The European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) took place from the 6th to the 10th of September 2021 in Genova, with online attendance also available. Soledad Romero-Rodríguez, Celia Moreno-Morilla, Tania Mateos-Blanco and Eduardo García-Jiménez, members of the Literacies research group, presented the following communication:
New Literacy Studies and gender: a systematic review – Elena Guichot Muñoz y Ana María de la Calle Cabrera
Introduction
La corriente de investigación de los Nuevos estudios de alfabetización surge como una nueva forma de ver la alfabetización, lejos de su reducción a preguntas puramente lingüísticas, gramaticales, estructuralistas o centradas en la evaluación de habilidades específicas. Esta corriente observa la alfabetización como una práctica social a través de estudios etnográficos en los que comienza a percibirse la capacidad de acción de las personas. También analiza cómo las personas interactúan con los medios locales, la vida pública, la familia, y las actividades de ocio; y cómo esto afecta su alfabetización. Una de las premisas esenciales de esta nueva corriente de investigación es que las alfabetizaciones están entretejidas en los momentos en que se generan, y no tienen sentido fuera de él. Esto conduce a un cierto desempoderamiento del texto y de quien lo consume o produce, con la consecuente horizontalidad de poderes, y pone el foco en «un reensamblaje continuo de lo humano y lo más que humano”. La experiencia alfabetizada de la actividad del aula se analiza, por tanto, desde esta perspectiva de un «encuentro afectivo», no como una actividad aislada. Estas nuevas alfabetizaciones se acercan a aspectos como lo efímero, lo sensorial, lo vivencial, ya que enfatizan aspectos como la fluidez, el afecto y la emergencia (en el sentido de lo que emerge, lo espontáneo).
Los Nuevos estudios de alfabetización proporcionan un marco de análisis que se centra en el impacto social del aprendizaje de la alfabetización, es decir: estudiar la alfabetización desde una práctica situada es un enfoque sociocultural. Así, las prácticas de alfabetización están determinadas por aspectos del individuo como experiencias y elementos de identidad, y por tanto, aspectos como la raza, el género, la sexualidad o la edad son constructos sociales que interfieren en la forma en que se recibe la alfabetización.
For years, the discussion between literacy and gender has been relegated to the question of unequal access to education that has occurred throughout history in literacy targeting the binary gender structure. Clearly, the power of the social context affects the way in which literacy is received and given, which is itself gendered. However, approaches to literacy have been presented as a neutral skill. In the current era, some research is beginning to launch questions such as "what ways do educational discourses and practices simultaneously constitute students as gendered and literate subjects?". It is undeniable that there are certain constructions in literate practices according to the gender of individuals, as the presence of patriarchal ideology and gender inequality is known to interfere with the literacy process. In particular, the patriarchal social system evidences gender as a risk factor in minority groups. Based on this theoretical framework, it is interesting to learn how NEL research analyses and responds to literacy processes with a gendered approach.
Methodology
This paper presents a review of the literature and research carried out specifically on the New Literacy Studies with a focus on gender. Consequently, the methodology of the review work is followed in order to ensure systematisation, which in this case consists of developing a systematic review with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).The choice of this instrument lies in the purpose of asserting the rigorousness of the systematic review, as PRISMA has increased the quality of the works focused on systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
The development of the systematic review through PRISMA consists of four phases:
- Phase 1: Identification of research (scientific articles) on the object of study hosted in the WOS database (Web of Science Main Catalogue) and SCOPUS by filtering the following keywords: “New Literacy Studies”, “Literacy”, “gender”, “women”, “minorities”.
- Phase 2: Screening: (a) First screening of scientific articles according to inclusion/exclusion criteria in relation to the year of publications (between 2000 and 2020) and language (English) and, (b) Second screening of studies after elimination of duplicate papers and analysis of abstracts using Mendeley also considering as inclusion/exclusion criteria the identification of interventions for changing literacy outcomes of the population under study (women).
- Phase 3: Eligibility of articles for full text reading after following the protocol using the PRISMA-P checklist (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocols, 2015) and discarding due to access problems; and 4) inclusion of selected articles for review and analysis.
Expected outcomes/results
The systematic review carried out through PRISMA allows the delimitation of the literary framework in the last two decades in relation to the actions in the context of New Literacy Studies and the attention to the gender component. The protocol established in the monitoring of the phases of the methodology has led to an exhaustive filtering of the results found in the WOS and SCOPUS databases, evidencing the need for studies in this field to include the subject matter that has been the object of analysis in the review. In fact, the theoretical corpus found in the results of the initial searches already made it clear that the volume of this line of research was limited, as only 111 results were found in WOS and 238 results in SCOPUS in the first phase. These were reduced to 237 in the first screening of the second phase, and were minimised in subsequent phases. Among the findings, the inclusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) in literacy practices as an element of social transformation is particularly revealing. This shows ICT as an element that breaks with verticality and introduces aspects such as social inequality and the community component (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear & Leu, 2008). Thus, a broader review should consider how ICTs intercede in the practices of women immersed in patriarchal and minority cultures as they relate to the visual, the spatial and the digital, which implies investigating more specific issues such as materiality, framing, design and production of these new literacies.
English 
Spanish