New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies

ISSN: 1523-9543

New literacies emerge and evolve apace as people from all walks of life engage with new technologies, shifting values and institutional change, and increasingly assume 'postmodern' orientations toward their everyday worlds. Despite many efforts to take account of such changes, educational institutions largely remain out of touch with the range of new ways of making and sharing meanings that increasingly mediate and shape the lives of the young people they teach and the futures they face. This series aims to explore some key dimensions of the changes occurring within social practices of literacy and the educational challenges they present, with a view to informing educational practice in helpful ways. It asks what are new literacies,how do they impact on life in schools, homes, communities, workplaces, sites of leisure, and other key settings of human cultural engagement, and what significance do new literacies have for how people learn and how they understand and construct knowledge? It aims to challenge established and 'official' ways of framing literacy, and to ask what it means for literacies to be powerful, effective, and enabling under current and foreseeable conditions. Collectively, the works in this series will help to reorient literacy debates and literacy education agendas.

120 publications

Critical Literacies and Language

One of the most fundamental aspects of a just society is the right to create equitable and inclusive spaces of belonging for all people while also confronting injustice and oppression. However, we are now in a time where seeking justice and equity is met with neoliberalism, which pervades the academy at all levels of education. Yet, for many, this is not a time for retreat, but rather a moment of solidarity, a time to create new knowledge and understanding through struggle. As Freire wrote, "Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other." Thus, the purpose of this series is to provide literacy and language researchers, practitioners, as well as community activists, with a space to actualize and embody a restless, impatient never-finished objective of critical literacies and language education. It is the aim of this series to create a space to share research that promotes pedagogies of equity. We also recognize that different audiences have different needs. To that end, we seek to provide, when applicable, a "notebook" as a companion to research volumes to facilitate actionable steps for the PK-12 classroom or community spaces. This series is different as it approaches the dissemination of critical work from a place of intentionality to address the gap in disseminating research (typically read by scholars) and the need to have it "on the ground" for classroom teachers, community activists, and workers. By creating companion volumes (where applicable), there is a greater chance for sustained criticality in literacy education.

2 publications

LaCuLi. Language Culture Literacy

In the LaCuLi. Language Culture Literacy series, studies in foreign language research and intercultural communication will be published, as well as studies in foreign-language didactics. Research on the processes of language acquisition and language teaching, with a special focus on language awareness, cultural awareness and learner perspectives, is central to the series. It focuses on empirical research in intercultural foreign didactics as well as on cultural aspects of the workplace. Multi-perspective, multi-language and multi-cultural comparative approaches are highlighted. Fields of application are comparative analyses of political speeches, news, ads and business communication in an international context, as well as in learner texts in multi-language and multi-cultural learning environments. In der Reihe LaCuLi. Language Culture Literacy erscheinen Studien zur Fremdsprachenlehr- und -lernforschung und Interkulturellen Kommunikation sowie zur Fremdsprachendidaktik. Im Zentrum stehen Forschungsergebnisse im Bereich von Spracherwerbs- und -vermittlungsprozessen mit den Schwerpunkten Language und Cultural Awareness und Lernerperspektivität, ebenso empirische Untersuchungen zur interkulturellen Fremdsprachendidaktik sowie zu kulturellen Aspekten des Arbeitsplatzes. Im Fokus stehen mehrperspektivisch, mehrsprachig und mehrkulturell vergleichende Herangehensweisen. Anwendungsfelder sind vergleichende Analysen von politischen Reden, Nachrichten, Werbetexten und Businesskommunikation im internationalen Kontext sowie von Lernertexten in mehrsprachigen und multikulturellen Lernumgebungen.

