Group Feedback Annotations, Spring 2013, p.

Feedback on Reading Annotations

Use the feedback you have received on these group reading annotation of Theorizing the Space for Literacy Practices to revise and resubmit your entries. After you incorporate the commentary, these annotations should be closer to what you want to shoot for on your individual annotations for future class readings.

Excellent annotations, but there are still some items that can be fleshed out to complete the annotation summary.
Annotation One: Bartlett, L. & Holland, D. (2002). Theorizing the space of literacy practices. In Ways of Knowing, (pp. 10-22) Brighton: University of Brighton Press. Bartlett and Hollands article on literacy practices focuses on the importance of literacy and education in certain figured worlds. Most prominently, the authors give examples of life in Brazil. They explain Brazilians different definition of education and go into detailed stories about different citizens experiences with literacy shaming. In Brazil, it is not at all uncommon for someone to be judged based on the pigment of their skin as well as their ability to speak and write Portuguese correctly. The article also talked about how literacy shaming is so common in Brazil that sometimes the guilty party is unaware they are even putting someone down. There was a lot of talk about the adults in Brazil that attend classes to learn how to properly read, write, and speak. It is quite a contrast from America where almost all children attend public or private school at an early age and are taught how to read and write. Bartlett and Holland do a great job using Brazil as an example to easily define figured worlds, actors, and artifacts. Had they used America as an example I know I wouldnt have grasped the concept nearly as easily. Annotation Two: Bartlett, L. & Holland, D. (2002). Theorizing the space of literacy practices. In Ways of Knowing,(pp. 1022) Brighton: University of Brighton Press. The article mainly introduced the concepts figured worlds, artifact, identities in practice and defined the notion of literacy in terms of these concepts. Figured worlds are realms created through societies perceptions in which different characters are identified and certain acts are valued. Those acts are performed by actors who use them in order to seek justification and be able participate in those figured worlds. The figured worlds are also bounded by certain artifacts which are given certain significant and used to open up those worlds by being used as tools in the process of cultural production. These three concepts come all together in a way where the artifacts are used by the actors in certain communities or "figured worlds in order to create social identities. Literacy practices are characterized based on the valued social aspects at the communities they are identified at, which includes everything that governs those communities interactions. In this article they extended the theory of social practice which suggests that actors and practice are influenced by social structure. They redefined literacy. They connected literacy to the figured worlds in which it is defined at and introduced the importance of artifacts in those worlds and the role they play in identifying literacy. In this article literacy shaming was an important issue that played a great role in defining literacy in the Brazilian community. Literacy was related to the ability to speak and socialize, rather than reading and writing as in that community speaking and being vocal is associated with higher education. Not being educated affects ones ability to communicate due to their fear of being shamed or corrected by educated people. Maria and Eunisa were two of the participants in this study. Neither of them received an education as children therefore had to seek it through the GNO programs, which encouraged sociability and speaking up in order to eliminate shame and declare equality.

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Overall, these annotations meet the expectations of what should be in a summary; however, there are still a few minor revisions to still incorporate.
Annotation Three: 1 L. Bartlett & D. Holland (2002). Theorizing the space of literacy practices. In Ways of Knowing, (pp. 10- 22) Brighton: University of Brighton Press. In the article Theorizing the space of literacy practices Lesley Bartlett, assistant professor in the department of international ad transcultural education at teachers college Columbia university, and Dorothy Holland, Boshamer distinguished professor of anthropology at the university of north Carolina at chapel hill, express the importance of literacy studies not only by stating, A focus on literacy practices incorporates not only the social, political, and historical contexts of literacy events but also the relations of social power that envelop them 1(p. 11) but by taking it upon themselves to expand on Bourdieus social practice theory. Instead of solely expressing the theory based off of habitus. Bartlett and Holland expanded on this theory by adding artifacts and figured worlds. Figured worlds are generally, but not limited to, settings in which actors take on roles and interact with a wide variety of artifacts. Also note that artifacts are not limited to only being physical objects but emotions or even thoughts a well. In the article Bartlett and Holland further exemplified this by observing the educational figured world in Brazil. Brazils education has a great effect on its community. In which ultimately segregates those of generally a lighter skin complexion, who have greater education, from those of a darker skin complexion, who have a lesser education. This trend then results in the latter being subject to literacy shaming in the community because as stated by one of Bartletts informants If you speak well, youll know how to write well.... If you read well, youll pronounce the words right. 1(p. 15) In the end Bartlett and Holland realized that this is simply is not a result of social structures influencing actors and practice, but more specifically, Literacy shame is a physical and emotional sediment of social structures in the habitus 1(p. 16) or as stated earlier an artifact within the set figured world.

