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Media Literacy Multicultural Literacy Visual Literacy
Information Literacy
Allen, Christine. Skills for Life: Information Literacy Skills Grades 7-12. 3rd ed. Worthington, OH: Linworth Publishing, Inc., 1999.
Organized around the nine information literacy standards, each chapter focuses on one standard and provides instructional guides or lessons for different areas of the curriculum. One volume focuses on the elementary level and the other on middle and high school learners.
American Association of School Librarians and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning. Chicago and London: American Library Association, 1998.
Provides a conceptual framework and broad guidelines for describing the information literate student. Prepared by the American Association of School Librarians and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, it presents nine core information literacy standards and indicators for each standard. The twenty-nine indicators help educators and librarians recognize ways the standards can be achieved. Also includes levels of proficiency for each performance indicator.
American Library Association. Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning. Chicago: American Library Association and Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 1998.
Includes the Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning that will help students become skillful producers and consumers of information along with the guidelines and principles that will help create a dynamic, student-centered program.
A practical guide for classroom teachers, library media specialists and others to support the integration of information literacy into their curriculum. It provides models and strategies and enables students to find, analyze, create and use information.
California School Library Association. The Research Process. November 1993
A twelve step process designed to identify, search, evaluate and analyze information to meet criteria created for use, presentation and communication.
Loertscher, David V. and Woolls, Blanche. Information Literacy: A Review of the Research. San Jose: Hi Willow Research & Publishing, 1999.
Pickering Thomas, Nancy. Information Literacy and Information Skills Instruction - Applying Research to Practice in the School Library Media Center. Englewood, NJ: Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1999.
Although aimed primarily towards the school library media teacher, classroom teachers will benefit from the examination of current research on how students learn and can be taught to use information effectively. Topics covered include a history of the roots of library skills instruction, impact of computers on information skills instruction, and an examination of the current assessment models and its implications for library media programs.
This traces the history and development of the term information literacy and explores the research related to this concept. The authors examine the impact of information literacy on K-16 education and provide examples of information literacy in various contexts.
Brunner, Cornelia and Tally, William. New Media Literacy Handbook: An Educator's Guide to Bringing New Media in the Classroom. New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1999.
Identifies five critical questions students can use as a tool for analyzing any medium they use whether the media is traditional or new, personally developed or composed by others.
Tyner, Kathleen. Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998.
The text examines definitions of multiliteracies identifying the commonalities and differences, key concepts and principles underlying media literacies. Media education has emerged primarily in Europe and Canada as a focus for increasing students' critical understanding of mass media.
Zettl, H. "Contextual Media Aesthetics as the Basis for Media Literacy. " Journal of Communication 48.1 (1998) 81-95.
This article is an introduction to a four level process to interpret how content is constructed using aesthetic fields (light & color, 2D and 3D space, time/motion and sound) to critically analyze and develop a framework for investigating the implications of various mediums on a wide societal level or a single situation level. Media literacy should become integrated into all students' learning.
Arnheim, Rudolf. Visual Thinking. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969.
Bebes, Jack. "Some History of Visual Literacy". Visual Literacy, Languaging, and Learning. Lincoln, NB: Visual Literacy Center,1978.
Dondis, Donis A. A Primer of Visual Literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973.
Hoffman, Donald D. Visual Intelligence. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.
Messaris, Paul. Visual Literacy: Image, Mind & Reality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994.
Banks, James A. "Multicultural Literacy and Curriculum Reform," Educational Horizons 69.3 (Spring 1991), 135-140.
Banks argues that "regarding knowledge as a social construction and viewing it from diverse cultural perspectives are key components of multicultural literacy." (p. 135) By critiquing the Eurocentric perspectives of cultural literacy theorists Hirsch and Bloom as well as exploring relevant curriculum and canonical examples of culturally-biased classroom teaching, Banks illustrates the need for an education system that fosters multicultural literacy so that students will be able to attain the "knowledge, skills, and perspectives needed to participate effectively in the next century's global society." (p. 140)
Chu, Clara M. "A Model of Literacy as Engagement" (draft)
Recognizing cultural differences, this model engages individual (attitudinal position), group (social/cultural schema), and societal (socio political environment) factors toward developing shared knowledge.
Cortes, Carlos E. The Children are Watching: How the Media Teach about Diversity. New York: Teachers College Press, 2000.
