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Rethinking Rural Literacies
Transnational Perspectives
Michael Corbett, B. Green, B. Green
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eBook - ePub
Rethinking Rural Literacies
Transnational Perspectives
Michael Corbett, B. Green, B. Green
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The chapters in this international collection investigate a wide range of theorizations of rurality and literacy; literate practices and pedagogies; questions of place, space, and sustainability; and representations of rurality that challenge simplistic conceptions of standardized literacy and the real-and-imagined world beyond the metropolis.
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PedagogĂaSous-sujet
Enseñanza de métodos de lecturaPART I
Conceptualizing Rural Literacies
CHAPTER 1
Literacy, Rurality, Education: A Partial Mapping
Bill Green
Introduction: Rural Literacies?
How might we go about understanding and researching rural literacies? Is it indeed appropriate to speak of ârural literaciesâ? Is it possible or even meaningful to refer to rural literacies, with the adjective in this case being a genuine modifier? What does the adjective âruralâ do? How does it add value to either literacy studies or rural education, as scholarly fields? What relationship exists between literacy studies and rural schooling, and between literacy studies and rural education more generally? This chapter seeks to engage and explore questions such as these, in order to open up discussion and debate in this undervalued and misrecognized area.
Donehower and her colleagues, as originators of the term, confirm that properly understanding rural literacy is indeed an issue: âAs we tried to define rural literacies for the purposes of [our] book, it was telling that we couldnât find a specific definition that we could work within or against in the field of literacy studiesâ (Donehower, Hogg, and Schell 2007, p. 4). Their proposal is that it refers, in brief, to âthe uses of literacy in rural contextsâ: âRural literacies . . . refers to the particular kinds of literate skills needed to achieve the goals of sustaining life in rural areasââthat is, âpursu[ing] the opportunities and creat[ing] the public policies and economic opportunities needed to sustain rural communitiesâ (p. 4). Further, they argue for âa notion of rural literacy based on a concept of sustainabilityâ (p. 12). They explicitly connect such work with a larger agenda, linked to notions of global citizenship, and involving a view of ârural literacies that are multiple and that encourage identification among rural, urban and suburban citizensâ (p. 193). The latter is particularly important: it allows the project of rural literacies to be associated with a distinctly ethical commitment, working toward global ecosocial sustainability. They clearly want this concept and its accompanying program to function as advocacy for rural people and rural communities. âRural communities have been ill-served in the past by both a lack of research on rural literacy and by research and education initiatives that mischaracterize rural literacyâ (p. 27).
This provides a useful platform to work from here. It is important to note that Donehower and her colleagues make no claim to a definitive account of the territory, clearly seeing their work as needing to be extended and supplemented. Nonetheless, that work constitutes an important reference point for research and scholarship addressed to literacy studies and rural educationâas is both confirmed and extended in their most recent publication (Donehower, Hogg, and Schell 2011).
In my (Australian) context, very little work exists on rural literacy, and there is little sense of how a rural literacies research program might be qualitatively different and distinct from literacy research per se. A recent preliminary survey of the Australian literature revealed just a handful of papers and reports, and a single national study specifically focused on literacy and rurality (Muspratt, Freebody, and Luke 2001). Rural locations and circumstances do feature in articles on Indigenous education and literacy studies, but without marking rurality as a significant category. More recently, there have been several papers addressed to results of standardized testing programs that reveal disparities relating to rural and Indigenous populations. By and large, however, little attention has been given, to date, to the notion that there may well be distinctive features of literacy in the rural context, or that literacy and rurality can be brought together differently, outside of a hegemonic schooling logic. This indicates that research is urgently needed in this respect, focusing specifically on literacy, rurality, and educationâon rural literacies in Australia.
