"We're tryna improve our life everyday": Digital literacy in policy and practice
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this study, drawing on a Foucauldian framework, I explore how through processes of governmentality, neoliberal discourse is taken up in both policy (governance) and adult learner subjectivity (self-governance) pertaining to digital skills. To do this, I conducted critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Alberta’s Living Literacy policy framework, then used ethnographic methods to observe a basic digital literacy classroom and conduct interviews with adult learners. My findings indicate that literacy is a useful area for investigating how neoliberalism and entrepreneurial subjectivity are (re)produced in policy and social practice. This is done through individualizing and responsibilizing discourse at both policy and individual levels. However, I also identify how, despite the strong neoliberal tendencies of the policy, adult learners understand literacy as extending beyond the economic. For them, literacy is also a practice of community, representation, and health. Using these findings, I argue that literacy is a practice for improving one’s life – though not solely through economic means, despite the policy’s attempt to quantify and invest in literacy as an economic project toward innovation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.047 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".