Repositioning online reading to a central location in the language arts

This chapter proposes that online reading and comprehension must take a central position in policy and curriculum if students are to be appropriately prepared for work and leisure. It underpins the theories of disciplinary literacy, new literacies, materiality and multimodality through which the authors argue that online reading requires both traditional and new reading practices that must be part of classroom teaching. The authors believe that a central focus for reading instruction today should be to develop students’ meaning making and learning skills when working with the complex information resources that are presented in online contexts. The chapter explores the most useful theory, research, and practice that might inform a repositioning of online reading and reading instruction to a central location in schools around the world. It considers “movement” to be recorded visual text such as a film clip as well as animation of characters or text.