Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Stuart A. Selber. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.
Reviewed by Toby Coley, Bowling Green State University
Introduction and Importance
In Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, Stuart Selber offers an approach to teaching digital literacy in three phases, the functional, critical, and rhetorical. Although Selber's idea of these phases is not new in terms of the definitions he applies to them and the book was published in 2004, what is useful (and original) about the book is the integration of all three of these phases into the digitally-mediated classroom in ways that offer new media instructors overarching categories for evaluating any technology, even those new in 2008. Selber's purpose in Multiliteracies (hereafter MLDA) is to "help teachers of writing and communication to develop full-scale computer literacy programs that are both effective and professionally responsible" (xi). At the same time, Selber desires for this text not to be a "how to" guide, but instead to "provide a framework within which teachers of writing and communication can develop comprehensive programs that draw together functional, critical, and rhetorical concerns in the service of social action and change" (xii).
Stuart Selber has written a text that tries to bridge the theory-pedagogy gap and offer heuristics for incorporating digital technology and encouraging technological literacy in the classroom. This book is important because Selber does not discount functional literacy, as many recent articles have done, but sees it as the foundation upon which to build other literacies while realizing that in order for modern students (who are in many cases digital natives) to be successful they must learn each of these literacies (functional, critical, and rhetorical literacy) and be able to call upon them as needed.
Situating and Synthesizing
In order to understand what these literacies mean for composition and communication Selber draws on previous research in computers and writing and technical communication that explores the idea of technological literacy (the ability to use, question, and situate technology in social action) in order to guide readers to develop a "postcritical" stance in his first chapter. Selber invokes definitions by Stanley Aronowitz and Patricia Sullivan and James Porter to develop his own definition of postcritical. The first of two components important in this stance is the recognition that since computers are only increasing in usages, teachers would be more productive to find ways to incorporate technology into their pedagogy (8), a truism just as much today as in 2004. The second part of this definition, taken from Sullivan and Porter, is "critical consciousness" of technological literacy that that enables students to perceive practices that facilitate inequity and counterproduction (8), appropriate in view of composition's current focus on diversity and equality, and representation.
It is in the framework of this perspective that MLDA reminds teachers that technological literacy is something that must both accompany and "align with" pedagogy. Using technology for technology's sake does not incorporate reliable pedagogy and overlooks the true value of integrating technology into the classroom: the ability to use, question, and design programs/assignments for our students newly acquired technological literacy that can help those students function, grow, and contribute meaningfully to society. MLDA accomplishes this goal in its three central chapters, which look at functional, critical, and rhetorical literacy respectively, in the context of social action.
Functional Literacy
The first component of Selber's three-part framework in MLDA is his re-mediation of functional literacy offered in chapter two. Functional literacy is the ability to utilize the skills needed to manipulate a technology for one's own ends. For Selber, a functionally literate student understands the basics of what it means to use a computer: effective usage, social conventions, technological discourse, management of virtual environment, and technological problem-solving (45). It is this literacy that many teachers have focused upon in the past, but Selber offers a re-examination of functional literacy in terms of its social contexts. Instead of teaching students "lists of software skills" that will need to be constantly updated, Selber examines functional literacy in terms of suggestive (not "monolithic") parameters to create functional fluency (72). These parameters are suggestive because, like society's application of technology, they may fluctuate with usage but still provide a basis for understanding how to apply computers in any setting (past, present, or future). Students generally need to be taught how to use a technology before they can actually use it, thus the importance of functional literacy. At the same time that Selber notes the benefits of the tool metaphor that accompany functional concepts of technology, he cautions that this "metaphor tends to conceal the political aspects of computers" and students therefore need to take the next step and question its use (73).
Critical Literacy
It is critical literacy which provides this next step in the growth of multiple technological literacies (and Selber offers a series of steps that can be taught through multiple courses). Critical literacy involves the questioning of the power structures (socially and personally) that influence and maintain technology. A critically literate student is able to critically examine the ideologies that shape computer cultures, sees the use of computers as "inseparable" from other aspects, has an awareness of the non-technological factors that influence computer use, and "scrutinizes representations of computers in the public imagination" (96). A critically literate student can take the "power moves associated with technological regularization" and adjust and reconstitute them (105) while maintaining a recognition of "the way the power circulates in technological contexts" (133). Selber sets up this chapter (and the next) in such as way as to encourage the "use of heuristics" that guide students to develop critical and rhetorical literacy (133). These heuristics are helpful for teachers both new to technology and experienced with it. MLDA is not so naive as to ignore the limitations of the strategies offered, and thus simultaneously challenges the profession to create a diverse collection of these heuristics for literacy (134). Once students (and teachers for that matter) understand the functional and critical aspects of technology (literacy), they can then move to rhetorical literacy.
Rhetorical Literacy
The fourth chapter, explaining rhetorical literacy, asks instructors to teach and students to understand that "persuasion" saturates the interface design of technology and involves larger forces than just the structure and institution. These same interface concerns produce problems that are "ill-defined" and "whose solutions are representational arguments that have been arrived at through various deliberative activities." The rhetorically literate student also "articulates his or her interface design knowledge at a conscious level and subjects their actions and practices to critical assessment," and acknowledges that interface design is a social action, not a technical one (147). Rhetorical literacy over-arches functional and critical literacy by providing the rhetorical framework needed to apply the use and questioning that students have learned through functional and critical literacy. Ultimately, rhetorical literacy enables students to "effect change in technological systems" because it focuses on "the design and evaluation of online environments" (182). While Selber offers ways to develop heuristics for teaching rhetorical literacy, his approach is to do so through the lens of theory much more than practice.
Conditions and Conclusions
At this point it is important to note that while Selber offers these three literate approaches in a specific, and somewhat chronological order in terms of mental development and even course structures, he does not limit the learning and acquiring of these literacies to this successive structural order. A student who is learning functional literacy may well be learning critical or rhetorical literacy at the same time, though a focus on one at a time (according to Selber) will provide a clearer conceptual framework in the end.
While this book offers solid theoretical underpinnings for teachers to consider learning and teaching multiple technological literacies, Selber tends to ask much of teachers. MLDA also offers some pedagogically applicable approaches to incorporating these literacies into the classroom (chapter five), but it does not go as far as it could by providing solid and tested assignments and assessment rubrics for teaching a class on any of these approaches. At times, Selber can fill pages with jargon and what feels like unnecessary prose, but overall, Selber's examination of the pitfalls of instrumental approaches and advocacy of this three-part conceptual approach to learning technology is helpful for providing teachers with a framework for viewing technological integration to develop student literacies.
Selber's book has, in its short history, already become pivotal in defining multiliteracy in the digital age for those in the field of computers and composition and his model will certainly continue to guide teachers in their understanding of these literacies for years to come. Functionally literate students learn how to become users of technology, while critically literate students become questioners of technology and rhetorically literate students become producers of technology. It is these three roles (users, questioners, and producers) that teachers need to prepare their students to become in the digital age and Multiliteracies for a Digital Age will be important in that preparation.