There is more work being done in this area outside Australia (e.g., Brooke 2003; Edmondson 2003; Kelly 2009), even though it is at best a small (sub)field. Also, much literacy research and scholarship effectively still overlooks the rural, and thereby marginalizing it. As Donehower and colleagues observed, âliteracy research in our field is skewed toward urban sites and subjectsâ (2007, p.12). Hence we are much more likely to find work on topics such as âcity literaciesâ (Gregory and Williams 2000), âEnglish in urban classroomsâ (Kress et al. 2005) or âurban literaciesâ (Kinloch 2011)âwork for which the reference point is the modern(ist) city, producing, in effect, whether acknowledged or not, a form of metro-normativity. Understanding literacy as âtranslocalâ and âsituated,â and linking to critical-cultural work on space(s) and place(s), is, therefore, an important avenue for developing a research program addressed to rural literacies, or the relationship between literacy studies and rural education.
Space, Literacy, and Rural (Teacher) Education
Politico-administrative jurisdictions like states or provinces, or nations, bring together populations and territories, as objects of sociopolitical management. One way of understanding contemporary developments with the public use of data is as a heightened form of spatial governance (Jackson 2004). Governing space is a distinctive form of social power. Governing the spatial field involves practices of normalization. Furthermore, policyâorganized as it is by the logic and politics of populationâis usefully seen as addressed to the relationship between space and power. This includes education policy. And yet policy would seem curiously âspace-blindâ (Green and Letts 2007, p. 63; Green 2008). This is notwithstanding the observation that â[e]ducational phenomena are distributed in spaceâ (Marsden 1977, p. 21), a formulation described as âa key defining element, however naturalized, in the practice and institution of educationâ (Green and Letts 2007, p. 59). The particular relevance and importance of this for rural education is clear.
As Cloke (2006, p. 18) has observed, â[t]he idea of rurality seems to be firmly entrenched in popular discourse about space, place and society in the Western world.â Indeed, the concept of rurality itself is âinherently spatialâ (Halfacree 2006, p. 44). Building on this idea, Green and Letts (2007, p. 63) argued that what is needed is âa critical socio-spatial framework, a social-dynamic theory of space and spatiality whereby there is a dialectical relationship between space and society, practice and representation, and an emphasis on the social production of spaceââmore specifically, a way of âthinking differently about issues of space, equity and rural educationâ (p. 58; emphasis added). Moreover, this needs to be appropriately complex and sophisticated, and in this regard, it is useful to think of the rural as real-and-imaginary, following Soja (1996), or of rurality as pertaining to real-and-imaginary spaces and places. This allows due consideration of desire, fantasy, and anxiety, and the power and pleasures of the Symbolic, and provides a basis for drawing in psychoanalytic work as a further resource for rural education research and rural literacy. In our case, we were able to think of inland NSW and specifically the Far West (âout thereâ) as an object of âracially-charged fantasies and anxietiesâ (p. 71). This is particularly resonant given the significant proportion of Aboriginal people living in these areas and the ongoing challenge of Aboriginal education in NSW, and indeed in Australia more generally, with literacy remaining a key and crucial area within which Indigenous disadvantage is realized.
A matter of particular interest arising from this work is what such an argument opens up in terms of a critical account of (rural) educational space. Taking a historical perspective, Green and Letts (p. 61) note âthe view, deeply entrenched in the Australian system, that location is of no consequence to the delivery of education, that distance can be effectively annulled, and that space simply doesnât matter.â Such a view appears to be even more supported and substantiated by contemporary arguments that introducing new digital technology into schooling overcomes many of the difficulties and disadvantages of rural education. The logic is remarkably consistent. Despite strong assertions that place matters, and a historical commitment to equity, this logic produces a particular form of governmental, normalizing space, making it hard to sustain place-based initiatives or to develop more effective equity programs.
