The 21st century, as I think no other has done in just the same way, has caused us to interrogate ideas and concepts that were previously unquestioned and perceived as self-evident: education, family, traditions, values, belonging or not belonging , even in some cases what is right and what is wrong.
The spread of communication, the invasiveness and encouragement of globalism – of regarding issues from international perspectives rather than from more localised national perspectives – have radically shaken previously held ideas and tenets. Allied with this has been the rise of a different and more insidious form of global conflict – terrorism, both external and home grown. Previously, for the West at least, there had been an increasingly comfortable accommodation of the multiculturalism that was so much part of the latter half of the 20th century; now it was not only superseded but dangerously eroded by fears of an increasingly simplistic and un-nuanced ‘other’. This paper will discuss the effects of this on education, family, traditions and values. It will claim that there is a need for a deeper aspect of literacy – Deep Literacy - that goes beyond the skills of reading and writing, speaking and listening, crucial as they are. It will describe deep literacy as that which generates moral and ethical imaginations and response to the ongoing challenge of differing cultural realities.
Speaker:
Professor Rosemary Johnston
Head of Academic Group, Education, Education Group
Professor of Education, Education Group
Director Australian Centre for Child and Youth: Culture and Wellbeing, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Professor Rosemary Johnston is Head of Education at UTS and Founding Director of the Australian Centre for Child and Youth: Culture and Wellbeing. This is an innovative interdisciplinary 21st century centre that integrates technology, research, teaching and practice in all fields pertaining to the culture and wellbeing of children and youth.
The Centre has staff and advisory expertise in areas that include: literacy; school education; indigenous education; children's health; curricula, including the proposed National Curriculum; children's literature and culture; drugs and alchohol abuse; parenting practices; healthy lifestyles for sports participation; child and family law; play and playground spaces; adolescents' online/digital/mobile cultures.
Professor Johnston is currently setting up and leading the Centre's interdisciplinary project, Literate Australia (PDF, 662kb), which is an umbrella for a number of cell projects that have specific outcomes relating to the education, culture and wellbeing of children and youth.
Literacy - and the idea of a literate nation - are not just educational issues but relate to and are influenced by health, parenting practices, communities and cultures of influence, and the larger sphere of government policies. Literate Australiais committed to developing community initiatives that enhance not only skills, but the imaginations and minds that help to generate creative and civil societies.
Previous appointments:
- Associate Dean Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Education UTS Semester 1 2008
- Director Teacher Education UTS 2004-2007
- H.W. Donner International Research Chair in the Faculty of Humanities at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, working with an interdisciplinary doctoral training program which included literature, language, semiotics, cultural studies, folklore, education and gender studies.
- Director of the Centre for Research and Education in the Arts (CREA) UTS 1998-2006. CREA's application, Creating Community ~ Connecting Communities, was shortlisted in the 2002 Australian Awards for University Teaching Institutional Award: Category 3 - Innovative and practical approach to the provision of educational services to the local and/or regional community..
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