Definition of LiteracyThe ability to understand information and communicate effectively in common academic and real world information environments.
Where literacy was traditionally the ability to read and write at a rudimentary level, the contemporary concept is commonly expanded to include the skills required to comprehend and express meaning in the modern world. The following are common examples of literacy.
Reading Literacy
The ability to read everyday materials such as a newspaper, job description or popular book. Before 1950, this was simply the ability to sound out words to understand their meaning. Modern reading literacy implies fluency and deeper comprehension whereby you can read materials smoothly and understand their key points or storyline.
Writing Literacy
The ability to communicate meaning with written language. This includes technical elements such as grammar, punctuation, spelling and structure. Writing literacy also implies the ability to express yourself accurately and with purpose such as developing an argument for a thesis statement.
Information Literacy
Information literacy is the ability to meet information needs and to develop valuable and valid information artifacts. This involves gathering sources, evaluating them, organizing information and developing new information with critical thinking. For example, the ability to evaluate the safety of a model of car that you would like to buy by researching official ratings and crash test data online.
Numeracy
The ability to understand and use numbers and basic math. Numeracy includes the ability to perform basic arithmetic in your head and to understand basic mathematical concepts such as percentages. This implies an intuitive sense for numbers such as what would be a small or large number in an everyday situation. For example, being able to visualize 100 pounds of bananas.
Digital Literacy
The capacity to fully participate in everyday elements of digital life such as communicating online or using common tools such as search. Whenever a technology or digital experience becomes completely mainstream, it becomes more or less a baseline expectation that everyone knows how to join in. This creates a problem whereby digital literacy isn't something you acquire in school when you are young but is rather a lifelong process of learning.
Media Literacy
The ability to consume and produce media in a safe and effective way. Tools such as social media, vlogging and livestreaming allow anyone to publish out to the world. This creates quite a bit of misinformation and safety issues. Likewise, people may regret media participation such as overly emotional debates online. Media literacy is a set of abilities for managing all of this to enjoy media and benefit from it while managing its risks.
Social Literacy
The ability to navigate the social elements of communication. This goes beyond reading and writing to the skills required to verbally communicate in-person. Social literacy is perhaps the most daunting type of literacy as people are quite complex and human communication and behavior are both multifaceted. However, navigating social situations, as with the other types of literacy, is clearly a foundational life skill.
Literacy & Progress
Literacy can be viewed as the baseline set of skills that are required to fully participate in society. Before the modern age, it was considered unnecessary for regular people to read and write but with time this became more of a basic expectation as opposed to an exceptional ability. It is very likely that things that are viewed as exceptional abilities now such as understanding basic physics, will become the baseline in the future as knowledge continues to be democratized. This can be seen in the past century where prior to WWII, literacy was typically defined as a rudimentary ability to sound out words to capture their meaning and to copy words to paper. This expanded to full reading comprehension and the baseline expectation that people can fully express themselves with the written word. With the introduction of the internet, the use of digital tools and evaluation of information, numerical information, visual information and source credibility became more of an everyday need such that the concept of literacy has quickly expanded.| Definitions: Literacy | ||
Type | ||
Definition (1) | The ability to read and write. | |
Definition (2) | The ability to understand information and communicate effectively in common academic and real world information environments. | |
Related Concepts | ||
