Digital Reading Competences as a Foundation for School-Based Engagement with Cultural Texts in New Media Environments

Abstract

This article aims to propose a conceptual and didactic framework for the category of digital reading competences (DRC), understood as a complement to the school model of working with cultural texts. The starting point is two premises: (1) a diagnosis of the reading gap, understood as the temporary absence of selected forms of cultural texts from school education, resulting in a growing incompatibility between institutional and home-based reading practices; and (2) a description of quiet rebellion as a strategy through which students withdraw from imposed, linear models of reading in favor of interactive, performative, and participatory practices. The author argues that the contemporary “illegibility” of school reading results not only from a decline in interpretive competences but also from a systemic lack of tools enabling the recognition and development of reading practices under conditions of the modularity, multimediality, and procedurality of digital works. The main part of the article presents a definition of DRC and a component model encompassing navigational, selective-interpretive, performative, multimodal, and reflective competences. The article concludes with a package of teaching strategies operationalizing DRC in Polish studies, with an emphasis on the legitimization of fragmentary reading, reading decision-making practices, and meta-reflection on the reception process.