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Annotation Four: Bartlett, L. & Holland, D. (2002). Theorizing the space of literacy practices. In Ways of Knowing, (pp. 10-22) Brighton: University of Brighton Press. Theorizing the space of literacy practices covers a wide range of topics including: figured worlds, literacy practices, literacy shaming, education in Brazil, and extension of theory. All of these points tie in together with each other throughout the article. Figured worlds include actors that are held to a higher standard than the normal people. These actors have different and specific roles inside these figured worlds. The actors have objects and emotions, called artifacts, that they use to make correlations to past events or situations that shaped their opinions and views. The actors in these figured worlds often have many literacy practices that they participate in. These can be socializing with his or her peers, participating in events that interest him or her, and many others. Often times, if these actors do not meet the expectations of their peers while participating in these practices, they are put down or criticized for not being as literate as others. This criticism is a major problem in Brazil. In this particular area, people of lighter skin are thought to be more educated and literate than those of dark skin. In some schools located here, there is a focus on participating in social conversation with peers. Even though this seems like it would benefit everyone, all students do not believe it is helping with his or her education. These students feel like there should be more of a focus on the historical ways of regular schooling such as reading texts and things of that nature. Bartlett and Holland feel that these historical practices are just scratching the surface. They believe that the theory of social practices should be expanded to include cultural settings, images, and other artifacts.

Annotation Five: Annotations for Theorizing the Space for Literacy Practices After reading this article, our group has concluded the many aspects of a literacy practice. We found five key points throughout the article about different natures of literacy practices that Bartlett and Holland observed in Brazil. The first of these key points were Literacy Studies which comprised of lower class Brazilians who were considered illiterate since they were unable to speak as well as the upper class. The second was literacy shaming which was where the upper more educated people in society would correct and make fun of the lower educated people of society. The third aspect was figured worlds which is comprised of actors, artifacts and figured worlds. The fourth is education in Brazil which included the lower class going back to school in order to gain literacy in order to gain a higher status in society. The fifth and final point the group found was manners which is Knowing how to enter and how to leave. In Bartlett and Hollands first key point in the article it talks about the different discourse groups in Brazil and how there are two main groups, the upper class and the lower illiterate class. Even though the lower class was not completely illiterate, they were not as educated and many of them could not speak or write very well, this labeled them as illiterate to the upper social group who was very educated and knew how to speak and write very well. (Bartlett and Holland 2002, 11) The first topic directly correlates with the second topic which is literacy shaming. Due to the lower classs illiteracy the upper class would often correct and point out all of the fault s that they could find in the way that the lower class spoke and wrote. In the article they give an example of a woman who talked about how she was embarrassed to go around the upper class because she did not know how to speak Portuguese very well and every time she misspoke a word or mispronounced a phrase the upper class would not hesitate to point out every error they could find in her pronunciation. (Bartlett and

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Holland 2002, 16) The article also talked about how when the people would go to register to vote in Brazil the upper class would always flaunt about how they could write well, whereas the lower class would have to use the Father of donkeys which was the nickname given to the inkpad used to give a thumb print if you were unable to write. (Bartlett and Holland 2002, 17) The third topic in the article was figured worlds. Figured worlds come together when you have actors and artifacts working together to make something, like in this case, a classroom. The figured world best described in this article was a class room since the article was all about literacy studies. The classroom describe in this article was all about teaching someone how to become more able to communicate more effectively through both written and verbal communication. The article talked about how the teacher tried to be more like a friend to the students instead of a teacher and the class usually consisted on the entire class having a discussion instead of having the lecture and book style of learning. (Bartlett and Holland 2002, 19) The actor(s) in this circumstance would be the teacher and the students since they are playing a part in making a class room style figured world. The artifacts would be everything else that allows them to make the classroom style figured world, i.e. desks, chairs, pencils, and notebooks. The fourth topic was education in Brazil. This topic discussed how the lower class people would go back to school in order to try and gain a better social status by getting an education. In the article it talked about how in these classrooms the teacher tried to make it as relaxed an environment as she could, this included; mingling with the students instead of staying behind her desk, discussing topics that her students were comfortable with, and having an enjoyable conversation by making small talk and jokes with the students. (Bartlett and Holland 2002, 19) There were some students that did not like this way of teaching and left the program saying that the teachers did not act like a teacher saying that it wasnt real school since they did not stress book knowledge. (Bartlett and Holland 2002, 19) This also goes with the figured world since they said things like the teachers did not act like teachers normally do which plays into the figured world aspect of it. The fifth and final aspect of the article was about manners. The article tells about how education also means having manners and denotes proper conduct, which relied heavily on physical and verbal signifiers. (Bartlett and Holland 2002, 14) The article also specified that with manners also comes an element of ethics which is the equivalent to being a good and decent person. (Bartlett and Holland 2002, 15) One of the literacy students said that manners was not messing with other peoples things and if you went to work you respect your bosses and dont mess with their things, this holds true to the ethics part as well since it would be disrespectful to mess with other peoples things without permission. (Bartlett and Holland 2012) The article sums up manners with This aspect of being an educated person incorporates an element of morality: it is the equivalent to being a decent and honorable person. (Bartlett and Holland 2002, 15)