Colin Lankshear

Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization

Remix means to take cultural artifacts and combine and manipulate them into new kinds of creative blends. In this sense, remix is as old as human cultures, and human cultures are themselves products of remixing. Since the late 1980s, however—originating with highly contrived forms of music remix by dancehall DJs—remix practices have been greatly amplified in scope and sophistication by recent developments in digital technologies. These make it possible for home-based digital practitioners to produce polished remixes across a range of media and cultural forms. This has in turn strengthened remix culture, encouraging seemingly endless hybridizations in language, genre, content, technique, and the like, and raised questions of legal, educational, and cultural import. This article samples remix culture and identifies some key implications remix practices have for literacy in general, and literacy education in particular.

New Technologies in Early Childhood Literacy Research: A Review of Research

Against the background of Michael Kamil and Sam Intrator’s landmark reviews of research about new technologies and literacy development, this article maps recent research concerned specifically with the 0–8 years age group. Drawing on databases of research conducted in North America, Britain and Australasia, it affirms that the early childhood dimension is even more radically underresearched than other age ranges with respect to new technologies and literacy development. The authors develop an analytic framework comprising four quadrants to categorize the various studies conducted in the early childhood age range, and assign these to their appropriate quadrants. This reveals a lopsided distribution of the meagre corpus of studies available. The article provides a map of the field against which early childhood educators can judge ‘at a glance’ how far their personal areas of interest are served by existing research. It simultaneously pinpoints areas where new research is needed to fill important gaps.

Researching New Literacies: Web 2.0 Practices and Insider Perspectives

This article argues that ‘new literacies’ is a useful construct for recognizing and understanding the extent to which changes in the current conjuncture are extending social practices of using codes for making and exchanging meanings in directions that warrant serious rethinking of how and why we research literacies. It provides a conceptual definition of ‘literacies’, according to which literacies can best be described as new when they are constituted by ‘new technical stuff’ and ‘new ethos stuff’. On the basis of this account of new literacies the article advances a framework for envisaging new literacies research agendas and briefly discusses two cases of current research that illustrate this framework.

Self‐directed learning in a work context

The understanding that theorists and practitioners hold of self‐directed learning can vary depending on the context in which they find themselves. In an effort to understand these variations, attempts to synthesize theoretical understandings of the concept of self‐directed learning in the workplace. Includes an empirical study involving 21 white‐collar employees in four Australian businesses. Reveals six variations in the workers′ conception of the experience of self‐directed learning in their jobs. Provides a brief comparative discussion of the results of synthesis of the literature and those from the empirical study.

Language and the new capitalism

This paper discusses the extent to which conceptions and practices of literacy in schools are currently undergoing change in tandem with the emergence of a new capitalism. It considers the possible emergence of a new word order that parallels the evolving new work order. Some possible implications of the discussion for the theory and practice of inclusive education are raised. The argument moves from a brief sketch of capitalism in general to describe some key features of ‘the new capitalism’. It then identifies six characteristics of a language and literacy agenda for schools promulgated in contemporary educational reform policies. These characteristics are discussed in relation to the new capitalism. The argument concludes by suggesting that proponents of inclusive education must actively engage in debate about the social purposes of language and literacy education, and make this a key component of their political strategy for educational change.

Riding a hydra: women ICT professionals' perceptions of working in the Australian ICT industry

Purpose – This paper seeks to identify aspects of work environment, culture or expectations that contributed to womens comfort or discomfort within the information and communication technology (ICT) industry.Design/methodology/approach – The study is empirical in nature and addresses the perspectives of 178 professional women currently working within the Australian ICT industry who responded to the “Women in ICT” survey conducted through James Cook University. Likert‐scale responses were subjected to principal component analysis and then K‐mean cluster analysis, distinguishing four groups of respondents. Explanations for group membership were then sought from responses to open‐ended survey questions.Findings – There was common agreement among respondents that, when making their career decisions, they had expected to enjoy good community image, and that their work would be socially useful, satisfying and flexible. Respondents also agreed that careers in ICT are rewarding, and provide opportunities, and di...

Researching New Literacies

This paper advocates an orientation toward new literacies research that privileges “insider” perspectives and current developments within social spaces of the internet. It advances a conceptual definition of new literacies based on a “practice”-oriented account of “literacies” and three key distinctions • A distinction between two mindsets that compete in the current conjuncture • A distinction between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 conceptions and practices of social participation and digital interconnectivity • A distinction between “new technical stuff” and “new ethos stuff” Illustrative cases of new literacies are identified and their “researchable” dimensions tapped with a view to generating guidelines for a productive and expansive new literacies research agenda.

Children, Literacy and the Uk National Grid for Learning

This article presents a critical assessment from the standpoint of early childhood literacy of Britain’s ambitious and costly on-line learning resource, the National Grid for Learning. It provides an overview of the aims, scope and administration of the Grid, together with typical examples of content available for users in the early childhood age range (0–8 years).The authors argue that the Grid is headed in an unfortunate and counterproductive direction so far as young learners are concerned.The argument claims that in its current form the Grid is likely to generate boredom among young people in terms of Grid-promoted on-line literacy practices, and to foster mislearningof important new forms of literacy, such as email and interactivity. Furthermore, Grid activities and approaches dumb down literacy acquisition, particularly acquisition of ‘new literacies’, and impede development of personal responsibility for on-line actions. The authors claim that a major change in mindset will be necessary to reform the Grid in ways that are compatible with the official policy goals and aspirations behind its development. Examples are provided of more productive alternatives, together with concepts, principles and data supporting the judgments and suggestions advanced.

More than words: Chris Searle's approach to critical literacy as cultural action

This article discusses what seem to us to be some of the key features of Chris Searle’s approach to language and literacy education within school classroom settings in England, as portrayed in his own writings and reflected in work done by his students and published in numerous compilations from Stepney Words (1971) to School of the World (1994). We understand his work as a sustained engagement in critical literacy, underpinned by an unswerving belief that being a literacy educator serving working-class communities is inherently a political, ethical and situated — material and grounded — undertaking. Throughout his school teaching life, Chris Searle took it as axiomatic that working-class children should learn to read, write, spell, punctuate and develop the word as a tool to be used in struggles — their own and those of people like them, wherever they may live — for improvement and liberation. Literacy education for working-class children must proceed from, maintain continuity with and always be accountable to the material life trajectories and prospects of these children. It can only do this by maintaining direct contact with their material lives and their situated being within their material worlds.

Freedom and Sharing in the Global Network Society

This article focuses on some ideas from social and political philosophy concerning the ideal of freedom that may be useful for thinking about issues associated with the rise of network societies. The tendency for ‘freedom’ to mean very different things to different people has carried over to the context of thinking about issues associated with new technologies and network societies. This elasticity needs to be managed if ‘freedom’ is to do useful work in substantive debate about the issues that arise. This article considers three analytic tools that seem applicable to issues arising under the contemporary condition of network societies. They are, respectively, the ‘opportunity—exercise’ analysis of ‘freedom’, the ‘positive—negative freedom’ distinction, and the ‘triadic relation’ analysis of freedom. Each is discussed by reference to familiar current issues.