Literacy Theories for the Digital Age

This book critically reviews essential approaches to literacy research and practice in the digital age while showing the relationships between these vital paradigms. This indispensable volume also introduces sensory literacies – a new approach with powerful potential for today's learning environments.

Kathy A. Mills is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Kathy's research interests include literacy, digital media, education research paradigms, critical sociology, ethnography, classroom observation, discourse analysis, and multimodal analysis. She is Associate Editor of the Australian Educational Researcher and her previous works include The Multiliteracies Classroom (Multilingual Matters, 2011).

Kathy A. Mills is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Kathy's research interests include literacy, digital media, education research paradigms, critical sociology, ethnography, classroom observation, discourse analysis, and multimodal analysis. She is Associate Editor of the Australian Educational Researcher and her previous works include The Multiliteracies Classroom (Multilingual Matters, 2011).

As literacy practices mutate in the digital era, research must evolve, and yet curricula still appear
to lag behind. Mills addresses her book to graduate students of education, so that they may gain a
vital introduction to some of the key theories that shape literacy education in the digital turn.

Jose Ignacio Aguilar Río, Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 University, France:

Kathy A. Mills' work is truly impressive. The wealth of references contained within the volume makes certainly for a useful reading. But that is not the main asset of the book. What comes through as the strong point of Mills' work is that she has attempted to depict as large, comprehensive and complex a picture as possible of the multiple meanings that “literacy” may have in such a diverse global context as that of our planet in the 21st century.

Brian V. Street, King’s College London, UK:

Literacy studies is moving on and Kathy Mills is helping us move forward, through new approaches, such as socio-spatial literacies, socio-material literacies, and sensory literacies. Many may be wary of all that technical language, but Mills signals her ability to make it comprehensible and leaves the reader with some control to, as the author says, take their own lines of flight. Enjoy the flight!

James Paul Gee, Arizona State University, USA:

Digital and social media, multimedia, multimodality, and massive social and cultural changes in our global world are transforming what literacy is and how we ought to study it. Kathy Mills’ book is, by far and away, the best guide yet to this new world. It is the New 'New Literacy Studies'.