Packaging literacy, new technologies and `enhanced' learning.

Literacy educators need to pay attention to shifts in the perceived relationship between literacy education, the use of new technologies and learning, as exemplified in national and state P-12 policy documents. At the national level, policy statements have reverted to emphasis on basic literacy, with minimal acknowledgement of the cultural significance of emerging digital literacies. By contrast, at the state level, the emphasis is on `technologising' the curriculum and literacy education, with the promise that technology will `enhance' learning. At both levels, literacy has become `commodified': an autonomous product to be packaged and consumed. However, if schools are to prepare students for a rapidly changing world, in which technology-mediated literacy practices are integral, then more is needed than reductive notions of literacy and market-driven `technologisation' of the curriculum, accompanied by evidence-free promises of better learning. The conclusion considers the possibilities for critical digital literacy education.

Introduction

Substantial efforts have been made to investigate and theorise the intersection between critical literacy practices and new technologies (Lankshear et al., 1997; Lankshear & Snyder, in press; Snyder, 1996, 1997c). Although such research is complicated by the contested nature of literacy (New London Group, 1996; Street, 1997), recent work contributes to our growing understanding of the significance of both literacy and information technology in learning and schooling, the interconnected relationship between them, the changing nature of literacy itself in increasingly technologised conditions, and the new and emerging pedagogical and curriculum practices (Bruce, 1997; Peters & Lankshear, 1996; Snyder, 1997c).

Yet despite significant theoretical advances in the area of literacy and technology studies, governmental policies on literacy, learning and technology often fail to reflect these insights and understandings. Sometimes it is difficult to discern the educational value of the policy directions that have been chosen. Also striking is the extent to which certain policies, at both state and federal levels, appear to be influenced by market considerations. Literacy--both print-based and digital--has become commodified: an autonomous product to be packaged and consumed.

This article examines these policy trends, which have important implications for educational and curriculum practice. At the national level, the current emphasis is on `foundational literacy' (Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA), 1998), the most recent incarnation of the `back-to-basics' movement. Of significance in the context of this article, the National Literacy Plan (DEETYA, 1998) makes almost no reference to the cultural and educational significance of emerging digital literacy practices, defined here as literacy practices mediated by the use of new communication and information technologies. By contrast, at the state level, there is a growing emphasis on `technologising' the curriculum in general and literacy practices in particular. Increasingly, public documents acknowledge students' need to read, write and communicate in electronic environments for lifelong learning. Also evident at the state level is an overt market orientation to the process of technologising education. The growing commercialisation of schooling (Robertson, 1998) is exemplified in the deals that are being made with computer companies to provide products and facilities at bargain rates, and also in the very appearance of the glossy documents that embody policy initiatives (Lankshear & Snyder, in press; Symes, 1998). Further, directly associated with the project to technologise education are increasing inequities, typical of a market environment. These inequalities are exemplified by the widening gulf between technologically endowed and technologically disadvantaged schools. Some of these inequities have been initiated and subsequently institutionalised by government policies. The connections between technology, literacy and inequality are complex, but an examination of recent related policy initiatives provides some insight into them (Selfe, 1999).

All educators, but especially literacy educators, need to pay attention to these developments. Traditionally, literacy educators have seen technology as `antithetical to their primary concerns' (Selfe, 1999, p. 412). Although this attitude is not shared by all literacy educators, there is a general distrust of machines and a preference for the non-technological. At the end of the 20th century, ignoring the cultural and educational significance of technology is short-sighted. As the new communication and information technologies are used more and more widely, literacy educators have to think critically about their use and provide their students with the skills to do likewise. They need to look carefully, in focused and systematic ways, at both the federal government's back-to-basics initiatives and the state governments' project to technologise schools. They cannot continue to dismiss the new technologies simply as new tools for instructional purposes that they choose either to use or to ignore. They cannot continue to line themselves up as either technology enthusiasts or technology demonisers; as either technophiles or technophobes (Snyder, 1997a). Such extreme positions are no longer tenable as they overlook technology's material bases and the expanding global economic dependence on technology. At the very least, literacy educators need to take account of the cultural and educational influences of communication and information technologies.

