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Literacy in the 21st Century: Recognizing the Challenges, Creating Solutions

Susan Goldman, Co-Director of LSRI; Distinguished Professor in Psychology and Education (Click name for speaker's biography)
Monday, March 16, 2009
3:00 - 4:30 PM; Cardinal Room, SCE

Information has never been as available and accessible as it is today. Electronic technologies make it possible to create, store, and retrieve information in multiple media almost at will. Indeed, the centrality of information to present day society has prompted some to characterize it as a “knowledge society” wherein information is the basis of wealth and power. The transition from an industrial to a knowledge society brings with it the challenge of developing human capital that can deal with multiple, varied, and prolific information sources. A literate, fully productive member of a knowledge society needs to read, understand, select, coordinate, and integrate multiple sources and forms of information in the service of specific goals and tasks. Doing so requires that individuals adopt a critical stance toward the information, questioning and evaluating its credibility, validity, and usefulness rather than simply accepting whatever information they find as “truth.” Adopting a critical stance involves an appreciation of the specific practices of a disciplinary field, that is the ways in which a discipline creates, represents, and communicates information. This presentation discusses research indicating that, currently, formal educational settings are not doing very well meeting the literacy challenges created by the knowledge society. There is hope however. An emerging body of research is illuminating some of the characteristics of learning environments that are critical to fostering the development of 21st century literacy.

Powerpoint Presentation (pdf format): GoldmanMar16Lecture.pdf

Audio File:
susan_goldman_031609.mp3 55 MB

Quicktime Movie
(Right Click/Control Click & Save to download):
153 MB (120 minutes)