Cortes examines how multicultural issues are treated in the mainstream media and encourages the critical analysis of the media as a way to further multicultural education. He believes that examples of multiculturalism as found in the mainstream media should be brought into the classroom as a way to help students analyze and evaluate its content. This text can help teachers think critically about the types of information that surrounds their students outside of the classroom and can enable its readers to develop a multicultural literacy framework when processing information found in different mainstream media outlets.
Courts, Patrick L. Multicultural Literacies: Dialect, Discourse, and Diversity. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.
Courts provides detailed analyses of multiculturalism and multicultural literacy issues in education. He argues that non-dominant discourse systems need to be acknowledged, accepted, and respected as valid forms of knowledge acquisition and comprehension in order to achieve such goals as increasing communication, acquiring multiple discourse systems, and improving literacy teaching in schools. Courts constructs a framework of multicultural education which promotes the acquisition of multicultural literacies as foundations for "learning about and respecting our own and others' discourse systems, mitigating against linguistic and cultural biases, and providing students an opportunity to become knowledgeable, conscious users of their own and others' discourse systems." (p. 2)
Diamond, Barbara J. and Margaret A. Moore. Multicultural Literacy : Mirroring the Reality of the Classroom. White Plains, N.Y.: Longman Publishers, 1995.
Diamond and Moore adopt a thematic approach to multicultural education, one in which multicultural literacy is incorporated into all aspects of the curriculum and is beneficial to all students. They demonstrate how multicultural literacy "activates silent voices, opens closed minds, promotes academic achievement, and enables students to think and act critically in a pluralistic, democratic society." (p. 7) To support the development of a multicultural literacy curriculum, the book features specific teaching strategies, implementation techniques, samples of students' work, graphic organizers, overviews and summaries, and FAQs.
Dresser, Norine. Multicultural Manners: New Rules of Etiquette for a Changing Society. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
Dresser's book describes selected customs and traditions aimed at avoiding cross-cultural miscommunication learned from first-hand experience or through her work as Multicultural Manners columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Organized by subject matter and through the fragmented use of third-person anecdotes, this multicultural guide serves to illustrate the importance of multicultural literacy as it pertains to interpersonal communication skills. However it does not provide a comprehensive overview of all the different customs nor explain the underlying reasons for the particular customs and traditions presented related to a particular culture. Despite the limited scope of the book's content, the examples which the author selects may be useful in developing lessons to support a multicultural curriculum that enables students to understand the importance of multicultural literacy skills in reading and understanding cross-cultural behaviors.
Gay, Geneva. Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press, 2000.
Gay identifies four critical aspects of culturally responsive teaching: caring, communication, curriculum, and instruction. She analyzes these areas based on a combination of pedagogical theory, educational research, and instructional practice. The book may be useful for instructors designing a multicultural literacy curriculum as it views literacy skills as the foundation of instruction and learning, and explores the importance in "recognizing the worth of the information and contributions ethnic groups have made to the fund of knowledge [that] students should learn." (p. xvi)
Gorski, Paul. "Toward a Multicultural Approach for Evaluating Educational Web Sites," Multicultural Perspectives 2.3 (December 1999). Available at: http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/multicultural/net/comps/eval.html
Gorski discusses the importance of adopting a multicultural approach for evaluating websites. He begins by summarizing current website evaluation techniques and practices (pointing out their shortcomings in terms of incorporating multicultural issues into the evaluation process) and then presents a new approach consisting of seven categories to consider when evaluating websites from a multicultural perspective. Gorski's insights into the evaluation process can be useful for multicultural literacy instructors as a way to incorporate multicultural sensitivity, particularly when discussing the reliability of information found on the internet.
Grant, Carl A. and Christine E. Sleeter. Turning on Learning: Five Approaches for Multicultural Teaching Plans for Race, Class, Gender, and Disability. Up Saddle River, NJ: Merrill, 1998.
Turning on Learning is a practical, lesson-based companion guide to Sleeter and Grant's Making Choices for Multicultural Education: Five Approaches to Race, Class, and Gender. Grant and Sleeter discuss issues related to race, class, gender, disability, language and sexual orientation and offer lesson plans covering different areas for the grade 1-12 curriculum. Instructors Teachers may find this guide useful in applying different strategies to construct a multicultural literacy curriculum for their own classroom.
Grant, Carl A. and Gloria Ladson-Billings, eds. Dictionary of Multicultural Education. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press, 1997.
The Dictionary of Multicultural Education is a useful reference source for instructors teachers interested in exploring the different issues and perspectives operating within the area of multicultural education. The dictionary attempts to address "both the literal meanings of words and terms as well as the contextual meanings and exemplars that help create those meanings." (p. xvii) Entries include key terms, court cases, and conceptual theories. The dictionary includes entries about the development and practice of multicultural literacy/literacies and may be beneficial in providing a theoretical foundation towards building a curriculum that supports multicultural literacy.