Although the focus of this article is on literacy education, the analysis has clear implications for other curriculum areas. The article begins with a brief look at the connections between policy and practice, and the global policy context which parallels patterns and trends apparent in Australia. The next section details the major characteristics of the Australian national literacy policy environment. Using Victoria as an example of a development evident across all the states and territories in Australia, the following sections document the shift towards a market orientation in the P-12 literacy and technology policy environment. It is argued that if schools are to prepare students for a rapidly changing world, in which technology-mediated literacy practices are integral, then much more is needed than the federal policy emphasis on anachronistic notions of literacy and the states' policy preoccupation with technologising the curriculum. Moreover, the promise of improved learning, implicit in the call to teachers to take up technology, has not been grounded in research evidence. Clearly both the federal government's capitulation to reductive understandings of literacy and the states' surrender to commercial influences threaten to compromise important educational objectives and principles.

But there are alternatives. The article concludes with an elaboration of a `preferred future': the possibilities for critical digital literacy education in a world beyond market-driven perspectives and decisions, in which policy directives are appropriately resourced by governments dedicated to the promotion of ethical and democratic educational principles, and uncompromised by concessions to commercial imperatives.

Literacy and technology policy: A broad perspective

At the outset of this discussion of literacy and technology policy, two points need to be made. First, it is important to emphasise the nature of the relationship between policy as officially formulated and policy as implemented in practice. Educational practice is never a direct, simple and seamless realisation of education policy. A complex chain of processes, components and agents exist between the act of formulating policy at official levels and the myriad acts of implementing policy in the classroom (Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard, & Henry, 1997). To date, policy makers at the centre have left the roles of policy interpretation, translation and implementation largely to teachers and the institutions they work within. Increasingly, however, policy contains the range of possible interpretations by specifying such things as benchmarks, reporting instruments and procedures (Lankshear & Snyder, in press).

Second, the Australian literacy and technology policy environment needs to be understood in the larger global policy context. This context emphasises, if not `fetishises', communication and information technologies in education. Some commentators go so far as to claim that `the whole task set by contemporary education policy is to keep up with rapidly shifting developments in technology' (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993, p. 63).

President Clinton's Technology Literacy Challenge policy package of February 1996 set the tone and pace for many initiatives across the west and beyond. The policy aims at ensuring that all students are `technologically literate' by `the dawn of the 21st century'. It defines `technological literacy' as `computer skills and the ability to use computers and other technology to improve learning, productivity and performance', and claims that this new literacy `has become as fundamental to a person's ability to navigate through society as traditional skills like reading, writing and arithmetic' (United States Department of Education, 1996, p. 5). As is apparent in the case of the key Australian policies discussed in this article, similar emphases and constructions of technological literacy for the millennium can be readily found in the Australian context. What is happening in Australia closely parallels global trends, even down to the rhetoric employed by governments to persuade teachers to `get technologised'.

More generally, as in other countries, education policy initiatives in Australia are being developed within the material and cultural conditions of a rapidly changing world--a world characterised by the rise of the information age, the decline of national sovereignty, community disorientation at the pace of change, and the blurring of the boundaries between politics, education and entertainment. It is also a more deregulated world, driven by market considerations, in which people are expected to be more self-sufficient, and where tasks are devolved. This is the global world order towards which contemporary education policy initiatives seek to steer educators (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996). Knowledge about worldwide patterns and directions of change is essential to maintain some kind of objectivity and distance from policy enthusiasms and exhortations. Such knowledge allows professional educators to keep the focus on educational objectives and to avoid getting swept up in the hype about technology's inevitable contribution to educational advance (Lankshear & Snyder, in press).

The national literacy and technology policy environment

Until the late 1990s, few policy documents made overt connections between literacy, technology and learning (Lankshear et al., 1997; Lankshear & Snyder, in press). For example, in 1994, as part of the national curriculum project, statements and accompanying profiles were published in the eight key learning areas (KLAs) (Curriculum Corporation, 1994a, 1994b). Literacy and technology were treated as discrete KLAs. Literacy was understood as essentially verbal-linguistic in nature, whereas what was already needed was a multimodal view of literacy that took account of the increasing importance of the visual (Hodge & Kress, 1988; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Stewart-Dore, 1996). What characterised the entire array of KLAs was an overall commitment to print literacy. With the exception of the technology KLA, literacy and learning were understood with reference primarily to matters of language and text, with limited and restricted reference to matters of technology and information. It was not until the late 1990s that more focused attention was given to the importance of `electronic literacies'. This was primarily at the state level: perhaps understandably so, given that the states are responsible for detailed curriculum development and articulation.

