19th European Conference on Literacy
The 19th European Conference on Literacy in Klagenfurt, Austria, 13–16 July 2015.
The main conference language is English. It is possible to present in any other European language.
- The registration for the European Conference is online! Please update your websites and spread the news among your networks! https://conference.aau.at/event/15/registration/register#/register
- Notification of accepted proposals: End of February 2015
‘Literacy’ names a constantly dynamic social and cultural phenomenon. It has been, is, and will continue to be transformed by social change, as well as by the potentials of emerging technologies for representation and communication. New potentials for the production of texts and of forms of writing – of newly shaping texts – constantly develop; yet traditional forms of written communication, of reading and writing continue. As a consequence, the present “landscape of literacy” includes ‘traditional’, linguistically complex, monomodal texts and genres, as well as rapidly developing contemporaneous multimodal text-ensembles: of often very short texts, in new genres (e.g. tweets, ‘posts’ to blogs, face-book entries), linguistically closer often to spoken than to (traditional) written utterances.
To participate fully in this complex ‘literate’ and continuously differentiating society, all of us will need a wider range of experiences than hitherto. It is a world that demands an expansion of facility in reading and writing, and, as a consequence of literacy teaching and promotion. Effective teaching and promotion rests on differentiated knowledge about the social environments of reading and writing, about available resources, and knowledge about kinds of texts and their associated media. All pose challenges to (the learning of) reading and writing. A central aim of literacy research is to produce knowledge about the shaping of frames, of resources, and of the preconditions for successful learning and teaching, in short, of promoting a full sense of literacy.
The 19th European Conference on Literacy will offer a platform for the findings of current research into the range of contemporary forms and uses of literacy in everyday settings: be it the home, kindergartens, school or beyond school, in institutions of teacher training, in libraries, in the context of social work, in text-design and publishing, in (fictional and non-fictional) media programmes, in social media, in sites formal and informal. This platform will make it possible to relate these findings – with their theoretical and methodological focus – to the questions of learning and teaching of reading and writing, of uses and forms of literacy, traditional as well as new. In exchange and discussion of knowledge and experiences, of proposals and hypotheses, the Conference provides a platform for bringing literacy researchers and literacy educators together in a shared and strengthened project of developing literacy – in its many forms, uses and genres, including the aesthetic experience and pleasure of literature – as an essential component of democratic action, interaction and participation.
The conference is organized in cooperation with IDEC – International Development in Europe Committee of the International Reading Association.
More information will be provided here:
- on ALA’s website: www.lesenundschreiben.at
- on our Facebook-page: www.facebook.com/literacyaustria
- on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LiteracyAustria.
We are very much looking forward to your participation in the conference and to welcome you in Austria!
Dr. Margit Böck, President
Austrian Literacy Association
University of Klagenfurt
ALA – Austrian Literacy Association / Österreichische Gesellschaft zur Erforschung und Förderung des Lesens und Schreibens c/o Lesezentrum Steiermark
Eggenberger Allee 15a, 8020 Graz, Austria
M: office/at/lesenundschreiben.at