Research Round-Up

Cathy Burnett’s post revisits an ongoing and pertinent debate on the mismatches between lived experiences of literacy and the ways literacy is framed and defined in most formal educational settings, curricula and assessment frameworks. There are plenty of robust academic commentators who suggest the need for changes in the literacy curriculum and pedagogy, but somehow the gap between what research finds and recommends and policy-making still persists.

There is nothing new about calling for changes to the literacy curriculum and pedagogy in response to developments in digital media and the practices associated with them. […] We are increasingly reminded of the mismatch between what research is telling us, particularly that based on careful in-depth studies of literacy in people’s lives, and what literacy becomes when framed as policy or curriculum and assessment frameworks. […] We need to change the rules if we are to do the best we can to support learners to engage with literacy in the digital present, and if we are to allow sufficient flexibility to accommodate what literacy/literacies might become in the future…
Literacy and new media: a(nother) call for change

Cary Bazalgette posted about her doctoral research into the TV- and film-viewing practices of very young children, based on longitudinal ethnographic methods, and investigating what is it that makes different types of content appealing to them. In her latest observations she notes that young children are attracted not only to films and TV shows aimed at their age, but also to other types of content that seem to be out of their grasp…

It seems that Dora and Sam feel ready for this; that both texts offer the right mixture of situational clues and satisfying action, and that their increasing linguistic competence enables them to listen attentively to arguments and disquisitions that they can as yet only barely understand, but very much want to. Indeed, as David Bordwell observes (Narration in the Fiction Film, 1985), “every film trains its spectator”…
Film Studies Year 3