In the period from the mid-1980s till the mid-1990s, there were two notable exceptions. The first was the commissioned report Education and technology convergence (Tinkler, Lepani, & Mitchell, 1996). This is one of the very few documents examined for the purposes of this article that makes useful connections between literacy, technology and learning. Acknowledging the expansion of global communication networks, it argues for the need to `look beyond "computer literacy", and consider the importance of "information literacy", which takes into account the development of higher-order skills in processing information' (p. x). Drawing on ideas from commentators such as Drucker (1993), Tinkler et al. (1996, p. 97) claim that convergent technologies can support a shift in emphasis from teaching to learning, and that, in reshaping schools and challenging received forms of education, technology will be important because it encourages and compels us to `do new things rather than enable us to do old things better'.

The second exceptional document was The national policy on literacy (Lo Bianco & Freebody, 1996), which found its way into university education faculties, state education departments, the offices of teachers' professional associations and school staffrooms. Joseph Lo Bianco was then Chief Executive of Language Australia, and Peter Freebody, Professor in Language and Literacy Education at Griffith University. It took explicit account of the uses and significance of the new technologies in literacy education. However, The national policy on literacy never assumed the status that its name connoted: it did not become official policy. It was eventually published in 1997 as a book, titled Australian literacies: Informing national policy on literacy education (Lo Bianco & Freebody, 1997).

While this document was circulating, there were a number of other developments in the literacy field, including a national literacy survey, literacy testing, and literacy benchmarking procedures. As part of the National Literacy Plan, commonwealth, state and territory ministers agreed to a national literacy goal that `every child leaving primary school should be numerate and be able to read, write and spell at an appropriate level' (DEETYA, 1998, p. 9). They also agreed to a subsidiary goal that `every child commencing school from 1998 will achieve a minimum acceptable literacy and numeracy standard within four years' (p. 9). The new emphasis in the National Plan on the development of `foundational literacy' (p. 9) skills for students in the early years and `early intervention' (p. 10) for at-risk students is considerably narrower than that of its predecessor, the Australian language and literacy policy (ALLP) (DEET, 1991a, 1991b).

Close examination of the National Plan reveals an emphasis on what Lankshear (1998) calls `lingering basics', where the notion of basic literacy as proficiency in fundamentals of encoding and decoding print texts continues to `linger', from the 1960s and 1970s. Basic literacy is framed in terms of knowing the alphabetic script visually and phonetically, and grasping the mech-anism of putting elements of the script together to encode or decode words, and to separate words or add them together to read and write sentences. As with its predecessor, the ALLP (DEET, 1991a, 1991b), any serious concerns with literacies mediated by new communication and information technologies is conspicuous by its absence. Instead the focus is on standards, testing, benchmarking and reporting.

When Lo Bianco and Freebody's national policy on literacy was shelved, the tide of official policy making for literacy was starting to flow very strongly in a different direction from that advocated in the national policy. Whatever the document's original status may have been in relation to official policy development, its content was destined to be strictly marginal to ensuing federal literacy policy (Lankshear & Snyder, in press). National literacy policy has turned from more expansive literacy education concerns to early intervention for at-risk students. Current policy initiatives replicate procedures and trends already well established in the United Kingdom and in many American states.

Literacy and technology policy development in Victoria

More markedly than in the national policy context, there has been a major policy shift in the states, from the beginnings of interest in technology matters in the mid-1980s to the high interest which characterises the present. The provision of computers for teachers and students, together with appeals to teachers to take account of the new technologies in their classrooms, so that students are not disadvantaged in post-secondary settings, represents a new policy development. The late 1990s saw information technology (IT) become the hot item, with the states taking every media opportunity to parade their ideological and financial commitment to the provision of hardware and software for both students and teachers. The focus in this section is on policy developments in Victoria, although similar patterns and trends can be discerned in other states and territories.

