David Barton | |
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Born | Lancaster, United Kingdom | 25 June 1949
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Discipline | Linguist |
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Website | Barton on the website of Lancaster University |
David Barton (born 1949) is a British linguist. He is currently an honorary professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University,United Kingdom. [1] His research focuses on applied linguistics with a special focus on literacy,and academic writing. Barton's research also concentrates on the qualitative methodology such as ethnography in applied linguistics.
Barton has been a Professor of Language and Literacies at the Lancaster University since 1993. [2] He also served as the Director of the Lancaster Literacy Research Centre,which is a core partner in the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy.
On 26 January 2006,Barton's opinion on an article entitled The struggle to keep basic skills up to scratch was published on The Guardian. He said that "It is insulting to adults who have problems reading and writing to compare them to children. Adults with problems have the knowledge and experience of the world,and,mostly,lead normal lives. The comparison with children is silly - I wish I could surf the internet,programme the video and download music as quickly as a 12-year-old". [3]
Barton was a visiting professor at the University of Stavanger,Norway. [4] [5]
Barton is the life president of the Lancaster Literacy Research Centre at Lancaster University. [6]
Barton's research focuses on all aspects of language online,including the interaction of words and images,multilingual issues,changes to vernacular practices and learning.
Barton's book,Literacy:An introduction to the ecology of written language,has been published twice. First it was published in 1994 and later in 2007. Michael Stubbs said that literacy emphasises the social approaches to literacy,as opposed to the merely psychological approaches which dominated the field of literacy for many years. [7]
In his book entitled Local literacies:reading and writing in one community,Barton and his co-author (Hamilton) focused on a particular community in Britain by analysing how people use literacy in their everyday lives. Their exploration provides a description of literacy at one segment in time,and also explores the nature and significance of communication to people,households and communities. [8]
Between 2002 and 2009,Barton's research was funded by the Department for Education and Skills as part of a national research and development consortium,the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC) to support the major government initiative Skills for Life. [9]
In an article entitled Redefining Vernacular Literacies in the Age of Web 2.0,published in Applied Linguistics in 2013,Barton and Lee examined the characteristics of vernacular literacies on Web 2.0,focusing on the writing activities performed on the photo-sharing website Flickr.com. Their study showed that people draw upon a large array of multi-lingual and multi-modal resources to project new global identities. The writing practices found on Flickr are often changing and new ones are formed out of existing ones. [10]
In a research article entitled Researching writing across the lifespan:The value of literacy studies for highlighting social and contextual aspects of change,published in Writing and Pedagogy in 2019,Barton and his colleagues (Karin Tusting,Sharon McCulloch,Uta Papen,Diane Potts) argued that shifts in material,social and institutional dimensions of context have a huge effect on what individuals write and on the writing practices that they develop. They also emphasised the role of changing tools for writing and values around writing,and the importance of transformations in identity and relationships. In addition,they argued that the tradition of literacy studies research,drawn on by all the projects described in their journal article,provides the theoretical and methodological resources to approach such aspects of academic writing development across the lifespan. [11]
Barton has publications in several journals such as Applied Linguistics,TESOL Quarterly,Writing &Pedagogy,Discourse,Context and Media,Journal of the European Association of Languages for Specific Purposes,Journal of Child Language,Situated literacies:Reading and writing in context,and Language and education. [12]
Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words,humans in literate societies have sets of practices for producing and consuming writing,and they also have beliefs about these practices. Reading,in this view,is always reading something for some purpose;writing is always writing something for someone for some particular end. Beliefs about reading and writing and their value for society and for the individual always influence the ways literacy is taught,learned,and practiced over the lifespan.
Skills for Life was the national strategy in England for improving adult literacy,language (ESOL) and numeracy skills and was established as part of the wider national Skills Strategy to increase the numbers of young people and adults with adequate skills. The strategy was launched by the Prime Minister,Tony Blair,in March 2001.
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters,symbols,etc.,especially by sight or touch.
Multiliteracy is an approach to literacy theory and pedagogy coined in the mid-1990s by the New London Group. The approach is characterized by two key aspects of literacy - linguistic diversity and multimodal forms of linguistic expressions and representation. It was coined in response to two major changes in the globalized environment. One such change was the growing linguistic and cultural diversity due to increased transnational migration. The second major change was the proliferation of new mediums of communication due to advancement in communication technologies e.g the internet,multimedia,and digial media. As a scholarly approach,multiliteracy focuses on the new "literacy" that is developing in response to the changes in the way people communicate globally due to technological shifts and the interplay between different cultures and languages.
