Preface
The contemporary age is characterized by knowledge and information production, industrialization, and increasing cultural and global integration. For individuals and professionals to thrive in the global community, they need to possess new skills, competencies, and dispositions as emerging technologies, industries, and relations have become more complex and intricate. In response to the needs and demands of the 21st century learners and context, the Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers (PPST) was formulated. It stipulates the expectations of teachers’ increasing levels of knowledge, practice, and professional engagement. At the same time, the standards allow for teachers’ growing understanding, applied with increasing sophistication across a broader and more complex range of teaching/learning situations (DO 42, 2017). The standards characterize 21st century teachers as lifelong learners and functional and multi-literate individuals. In consonance with the PPST, the outcomes-based curriculum for pre-service teacher education put premium on the development of the pedagogical content knowledge and 21st century skills and competencies of future teachers (CHED memo no. 74 and 75 s.2017). In fact, one of the professional education courses in both elementary and secondary education is Building and Enhancing New Literacies across the curriculum. This course introduces the concepts of new literacies in the 21 st century as an evolving social phenomenon and shared cultural practices across learning areas. The 21st century literacies shall include (a) globalization and multi cultural literacy, (b) social literacy, (c) media literacy, (d) financial literacy, (e) cyber/digital literacy, (f) eco-literacy, (g) arts and creativity literacy, and (h) critical literacy. This book is unique in examining new literacies through multiple theoretical lenses and in highlighting critical literacy in the list to put premium on the importance of critical thinking and evaluation of information and sources in the contemporary information and knowledge production age. It has a clearly defined instructional design that aids the teacher in facilitating
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