Miller, Suzanne M. and Barbara McCaskill. Multicultural Literature and Literacies: Making Space for Difference. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993.
This anthology of writings approaches multicultural literature and literacies from three different positions: writing literature, writing policy, and teaching. "With essays on literature, policymaking and education, the groups of writers discuss pedagogical strategies, program philosophies, aesthetics and poetics, and research agendas that have arisen from the debates on multicultural literature and literacies." (p. 8) By presenting a myriad of voices, this book showcases multicultural literacies as viewed, interpreted and implemented from a variety of perspectives. It includes an appendix of selected resources of multicultural education.
Ramirez, Lettie and Olivia M. Gallardo. Portraits of Teachers in Multicultural Settings: A Critical Literacy Approach. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2001.
Ramirez and Gallardo examine the importance of literacy instruction using such tools as literature, technology, arts, and writing. They advocate the "use of critical theory as a foundation for the incorporation of multicultural education [which] results in students learning about themselves and the world around them." (p. xi) They also explain how certain texts and examples can be inappropriate for the classrooms, especially if they are not explained and evaluated from a multiculturally-inclusive context. The book also considers school/parent/child relationships in multicultural education as well as the changing cultural settings of the classroom, particularly within the framework of transformative education.
Sleeter, Christine E. and Carl A. Grant. Making Choices for Multicultural Education: Five Approaches to Race, Class, and Gender. Up Saddle River, NJ: Merrill, 1999.
Sleeter and Grant discuss five different approaches to incorporating diversity into the classroom. Geared toward the K-12 curriculum, each chapter contains the goals, theoretical framework, and instructional strategies and recommended practices for implementing each approach. The book covers issues that can be directly related to or interpreted within the framework of multicultural literacy, such as the consideration of different historical points of view, the social construction of social theories and "natural" categories; and the analysis of different literacy and knowledge systems based on factors such as race, culture, gender and ability. This book can be used in conjunction with Grant and Sleeter's companion volume, Turning On Learning, which provides examples of lesson plans using each of the approach.
Tiedt, Pamela L. and Iris M. Tiedt. Multicultural Teaching: A Handbook of Activities, Information, and Resources. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999.
This multicultural teaching handbook provides practical strategies on implementing multicultural education throughout the K-8 curriculum. The authors focus on "two major components of multicultural teaching: (1) a knowledge base for teaching multiculturally and (2) activities that provide equitable learning opportunities for diverse students." (p. ix) The book includes essays about the development of multicultural education theories, strategies for planning curriculum, sample lesson plans, thematic units, and curriculum evaluation. Part 2 of the book would be particularly useful for developing a multicultural literacy curriculum as it deals with such topics as culturally-reflective learning, increasing student perspectives, and exploring linguistic diversity.
Weil, Danny. "Towards a Critical Multicultural Literacy: Advancing an Education for Liberation," Roeper Review 15.4 (May-June 1993), 211-17.
Weil argues for implementing a critical multicultural curriculum to foster the personal and social empowerment and freedom of all students. He defines the term critical multicultural literacy as the "commitment to recognizing the relationship between theory and practice in pedagogy aimed at constructively creating a praxis that promotes dialoguing, analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing issues of relevant historical and contemporary multicultural concerns." (p. 211) He advocates for three essential components of critical multicultural literacy: educational equity, prejudice reduction, and understanding the common struggle for human dignity and the logic of oppression. This article is a valuable resource for instructors teachers as they formulate and implement their own goals for a multicultural literacy curriculum.
Other 21st Century Literacies
Burniske, R.W. Literacy in the Cyberage. Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Publishers, 2000.
This book identifies literacy in the Cyberage as an aggregation of multiple literacies, including media, visual, global, pedagogical, etc. Each receives a chapter of explanation, complete with an instructional strategy and examples for promoting it. Mr. Burniske provides step-by-step lessons that embody principles of good pedagogy and clear, concrete guidelines, all the while remaining mindful of the high stakes in this perpetually changing age. Education is an ongoing, lifelong process, not a product to be consumed once. This book provides the beginnings of a bridge between educators raised on text with students raised on a media saturated culture.
This page was last updated July 30, 2002
This resource was created to support the AT&T/UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies.
Links for this page are maintained by Mary Schrader Lasica, AT&T.
