‘Compliance Literacies’ versus embedding

'Literacy Embedding' often features as a compliance issue, and is considered something we 'put into' our teaching. In my opinion, literacy is what emerges from our teaching. There is a crucial difference between these two opposing views.

The challenge for educators is to make literacy embedding relevant to their practice, in the face of misconceptions about what, and how literacy should feature our everyday practice.

Here in New Zealand, (and other examples exist internationally), on one hand literacy might be considered a series of additional demands upon the educator – the National Assessment Tool, Professional Development predicated to the TEC Learning Progressions, Living Curriculum requirements that we ‘embed’ literacy. 

These might be broadly described as ‘compliance literacies’.

As well, there is an expectation that we will integrate ‘literacy embedding’ into our classroom practice even though compliance-focused literacy engenders a sense of alienation from such processes not only for the educator, but for the student alike.

Such conflicts are contrary to the multiple and diverse qualities of literacy as a social practice, but does not address the challenge to evidence literacy embedding in classroom practice, as it emerges from learning outcomes, rather than as adjunct to them. The understandable misapprehension about Literacy ‘embedding’  is partly because various agencies promote the view  that we put literacy into our teaching, or ‘embed it’.  One of the ways this can be seen is how the use of the Assessment Tool at the beginning and end of semester appears to satisfy compliance demands that literacy embedding in courses is evidenced, when in fact it does not.

When Literacy as a compliance issue is submerged beneath other curricular demands, it also assists to promote the idea of literacy as an ‘add-on’. In effect, the autonomous notion of literacy is encouraged by a standardized approach which in turn encourages pedagogical practices dedicated to meeting compliance issues, which are not necessarily to the student’s advantage. Furthermore, to some extent, educator-student negotiations of compliance literacy are coloured by a common misapprehension that Learning Outcomes must reflect Literacy outcomes as if they are the same thing.