Curriculum as a safe place: Parental perceptions of new literacies in a rural small town school

Abstract

New literacies have challenged all players in the educational enterprise in manydifferent ways. Youth are now engaged in literacies that extend well beyond thesafe and respected traditional texts that their parents experienced in school. In thisresearch we analyze parents' perceptions of the relative educational value of theirchildren's different textual engagements both in and out of school. We find thatparents employed a textual hierarchy of educational value with the traditionalhard copy school textbook and literature at the top of the pyramid, and plasticvirtual and visual texts at the bottom. These assessments are understood within aframework that employs the idea of safety to understand how parents navigate andnegotiate the often risky literate engagements their children enjoy.