The changing face of literacy policy in Victoria

In the transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century, literacy has undergone a fundamental change in the shift from page to screen as the dominant basis for communication. In a communications environment characterised by multimodality - integration of modes of linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial modes of meaning - young people require a broadened repertoire of literacy capacities.
Educational authorities with responsibility for literacy policy have responded in terms of curriculum, and assessment advice within a context of rapidly changing forms of multimodal communication. This paper details the early twenty-first century response of one educational authoríty, the Department of Education, Victoria, in reviewing early years literacy curriculum and assessment in light of the rapid developments in digital communications.