The Meta Literacy View - Critical Literacy

The last view of literacy in this evolutionary journey is meta or hyper literacy. What does this mean?

• Literacy involves multiple modes – Reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, representing.
• A Literacy is situated in multiple contexts – Workplace, social, personal, community.
• Literacy requires the use of multiple tools – Print, ICT, multimedia
• Literacy involves multiple processes – Recognize, represent, understand, critique, create.
• And it is permeated with critical thinking/literacy. Critical literacy is the defining aspect of meta-literacy. The literate person examines texts to determine the currency, accuracy, bias, and comprehensiveness of the information. It means taking our thinking to a deeper level with critical questions.

For example, when students research such areas of learning as the environment, government, health policy, and human rights, they need to know to ask about the perspectives being presented to them and why and how those perspectives have been shaped. Information is not neutral and fact-based – it is a perspective no matter how well ‘disguised” as objective. One final important characteristic is that the critical literacy stance in an information society means taking what you’ve learned and using it in real life to make a difference – knowledge has to be translated into action not end in a report read only by the teacher.