The Curriculum and standards framework (CSF): English (Board of Studies, 1995) is intended to provide the basis for curriculum planning in Victorian schools. (At the time this article went to press, the CSF was under review.) It is part of a larger document that includes all eight key learning areas. Its structure derives from the national statements and profiles (Curriculum Corporation, 1994a, 1994b); and the focus is on English language teaching through the study of texts, spoken, read, viewed and written. Although information technology, in its various forms, is not neglected in the English CSF, it is fair to say that it is presented simply as another medium.

Interestingly, several documents, published before the CSF, took greater account of the importance of new technologies. The first, English and computers, P-12 (Ministry of Education, 1986) assumes as its basic premise that the computer can be a valuable tool in `enabling students to develop and extend their abilities in using language' (p. iii). The second, The English language framework: P-10 (Ministry of Education, 1988) was designed to help schools Formulate their English policies, develop their programs and devise activities. Claims are made for word processing: that it enhances writing practices and promotes valuable group discussion around evolving texts. Both documents were forward thinking in recognising the potential of computers as effective writing machines.

Since the election of the Kennett Liberal Government in 1992, the Schools of the Future program (Directorate of School Education, Victoria, 1993) has dominated the policy environment. In essence, it has involved a systematic devolution of finances and management, as well as curriculum and administration more generally, in accordance with the ethos of the self-managing school. Among subsequent initiatives is `classrooms of the future' from which has emanated the `navigator schools' (seven schools in Victoria) and related forms of `lighthouse' professional and curriculum development. The `Smith report', Technologies for enhanced learning (Directorate of School Education, 1994), is a key document here for, until recently, it provided de facto policy guidelines for information technology in education in Victoria.

The Smith report contributed significantly to popularising talk of learning technologies and the notion of enhanced learning through the use of new technologies. `Learning' features prominently as a keyword, as does `networking'. Emphasis is placed on the notion of `open learning' as distinct from `distance learning', with attention to associated concepts of `choice', `flexibility' and `life-long learning'.

At issue is the shift of schooling in Victoria towards a generalised open-learning model with information technology envisaged as the key to profound changes in the structure and function of schooling. The document places great store on the revolutionary and transformative implications of the new technologies for education and schooling (Lankshear & Snyder, in press). No statements are directed specifically to literacy and the new technologies. This omission suggests a systematic failure to understand the fundamental linkage between literacy and technology and the profound significance of literacy as a key learning technology.

In 1997, the Board of Studies, Victoria, published Information technology in English: Using information technology to help students achieve the learning outcomes in the English key learning area. This chart is one of a set of eight similar charts created for each of the eight key learning areas. The document summarises the connections between IT and English in terms of learning outcomes. It indicates that more direct and explicit connections are now being made between the two areas. The chart suggests that IT is a powerful tool to enable students to achieve important learning outcomes. IT is seen as offering the different key learning areas a rich resource, and a major objective is for students to acquire skills in using IT effectively.

The current enthusiasm for technology is palpable in the recent document, Learning technologies in Victorian schools 1998-2001 (Department of Education, 1998a). Its central objective is that, by the year 2001, all schools will have implemented a learning technologies plan which will ensure that principals, staff and students will have access to technology, be routine, competent and discriminating users, develop a range of skills, and show leadership and innovation in the use of the technologies. On the road to 2001, schools are directed to develop curriculum, and teaching and learning strategies; improve and accelerate teachers' confidence and skills through professional development opportunities; develop an integrated organisational plan; and identify leadership/administrative staff objectives.

In addition to the learning technology plan and implementation strategy developed by each school, statewide mechanisms will be instituted to support implementation of learning technologies. These include negotiation between general managers (schools) and principals to ensure that the objectives are reflected in the principals' professional goals; school charters with a clear statement on `the role of learning technologies in the development of improved learning outcomes for students' (p. 24); the use of learning technologies as a criterion for principal class selection; and learning technologies and understanding as part of the annual review and performance management process for school staff. Getting schools up to speed with technology appears to be the number one item on the education agenda in Victoria.

Direct reference is made to the technologies' `potential to enhance the quality of teaching and learning' (p. 8). Technologies are seen as essential if students are to `operate successfully and confidently in a technologically enhanced community' (p. 9). The document lists the benefits of the new learning technologies. For students, these include student-centred learning; opportunities for collaboration, local and global; new roles; the acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitudes essential `for a successful and fulfilling life in the next millennium' (p. 10). For teachers, the benefits include a wider range of teaching strategies; opportunities to meet the needs of all students; access via the Internet to resources, collegial and professional associations, and new roles; and streamlined administration. For schools, the benefits include: stimulated students, empowered teachers, partnerships with business, academic and community organisations; innovative staffing practices; and more effective team approaches.

