1950s as college and career readiness. But we did not.

students, not just their teachers, see modern learning methods as cheating,

Modern learning practice demands a deeper authenticity to instruction than the traditional model of literacy in schools—in this case, reading a book in isolation over the summer and writing a summary about it.

when it comes to teachers, families should not have to depend on the luck of the draw.

Small gaps in instruction early on will lead to canyon-sized gaps as students get older.

school leaders must be aware of what the new literacies are, and they must be involved in creating a vision and mission to help their school venture into new literacy territories.

School leaders and IT directors must work with teachers and students to provide the access classrooms need while considering the safety of the school network.

The visuals may be better, but the

ownership of learning remains in the teacher’s hands.

The adults under the school roof must work together to build the vision for the immediate future and then work strategically to put the necessary steps in place, with support of the community and outside organizations. Constituents from all groups, including the students, must be present and ready to shape and support the needed changes, including decisions about access to school networks and in-school use of cell phones—policies that schools routinely challenge.

Establishing an effective team to

modernize the literacy work of the school will require a distributed and shared leadership approach.

Jim Collins (2001) reminds us in his article “Good to Great,” getting the right people on the bus is one of the first actions a good leader will take when formin...

Leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first t...

Once an effective team is in place, team members shoul...

a vision and acti...

Team members should be representative of the school community and can begin to serve as resources by bui...

shared leadership will not be dependent on only one or two people.

Once the team is established, developing a common language around modern literacy concepts to enable clear discussion about the work using common vocabulary is important.

team should then develop a vision for the work,

Teams need to outline actionable and measurable

Find the expertise that exists under your school roof and work with those staff members to plan both professional development sessions with teachers and curriculum facilitation work with groups.

key point to communicate to stakeholders is that the work in progress will require revision and adjustments as time passes. Schools should share successes

Collect feedback

Collins, J. (2001, October). Good to great. Accessed at www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-great.html on June 26, 2013.

Of course, new technology alone will not guarantee success. The integration of technology should not occur for its own sake.

Teachers and educators require structured and relevant professional development to support the integration of a multitude of learning applications

that are availa...

Implementation Steps

A Four-Phase Implementation Model

This team was composed of a cross-section of the community, including teachers from elementary, middle, and high school; staff representatives; parents; and high school students.

Having a mixed group of teachers, staff, parents, and students proactively involved in building the school’s technology integration program was empowering to all those involved.

These individuals were highly engaged and invested in the successful integration of technology, thus forming an environment in which collaboration

The technology leadership team developed a vision statement and a set of belief statements that formed the basis ...

program of professional development to support teachers in integrating technology based on the ISTE standards