20 publications

Critical Studies in Democracy and Political Literacy

ISSN: 2166-5036

Why do so few people vote? What is political engagement? How does education intersect with democracy and political literacy? What can be learned from interdisciplinary studies on democracy? How do we cultivate political literacy? What is the relevance of elections in light of war, poverty, discrimination, social inequalities, etc.? What are the alternatives to the traditional electoral, representative, party-politics models that have characterized our societies? Is the mainstream media holding government to account, disseminating propaganda or fuelling the need to pacify the population? How do international systems, approaches and realities related to democracy compare, and what can we learn from others? These are some of the questions that are addressed through this book series. Seeking to fill an important gap in the literature, this book series takes on the theme of democracy in a multi-/inter-disciplinary, comprehensive, and critical way. Some books have democracy in the title but do not make it the focus, and often books that address more directly, for example, multiculturalism, media studies, or school reform may delve into the area of democracy without fully deconstructing what it is, how it functions, how people can shape and intersect with it, and how it is used (or misused) to distort power relations, which is at the base of teaching, learning and action. Thus, a broader range of materials specifically tailored to teacher-education and scholars within the education field is desirable. Similarly, the overlapping and interdisciplinary nature of the study of democracy bleeds naturally into the areas of media studies, sociology, political science, peace studies, multiculturalism, feminist studies, and cultural studies, etc., all of which have a natural and inextricable relationship to and within education.

6 publications

Studies in Children's Literature

ISSN: 1531-3964

"This series will feature the work of leading and emerging scholars in children's literature who situate their study in an international literacy, cultural, and linguistic context, drawing on tools of historical research and theoretical paradigms from various disciplines, but offering new aesthetic frameworks as well as detailes textual analysis for the understanding of a literary phenomenon of enormous scope and power. The purpose of such a series is to expand dialogue among students and scholars of children's literature; questioning critical assumptions, including the notion of children's literature itself; opening new areas of inquiry; and advancing the serious exploration of that which is ostensibly written for the child." "This series will feature the work of leading and emerging scholars in children's literature who situate their study in an international literacy, cultural, and linguistic context, drawing on tools of historical research and theoretical paradigms from various disciplines, but offering new aesthetic frameworks as well as detailes textual analysis for the understanding of a literary phenomenon of enormous scope and power. The purpose of such a series is to expand dialogue among students and scholars of children's literature; questioning critical assumptions, including the notion of children's literature itself; opening new areas of inquiry; and advancing the serious exploration of that which is ostensibly written for the child." "This series will feature the work of leading and emerging scholars in children's literature who situate their study in an international literacy, cultural, and linguistic context, drawing on tools of historical research and theoretical paradigms from various disciplines, but offering new aesthetic frameworks as well as detailes textual analysis for the understanding of a literary phenomenon of enormous scope and power. The purpose of such a series is to expand dialogue among students and scholars of children's literature; questioning critical assumptions, including the notion of children's literature itself; opening new areas of inquiry; and advancing the serious exploration of that which is ostensibly written for the child."

1 publications

Sprachkönnen und Sprachbewusstheit in Europa / Language Competence and Language Awareness in Europe

The series Language Competence and Language Awareness in Europe unites interdisciplinary linguistic research with a thematic focus on multilingualism, linguistic choices and linguistic variability, language contact processes in Europe – and beyond its boundaries – as well as situated speech practices and literacy skills in private and public spaces. The series editor Amei Koll-Stobbe welcomes manuscript proposals, especially data orientated analyses of language competence cum performance with a priority on basic research (without any restrictions regarding theoretical and methodological frameworks). Prior to publication, the quality of the works published in this series is reviewed by external referees appointed by the editor. In der Buchreihe Sprachkönnen und Sprachbewusstsein in Europa erscheinen vorwiegend Sammelbände aus Linguistik und Anglistik. Der thematische Fokus liegt auf der Sprachkontaktlinguistik, auf Aspekten von Sprachwahl und Sprachvariabilität in nationalen Sprachgrenzen – oder über diese hinweg – sowie auf situierten Sprachpraktiken (und literacy skills) in privaten und öffentlichen Räumen. Die Herausgeberin Amei Koll-Stobbe freut sich über Publikationsvorschläge v.a. aus dem Bereich der datenorientierten Analyse von sprachlicher Kompetenz cum Performanz mit einer grundlagenforschungsorientierten Ausrichtung (Beschränkungen auf bestimmte Untersuchungsmethoden oder Rahmentheorien gibt es nicht). Die Qualität der in dieser Reihe erscheinenden Arbeiten wird vor der Publikation durch externe, von der Herausgeberin benannte Gutachter geprüft.

