Literature trends in schools have changed significantly in my time as a teacher. Over the past decade I have watched as Joy Cowly style ‘big books’ have slowly been stripped from infant classrooms, along with their silly storylines and shared reading style, as the whole language approach to literacy has been deemed obsolete. At the same time eBoards began to take centre stage for modelled decodable reading experiences and synthetic phonics lessons. On book shop shelves and online, new genres have emerged and grown in popularity to respond to new interests. However despite literature options and formats broadening outside the classroom, early reading instruction in many schools now seems so focused on the ‘how to of decoding’ print. Lamb (2011) suggests that for students’ overall reading skills, stamina and engagement with texts for enjoyment to continue to improve, the old definitions of ‘reading’ and ‘books’ must be reassessed.
In 2012, as an eary career teacher of Kindergarten teacher, I experienced a cohort of students that tried to swipe their mini whiteboards to switch them on- much like Jabr’s (2013) ‘A Magazine is an iPad’ child. The group of 5 year olds were almost perplexed that I was requiring them to make their own meaning with a whiteboard marker. It became a professional core memory as I began to ponder the implications of students who may have been exposed to iPads earlier, and at a greater rate, than physical books. I wondered how this would impact thier literacy aquisition, and in the back of my mind, I worried whether physical books were becoming a thing of the past. As an inner city public school teacher, I also began to consider how the ‘digital divide; would further fuel inequality. I struggles with how to harness technology to enhance learning, as suggested by Felvegi & Matthew (2012), rather than for the sake of iterating change.
Fast forward to 2023, where my initial reflections as a teacher librarian in training where I was confronted with the way that the role had changed to reflect the information landscape (Bertalli, 2023). Shockingly (to me at least) I wasn’t entering into a profession that sourced and organised physical books, inspiring a deep and transformative love of literature, but rather the role now demanded that I innovativly enable the free flow of information to diverse library patrons, through an ever evolving scope of media. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was suited to the task. Transliteracies and transmedia were unfamiliar concepts. and although I am now halfway through the course, I still continually grapple with how I can bring a truly hybrid collection to fuition in our own rural, school library.
This course has continually required me to reflect on my own reading and learning habits as well as my professional practice. As I have learnt about how storytelling and literature have evolved over time, I have begun to realise that narratives are structured to reflect the social context of their time, as suggested by Mills (2006). The internet age has allowed us to not only easily consume information but also instantly create content. This has enabled literature to be reimagined as an interactivce process. I have only just begun to scratch the surface of the technical platforms and applications that support literature in digital environments, however my first ‘ah-ha’ moment occured as I realised that we must stop limiting our notion of quality literature to narratives with a linear orientation, complication and solution pattern in our classroom discussions. Lamb (2011) points out that it is not unusual for stories to start at the ending and slowly uncover critical elements, allowing the reader to reconstruct the plot. Digital stories can provide alternate endings or hyperlinked narrative pathways. Characters can tell their stories concurrently, with point of views exsisting side by side or across time. Augmented or virtual reality may allow the reader to set the pace, or experience the setting in a unique way. Multimodal texts purposefully and deeply layer meaning through carefully curated, multisensory experiences.
Perhaps the reading skills and stamina of my students are not stagnant or on the decline, and instead students are interacting with literature in ways I hadn’t thought to look for. How do I tap into this as a teacher librarian through both a responsive and supportive collection development cycle? This is the first subject that seems to tie together my love of literature and bring it to a place that meets the needs and interests of so many of my students. It is exciting, daunting and also freeing.
References:
Bertalli, B. (2023). Teacher librarians its time to renew our role. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/bbertalli/2023/03/08/teacher-librarians-its-time-to-renew-our-role/
Flevegi, E., & Matthew, K. I. (2012). eBooks and literacy in K-12 schools. Computers in the Schools, 29(1-2), 40-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/07380569.2012.651421
Jabr, F. (2013). The reading brain in the digital age: The science of paper versus screens. Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/
Lamb, A. (2011). Reading redefined for a transmedia universe: Once upon a time, reading was as simple and straightforward as decoding words on a page. No more. Digital age technologies have made such an impact on the way we interact with content that the old definitions of reading and books no longer apply. Learning and leading with technology, 39(3), 12-17. https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/bitstream/handle/1805/8636/39-3.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y