Enhancing Digital Literacies with Adult English Language Learners: Theoretical and Practical Insights

Offering a new perspective on adult English language education, this book provides theoretical and practical insights into how digital literacies can be included in the learning programmes for newly arrived adults from migrant and refugee backgrounds.

Enhancing Digital Literacies with Adult English Language Learners takes readers inside Langfield, an adult community-based English language centre that supports the settlement and learning of this vulnerable group. Drawing on a six-month ethnographic study of Langfield’s work, the book explores the approach to teaching digital literacies and presents a range of perspectives, including those of the adult learners, the teachers, and the organisation’s CEO. The chapters present a holistic view of teaching digital literacies in the adult English language context by exploring: adult learners’ digital literacy practices in everyday life and their learning at Langfield; teachers' beliefs and practices about digital literacies; and the support offered to them through institutional resources, leadership, and professional learning. The book identifies exemplary practices, as well as areas for further development in Langfield’s work and offers a range of implications for practice, policy, and research.

Written in a detailed but accessible manner, this book contributes important insights into the strengths and needs of this unique and complex education sector. Addressing an area of uncertainty for many researchers, practitioners, leaders, and policy makers working within community-based learning contexts in Australia and internationally, this book will be an essential resource.

Ekaterina Tour is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Her research focuses on the digital literacies of children and adults from refugee and migrant backgrounds. It investigates the ways in which these groups use digital technologies in English as an Additional Language (EAL) for life, learning, and employment. Her research projects in EAL contexts have examined innovative teaching and learning with technologies, in-service and pre-service teachers’ experiences with digital literacies, teaching online during the Covid-19 pandemic, and technology use in culturally and linguistically diverse communities as they settle in Australia.

Edwin Creely is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His research focuses on creativity, poetry, literacy, digital pedagogies and literacies, and technology in learning. He has extensive experience as an educator in schools, and has worked in community-based education for decades. Edwin is especially interested in innovation and creative practices and bringing new models and perspectives to educational research. He has published in a range of journals and is a regular contributor to research and practice in literacy, creativity, and technology.

Peter Waterhouse is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His research and practice have explored literacy skills and needs, particularly adult literacy learning, across a wide range of contexts; from community settings to diverse workplaces and institutions. He is interested in how the culture and relationships within organisations shape the learning of those who live and work within them. He believes critical and creative literacies are essential to sustaining democracy and a decent life and hence provision of opportunities to develop these skills is fundamental to the ongoing quest for social justice.