The notion of literacy in the 21st century has changed with the emergence of advanced technologies. We can no longer treat written language as the sole resource in contemporary literacy. The advancement of technology has led to some fundamental changes in the ways we receive and produce texts. Theories of literacy that underpin the concept of writing need to be reconsidered both explicitly and implicitly. This paper reports on four case studies of primary school children in Hong Kong, focusing on their emerging digital competencies when engaging with digital text. The study investigates how the participating children engaged with digital text in the context of their out-of-school technology use. Each was observed to have developed a set of digital competencies in their receptive and productive engagements to deal with information on screens. Understanding how these competencies extended into their English language classrooms was explicated based on the data that emerged from the study. The study results identify five emerging competencies acquired by the children from their extra-school digital practices. Two of these were not extended into the children’s schoolwork – a reflection on the emphasis on mono-modal language learning in the class setting. At the heart of this research are two research questions: (1) What digital literacy practices emerge from the participating children’s out-of-school technology use? (2) How have these practices been extended to school activities?
These research questions guided the methodological choice of the current study. The research was conducted with a view to understanding the understudied phenomena in their naturalistic settings. Different data collection methods were applied to uncover the emerging skills in the participants’ receptive and productive engagement with digital text inductively and iteratively. The skills utilize but are additional to listening, speaking, reading and writing, and involve frequent use of visuals, dynamic information and interaction through digital text. Such skills are categorized in the literature as viewing and representing.
A detailed examination of the each of the five competencies led to the development of a framework of viewing and representing skills used by the participants during their receptive and productive engagement with information. These skills apply the five competencies in two different processes. The framework serves as a basis for recommendations for curriculum review, suitable pedagogical strategies and classroom learning resources that English language educators may utilize to facilitate development of students’ viewing and representing skills through the use of the five competencies. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:HKU/oai:hub.hku.hk:10722/181478 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Khoo, Kay Yong., 邱啟勇. |
| Publisher | The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) |
| Source Sets | Hong Kong University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PG_Thesis |
| Source | http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B49616316 |
| Rights | The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works., Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License |
| Relation | HKU Theses Online (HKUTO) |
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