Learning technologies also defines the challenges facing the implementation of a new technologies policy as access/infrastructure/resources; content development; and professional development. Continuing with the policy of devolution described in the Schools of the Future policy, it promotes school-based implementation and includes suggestions about how to go about achieving the goals in a systematic way.

Accompanying the Learning technologies statement (Department of Education, 1998a), the Learning technologies teachers' capabilities statement (Department of Education, 1998b) is a resource package designed to support the planning of professional development in learning technologies. It aims to enable school leaders and individual teachers to assess professional development needs and suggest programs, resources and strategies for developing skills and capabilities. The guide offers a framework against which professional development can be targeted.

These two documents, and indeed most of the documents released since the mid-1990s in Victoria, use the terms `information technology', `technology' and `learning technology' somewhat loosely. The resulting confusion matters, for the effective response of schools and teachers depends on more or less shared and consistent understandings of what each term means. The Smith report paved the way for these policy initiatives by familiarising Victorian teachers with the notion of `learning technologies' and connecting its use with `enhanced' learning and teaching. However there has been little questioning of why it may be problematic to juxtapose the two constructs, `learning' and `technology', nor whether `enhanced' pedagogical opportunities for students and teachers are in fact facilitated when the technologies are used. The employment of such rhetoric represents a somewhat naive response to the possibilities, and the problems associated with the use of new technologies (Snyder, in press). Explanations of power and the technologies of power should avoid being totalising. Clearly the technologies are not neutral, neither are they wholly good nor wholly evil.

The Learning technologies statement (Department of Education, 1998b) is part of the family of Victorian policy documents related to Schools of the Future. It represents an explicit, top-down policy imperative in which consultation was minimal. It could be that if consultative approaches had been built into the process, school communities may have given greater commitment to the policy prescriptions of Schools of the Future, with improved chances for their long-term survival and for positive educational outcomes. It will be of interest over the next few years to examine the extent to which the Victorian statement on Learning technologies is effective in achieving its somewhat corporate objectives.

The paper versions of these documents (Department of Education, 1998a, 1998b), which can also be accessed at the Department's Web site (Department of Education, Victoria 1999), have a corporate look, content and style (Symes, 1998), in line with the tenor of these market-oriented times. The objectives are laid out, the methods of accomplishing them suggested, the required outcomes determined. The failure to conform is associated with undesirable consequences, often tied to funding. These policy documents offer teachers and schools visions of what school learning, mediated by the use of the new technologies, could be like, but do not go much further. They are conceded primarily with the manufacture of images--images of a sleek, efficient, technologised, corporate education system, conveyed in part by the glossy packaging of policy statements (Symes, 1998). The sobering reality is that, most likely, the visions are destined to remain in the realm of images because there are not enough money and resources to make them materialise. There will inevitably be great variability in the extent to which the different elements recommended are taken up, despite increased government funding of technology.

Funding, targeted at providing students and teachers with computers, has increased dramatically in Victoria, as it has in most states. In 1998 the Government committed $51.4 million for access to computers, the Internet, online curriculum materials and technology training for teachers (Department of Education, 1998c). The Department aims to reduce the student/computer ratio to one computer per four students within two years, and teachers can lease ACER brand computers for a few hundred dollars annually. At the same time, policy statements require administrators and teachers to change their professional practices to accommodate the new technologies. Change is necessary, school communities are told, to equip students for post-school futures in which the use of new technologies is integral. Work and lifelong learning opportunities also will be enhanced, assert the documents, if schools meet their responsibilities to make students technologically literate (Department of Education, 1998b).

Clearly, in Victoria, there is a connection between policy initiatives and funding. The connection should not go unacknowledged, because it is so often absent in the policy environment. Indeed the absence of a direct link between policy and funding suggests that many educational policies can be dismissed as empty words. However, despite the funding of technology, dramatic changes in schools' policies and practices will not eventuate. There is nowhere near sufficient money to provide the range of material and human resources required to make the vision of a future-oriented, technologised state system of education a possibility.

