Applying dialogic theory to illuminate the relationship between literacy education and teaching thinking in the context of the Internet Age

Abstract

I begin with the argument that literacy practices taught in school are not external to thinking but that they shape both how we think and how we value thinking. I use some findings of neuroscience and a discussion of the Flynn effect to argue that thinking changes in history as a result of literacy education and changes in literacy practices. The advent of the Internet as the new emerging dominant mode of communication restores some of the affordances of oracy but in a new form. I examine some of the new literacies that are emerging mediated by the Internet and apply dialogic theory to argue for a convergence between the idea of teaching thinking and the idea of teaching for literacy in the context of the Internet Age. This response is not another ‘new literacy' but the proposal that we locate both literacy education and the project of teaching thinking within a larger context, the context of dialogu.