Literacy Definition for UAE Context
The definition of literacy has taken different approaches with others taking the social and cultural approach as others take the educational one. According to Ahmed (181), “literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts.” It encompasses a range of learning to enable one to attain his or her objectives, enhance personal capability and knowledge, as well as fully participate in society. Identification entails recognition of particular concepts as the individual attempts to acknowledge several issues. Understanding and interpretation deals with conceptualization of an idea and translating it in one’s language. Communication involves interactions with others as one attempts to voice his or her understanding of the concept while computation deals with the calculative moves a person is able to make.
Literacy is essential in modern society as it improves society’s know-how about the existence of various concepts and ideologies. Literacy is associated with knowledge expansion, and knowledge expansion is good both technological and economic advancement. UAE today applies such development in the creation of new ideas to improve their technological setting and uplift educational standards (Gremm, Barth, Fietkiewicz & Stock, 2018). For instance, the improved architectural development is as a result of ideation which basically originated from idea generation, concept understanding and ultimate development. However, the definition should include not only the identification, understanding, interpretation and communication but also application of the learnt concepts to the real world.
The major implication of literacy for grade two-five was expounding on the ability to communicate by improving the graders’ understanding of various concepts (Darling-Hammond et al. 2011). Additionally, literacy education would boost the children’s intelligence to promote their writing and reading capabilities that are essential for start-up brain development.