It is not necessary to look far for an explanation. With all the good will in the world, the state system simply cannot compete with the level of resources available, for example, in the stronger schools within the private sector. It is unlikely that there will ever be sufficient money to fund the state schools to the same extent as the private schools. The fact that the states continue to subsidise the private schools becomes, in these times, even more paradoxical than it has ever been. As technology increasingly becomes one of the major ways in which public and private schools market themselves, the unbridgeable differences between the two systems, in terms of digital media and telecommunication resources, professional development opportunities and essential support services, become poignantly patent.

But the picture is more complex than a simple distinction between the public and private sectors. Within the public sector, all is not equal; deliberate policies aimed at differentiation have become the reality. Since the late 1980s, certain schools have been selected for special treatment in regard to technology. In Victoria, for example, `science and technology centres', `magnet schools' and the `navigator schools' project all have received special funding. The shift towards self-managing schools has also contributed to the emergence of privileged schools, positional leaders. As Marginson (1997) points out, what has eventuated is not the borderless, contestable market imagined in liberal theory. `Like Thatcher's system-market, it [is] ... vertically segmented. First, by the private-public division. Second, within government schooling, between positional leaders and the rest' p. 202).

Questions arising

This article has examined a small sample of policies relevant to the interface between literacy, technology and learning. The aim was not to provide comprehensive coverage but to illustrate why literacy educators need to pay attention. There are significant tensions, even contradictions, between policies at different levels. How are literacy educators to handle the requirements of the National Literacy Plan with its emphasis on `foundational [print-centred] literacy' while meeting the global phenomenon of the `technology literacy challenge'? How do they reconcile `back-to-basics' emphases, with their premium on teacher/expert-driven diagnosis, intervention, and drill-and-skill packages for elementary competency development, with the challenge to build a learning environment that looks beyond `foundational' literacy from the earliest opportunity? Further, how do literacy educators build a learning environment that `look[s] beyond "computer literacy" and consider[s] the importance of "information literacy" which takes into account the development of higher-order skills in processing information' (Tinkler et al., 1996, p. x)?

At a much more specific level, what does it mean to act on the principle of incorporating computers into effective learning in ways that ensure equitable access, participation, and effective outcomes for students? How is this policy requirement to be interpreted? Is it equitable access within the classroom walls or must individual students' out-of-school access, including to sources of expertise as well as to equipment, be taken into account? In a policy-driven era, where schools have had devolved to them responsibility and accountability for actualising policy, expressed in a few easy words--but behind which may lurk huge logistical challenges at the level of implementation--just how are educators to interpret and translate into practical action and material outcomes something as seemingly innocent as `ensuring equitable outcomes for students'?

And what are literacy educators to make of the claims in policy documents that the use of communication and information technologies, or rather so-called `learning technologies', enhances teaching and learning? Are they not once again being confronted with those historically familiar refrains that endow the latest technology with utopian promise--computers as panacea for complex educational challenges. Such claims resonate with the strains of technological determinism--the assumption that qualities inherent in the technologies themselves are responsible for changes in social and cultural practices (Snyder, 1997a). This perception of technology as `an independent entity, a virtually autonomous agent of change' (Marx & Smith, 1994, p. xi) is not new. Indeed, assigning technology the role of change agent pervades popular versions of history: the compass is seen as making possible Europe's colonisation of the world; the printing press is often acknowledged as the cause of the Reformation.

The popular discourse of technological determinism is typified by sentences in which `technology' is made the subject of an active predicate: `Computers enhance students' learning'; `Computers improve the quality of students' writing'; `Access to the Internet promotes internationalisation and engagement with different cultures'; `The World Wide Web democratises the availability of information'. In each case, a complex event is made to seem the outcome of a technological innovation.

If schools are to prepare students for a rapidly changing world, in which technology-mediated literacy practices are integral, then much more is needed than anachronistic notions of literacy promoted in tandem with government-endorsed, quick-fix literacy packages. The limitations of such approaches are patently obvious. They commodify literacy as an autonomous product which, once acquired, provides the basis for future learning (Street, 1984). They ignore the widely accepted understanding that views literacy practices as socially located, culturally sensitive and always ideological (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Street, 1984). Similarly, more is needed than governments' excessively enthusiastic, often market-driven efforts to technologise the curriculum without the guidance of research that might tell us whether learning is being improved.