James Gee is a retired American researcher who has worked in psycholinguistics,discourse analysis,sociolinguistics,bilingual education,and literacy. Gee most recently held the position as the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University,originally appointed there in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Gee has previously been a faculty affiliate of the Games,Learning,and Society group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is a member of the National Academy of Education.
A significant construct in language learning research,identity is defined as "how a person understands his or her relationship to the world,how that relationship is structured across time and space,and how the person understands possibilities for the future". Recognizing language as a social practice,identity highlights how language constructs and is constructed by a variety of relationships. Because of the diverse positions from which language learners can participate in social life,identity is theorized as multiple,subject to change,and a site of struggle.
A dialogue journal is an ongoing written interaction between two people to exchange experiences,ideas,knowledge or reflections. It is used most often in education as a means of sustained written interaction between students and teachers at all education levels. It can be used to promote second language learning and learning in all areas.
Norbert Schmitt is an American applied linguist and Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. He is known for his work on second-language vocabulary acquisition and second-language vocabulary teaching. He has published numerous books and papers on vocabulary acquisition.
James Robert Martin is a Canadian linguist. He is Professor of Linguistics at The University of Sydney. He is the leading figure in the 'Sydney School' of systemic functional linguistics. Martin is well known for his work on discourse analysis,genre,appraisal,multimodality and educational linguistics.
Brian Vincent Street was a professor of language education at King's College London and visiting professor at the Graduate School of Education in University of Pennsylvania. During his career,he mainly worked on literacy in both theoretical and applied perspectives,and is perhaps best known for his book Literacy in Theory and Practice (1984).
Charles Alderson is a British linguist. He is currently an honorary professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University,United Kingdom. His research focuses on language assessment.
Martin Bygate is a British linguist. He is currently an honorary professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University,United Kingdom. His research focuses on applied linguistics with a special focus on tandem language learning,pedagogical grammar and task-based language learning.
Rosalind Ivanić is a Yugoslav-born British linguist. She is currently an honorary professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University,United Kingdom. Her research focuses on applied linguistics with a special focus on literacy,intertextuality,multimodal communication,adult literacy,educational linguistics,critical language awareness,punctuation,and second language writing. Along with Theo van Leeuwen and David Barton,she is considered one of the most prominent researchers on literacy.
Keith Johnson is a British linguist. He is currently an emeritus professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University,United Kingdom. His research focuses on applied linguistics with a special focus on second language acquisition and language teaching.
Greg Myers is an American linguist. He is currently an Emeritus professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University,United Kingdom. His research focuses on applied linguistics with a special focus on critical discourse analysis.
Alison Mackey is a linguist who specializes in applied linguistics,second language acquisition and research methodology. She is currently a professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on applied linguistics and research methods.
The Sydney School is a genre-based writing pedagogy that analyses literacy levels of students. The Sydney School's pedagogy broadened the traditional observation-based writing in primary schools to encompass a spectrum of different genres of text types that are appropriate to various discourses and include fiction and non-fiction. The method and practice of teaching established by the Sydney School encourages corrective and supportive feedback in the education of writing practices for students,particularly regarding second language students. The Sydney School works to reflectively institutionalise a pedagogy that is established to be conducive to students of lower socio-economic backgrounds,indigenous students and migrants lacking a strong English literacy basis. The functional linguists who designed the genre-based pedagogy of the Sydney School did so from a semantic perspective to teach through patterns of meaning and emphasised the importance of the acquisition of a holistic literacy in various text types or genres. ‘Sydney School’is not however an entirely accurate moniker as the pedagogy has evolved beyond metropolitan Sydney universities to being adopted nationally and,by 2000,was exported to centres in Hong Kong,Singapore,and parts of Britain.
Luke William Harding is an Australian linguist. He is currently a professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University,United Kingdom. His research focuses on language assessment with a special focus on listening assessment,pronunciation assessment,and diagnostic language assessment. He is the current editor-in-chief of the journal,Language Testing.
Marcia Elizabeth Farr is an American sociolinguist and ethnographer;she is an Emerita Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago,as well as an Emerita Professor of Education and English at the Ohio State University.
Mary J. Schleppegrell is an applied linguist and Professor of Education at the University of Michigan. Her research and praxis are based on the principles of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL),a theory derived from the work of social semiotic linguist Michael Halliday. Schleppegrell is known for the SFL-based literacy practices she has continuously helped to develop for multilingual and English language learners throughout her decades long career,which she began as an educational specialist before transitioning to the field of applied linguistics. As a result,her publications demonstrate a deep understanding of both the theories and practices related to teaching and learning.