This problem is noted by Jan Nespor and others, including exponents (and their critics) of what has been called place-conscious education (Gruenewald and Smith 2008), itself increasingly being drawn into new rural educational research and scholarship. Also, gradually more and more official maps and profiles are being produced, based on quantifiable, statistical data, operating at a range of scales. For Nespor (2004, p. 320), there are âpowerful forces at work to produce totalizing maps that allow distant students and teachers to be plotted with respect to one another.â Referring specifically to the United States, but more generally indicating the pervasive rhetoric of âstandardsâ in education policy and practice, he writes:
Buttressed by recent legislation, the standards portray schooling as a smooth, homogenous system, and the tests presuppose a static population in long-term engagement with neighbourhood schools. (p. 320)
In his account of âeducational scale-making,â Nespor presents a number of scenarios, âscalar storiesâ in effect, introducing a set of characters (Zena, Jerry, Chester) and tracing their various trajectories and relationships in space-time. Here, âchildren are defined by the way they reflect off the standards and tests, that is, accordingly to whether or not they pass.â Their situational specificity is obscured; where they and their families âlive or work or how often they have moved is maskedâ (pp. 320â321). Moreover, âstudent learning takes a form that can be scaled at the level of the state, making all students within that political sphere comparable and summable, according to a standard metricâ (p. 321). Place and specificity disappear. While Nesporâs focus is predominantly on the city, and on âimagin[ing] different ways for teachers to know cities, regions and communitiesâ (p. 323), there are clear implications here for rural education, and for engaging with issues of space and equity for rural schools and communities.
There are implications too for researching rural literacies. In NSW, for instance, there is a considerable history of standardized literacy testing, now subsumed within the new National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). While there is still little public analysis of how students in inland NSW fare as a distinct grouping within the total population, Indigenous students are consistently marked out as falling below state averagesâespecially in more remote locationsâalong with others from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This is consistent with research drawing on available PISA and National Benchmark data demonstrating âthe underachievement of rural and remote students in the area of literacy when compared to the performance of students in metropolitan areas of Australiaâ (Pegg and Panizzon 2007, p. 188; Welch, Helme, and Lamb 2007). Despite more enlightened forms of policy related to literacy pedagogy emerging in Australia, and widespread endorsement of âcritical literacy,â a gap still exists between theoretical and practical ideologies.
Nonetheless, along with continuing work on disadvantage and poverty, and ongoing concerns with social justice, new interest has developed in notions of place and communityâmore specifically, place-based community (Nixon and Comber 2009; McInerney, Smyth, and Down 2011). These concepts and proposals have increasingly been drawn into rural educational research (White and Reid 2008; Reid et al. 2010) and, relatedly, work on literacy education and environmental change (Comber, Nixon, and Reid 2007; Cormack, Green, and Reid 2008). Yet, how this has connected with state and national policy agendas heavily invested in standardized testing, committed to accountability, and in practice still oriented to print (Tan and McWilliam 2009) remains uncertain. Do place-referenced pedagogies contribute to enhanced scores in literacy tests? At this stage it is impossible to know. However, there is a case for claiming that accountability regimes such as these constrain the possibilities for place-sensitive work. This is particularly so if they encourage a tighter nexus between teaching and testing, or teaching to the test (Mills 2008). The challenge is to develop a research program that combines critique and creativity, or innovation, and engages with the potential of socially critical and responsible initiatives with regard to literacy, place, sustainability, and rural education.
Making such connections enables a direct link to the work of the Lancaster group on âlocal literaciesâ (Barton and Hamilton 2008) and âsituated literaciesâ (Barton, Hamilton, and IvanĂźic 2000). The project of situated literacies is especially generative, however, and immediately relevant. Indeed, there is a potentially useful resonance between notions of situated literacies and place-conscious education, in ways that (to my knowledge) havenât been recognized or capitalized on to date. At the same time, mindful of the critique that such work has attracted (e.g., Brandt and Clinton 2002) and wanting to move beyond its primarily ethnographic orientation, I want to put a somewhat different spin on the term. Following Soja (1996), literacies are to be understood as socially, historically, and spatially situated. Although Soja certainly sees these as profoundly interrelated, within what he calls a âtrialectic,â it is the spatial that I focus on here, very briefly. Understanding literacy as spatially situated compels attention to how literacy is realized in space, whether that is the spatial field of the nation or the district, or whatever, and within which are inescapably socio-spatial hierarchies. Hence literacy becomes thinkable in terms of the social difference-dynamics of space, place and scale, and associated trajectories: for instance, what flows from where to where, with what effect. Hence, what has been described as âspatial justiceâ (Soja 2010) emerges as a focus concern. Introducing time as well as movement into consideration further enriches the picture. What such a revised view of situated li...