A preferred future

There are other options. Principles such as free education, democratic forms and diversity might resume their place on the educational agenda. Released from the obsession with market considerations and the constraints they impose, education may once again be able to encourage innovation, even experimentalism, in pedagogy.

In the Afterword to Markets in education, Marginson (1997, p. 279) asserts that `marketisation is not inevitable'. He also warns, however, that the alternative is not a return to some romanticised past, before the advent of `markets', and prior concerns about issues of equality, better teaching and learning, cooperation and recognition of difference. We probably cannot go back to the old non-market structures and conditions, but we can do things differently. We can modify competition and its effects. Cooperation, for example, can ameliorate its impact. Subjecting to critique the ways in which the discourses of commercial considerations have impregnated how we talk and think about education may also diminish its impact. As Marginson points out: `Such strategies have their limits, but they point to a world beyond markets' (p. 281).

In a world beyond the commodification of literacy and empty claims about the promise of technology, there are possibilities for critical digital literacy education. Informed policy directives, appropriately resource& have the potential to guide teachers' effective use of the new technologies and may suggest ways to implement sound curriculum initiatives at the local level. But first, literacy, technology and learning must be viewed as intimately interconnected--not as separate enterprises. What literacy educators require are policies and the curriculum models flowing out of them that reflect this perspective and that are informed by a clear understanding of literacy and technology learning as social practice. Simply coupling the terms `technologies' and `learning' in a policy statement, without an explanation of why they may belong together, is not a solution. And it is always salutary to remember that research investigating electronic literacy practices at the school level suggests that, policy directives aside, language and literacy teachers are very slow to integrate the technologies into their teaching and learning (Lankshear et al., 1997; Lankshear & Snyder, in press), and when they do, it is often to achieve the same old purposes in the same old ways, just with new technologies. At the same time, policy documents such as Education and technology convergence (Tinkler et al., 1996) and even ersatz policy documents such as the Lo Bianco and Freebody (1997) book offer teachers and schools wider visions of what school learning, mediated by the use of the new technologies, could be like. They make innovative suggestions about the ways in which a curriculum designed for the future and new kinds of learning contexts may be achieved.

If one of the principal objectives of literacy education is to create opportunities for learners to become informed, articulate and critical contributors to society, then curriculum policies and practices need to engage directly with the operational, the cultural and the critical dimensions of technology-mediated literacy education (Lankshear et al., 1997; Lankshear ex Snyder, in press). This `3D' view of literacy and technology learning emphasises situated, `authentic' learning and cultural apprenticeship within a critical, sociocultural view of discourse and practice (Green, 1988, 1998). Rather than focusing on just technical competence, the 3D approach contextualises functional knowledge by giving direct attention to matters of culture, history and power (Green, 1988, 1998). Integral to this model is the understanding that all three dimensions need to be dealt with concurrently--none has priority over another. An integrated approach to literacy and technology education takes account of the three dimensions, all at the same time.

Professional development programs, preservice and postgraduate education have a key role to play here. They need to recognise literacy as social practice (Street, 1995) and to promote pedagogical models that may enable teachers to use the technologies to enhance students' learning. They also need to encourage teachers to look critically at current notions of `foundational' literacy and early intervention as the key to improving literacy outcomes (DEETYA, 1998). Moreover they need to consider the value of different formations of the important relationships between home, school and community (Freebody, Ludwig, & Gunn, 1995; Heath, 1983, 1986; Lankshear, 1998).

At a time when there is a flurry of activity in the policy arena to put literacy and new technologies on the school agenda, albeit in many instances separately, literacy educators can refuse or, at the very least, question whatever aspects of policy implementation they find unacceptable and look for ways to subvert it in practice. It means supporting constructions of literacy, technology and learning that are not market-driven and commodified. It means supporting constructions of literacy, technology and learning that are educationally expansive and informed by a critical, sociocultural view of discourse and practice.

Keywords

economic impact educational policy functional literacy information technology literacy education school policy

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Dr Ilana Snyder is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton Campus, Clayton, Victoria 3168.

Ilana Snyder Monash University