11 publications

Adolescent Cultures, School, and Society

"As schools struggle to redefine and restructure themselves, they need to be aware of the new realities of adolescents. This series is committed to depicting the wide variety of adolescent cultures that exist in today’s troubled world. It is primarily a qualitative research, practice, and policy series devoted to contextual interpretation and analysis that encompasses a broad range of interdisciplinary critique. The series addresses such issues as curriculum theory and practice; multicultural education; adolescent literacy; aggression, bullying, and violence; media and the arts; school dropouts; homeless and runaway youth; gangs and other alienated youth; at-risk populations; peers, family structures, and parental involvement; identity formation; race, ethnicity, class, and gender/LGBTQ studies; and overall social, biological, psychological, and spiritual development. "

84 publications

Health Communication

ISSN: 2153-1277

This series examines the powerful influences of human and mediated communication in delivering care and promoting health. Books analyze the ways that strategic communication humanizes and increases access to quality care as well as examining the use of communication to encourage proactive health promotion. The books describe strategies for addressing major health issues, such as reducing health disparities, minimizing health risks, responding to health crises, encouraging early detection and care, facilitating informed health decision making, promoting coordination within and across health teams, overcoming health literacy challenges, designing responsive health information technologies, and delivering sensitive end-of-life care.

32 publications

Visual Communication

ISSN: 2153-277X

"Visual communication is the process through which individuals in relationships, organizations, and cultures interpret and create visual messages in response to their environment, one another, and social structures. This series seeks to enhance our understanding of visual communication and it explores the role of visual communication in culture. Topics of interest include visual perception and cognition; signs and symbols; typography and image; research on graph ic design, use of visual imagery in education. On a cultural level, research on visual media analysis and critical methods that examine the larger cultural messages imbedded in visual images is welcome. By providing a variety of approaches to the analysis of visual media and messages, this book series is designed to explore issues relating to visual literacy, visual communication, visual rhetoric, visual culture, and any unique method for examining visual communication. "

16 publications

New Approaches to Applied Linguistics

This series provides an outlet for academic monographs and edited volumes that offer a contemporary and original contribution to applied linguistics. Applied linguistics is understood in a broad sense, to encompass language pedagogy and second-language learning, discourse analysis, bi- and multilingualism, language policy and planning, language use in the internet age, lexicography, professional and organisational communication, literacies, forensic linguistics, pragmatics, and other fields associated with solving real-life language and communication problems. Interdisciplinary contributions, and research that challenges disciplinary assumptions, are particularly welcomed. The series does not impose limitations in terms of methodology or genre and does not support a particular linguistic school. Whilst the series volumes are of a high scholarly standard, they are intended to be accessible to researchers in other fields and to the interested general reader. New Approaches to Applied Linguistics is based at the Centre for Language Assessment Research, University of Roehampton.

3 publications

Counterpoints Primers

ISSN: 2572-5831

Counterpoints Primers are designed to provide a brief and concise introduction or supplement to specific topics in education. Although sophisticated in content, these primers are written in an accessible style, making them perfect for undergraduate and graduate classroom use. Each volume includes a glossary of key terms and a References and Resources section. Other published and forthcoming volumes cover such topics as: Standards Popular Culture Critical Pedagogy Literacy Higher Education John Dewey Feminist Theory and Education Studying Urban Youth Culture Multiculturalism through Postformalism Creative Problem Solving Teaching the Holocaust Piaget and Education Deleuze and Education Foucault and Education

41 publications