Analyzing literacy practice: Grounded theory to model

2005

This is a study of the application in South Africa of a social practices approach to the study of literacy. A social practices approach conceptualizes literacy practices as variable practices which link people, linguistic resources, media objects, and strategies for meaning-making in contextualized ways. These literacy practices are seen as varying across broad social contexts, and across social domains within these contexts, and they can be studied ethnographically. I examine how this approach is applied across four critical themes of study in South Africa, namely: the uses and valuations of reading and writing by adults without schooling; the historical circumstances whereby literacy comes to be identified as a resource of European culture in colonial South Africa; children's early engagement with literacy in formal and informal contexts; and reading and writing in relation to electronic and digital media. I review examples of ethnographic research in each case, in which I have participated as a researcher, and examine how the approach has been applied, tested and modified in each case of its application. The research in each case showed literacy's incorporation in complex and variable ways in situated, located human activities. Whereas the first application of the social practices approach, that of the SoUL project detailed how literacy operated as everyday practice amongst people with little or no schooling, the research lacked a theoretical perspective to explain how these practices came to take the form and status that they did, as regards the influences upon them from outside the immediate settings that were studied. Over the subsequent studies I developed a revised approach to the study of literacy which detailed the explanatory usefulness of studying how literacy practices that network across larger domains than the local have effect on the construction of local practices, in both historical as well as contemporary examples. Literacy practices were not simply the products of local activity but involved rather the particular local application of communication technologies, language and artefacts that originated from outside the immediate social space. However, local applications involved original, indeterminate and varied uses of those resources.

Literacy is an important aspect of society and it is therefore not surprising that how it is defined, researched, measured and supported is often fiercely contested.

The term literacy is most commonly interpreted as being the ability to read and write. However, focusing on decoding and encoding leads to meaningless techniques that obscure a broader understanding of this complex cultural phenomenon. Literacy as a subject of scientific inquiry concerns both the myriad social practices of which the activities of reading and writing are an integral part and the multitude of sociocultural concepts, values and functions of what is considered a literate performance in a given situation. The focus, therefore, is on the contextual use of language and not on abstract, context-free structures or on written products of communication. Moreover, if reading and writing are essential elements of cultural practices, i.e., cultural ways of doing things, and make sense within groups and communities, they must, perforce, be seen as deeply interconnected with and inseparable from each other. Drawing on comparative socio-anthropological studies, critical studies on literacy have found that literacy practices had been historically embodied within religious, ethical, and ideological issues.

Proceedings of the 1996 World Conference on Literacy, 1996

Reviewing the research literature in literacy studies demands patience to deconstruct the multilayered meanings of the concept of literacy. Literacy is a loaded term that is also embedded in myths associated with social and economic progress, political democracy, social and educational mobility, and the development of cognitive skills. Graff (1995) reminds readers that literacy has historically represented and continues to represent different things to people. Scribner (1988) "unpackages literacy" by using the metaphors of "adaptation," "power," and "state of grace"-if students' literacy skills are at level they are in the adaptive mode, below level and they have fallen from grace, and above level they attain power or status. Viewed as an abstract set of decontextualized skills, literacy contributes to the creation of the "deficit" model in educational and social systems. This model has been applied in many remedial reading and writing programs at all educational levels. Ironically, attempts to teach literacy skills in the schools often restricts literacy development because of educators' lack of knowledge and awareness of the interweaving of social, cultural, and oral literacy contexts of language use and identity. Students' language use in other contexts dramatically conflicts with school discourse and many students fail to acquire higher literacy skills. "Multiliteracies" must be studied in many contexts to better understand their role in instruction and curriculum development. There is a pressing need to define and recognize "non-schooled" literacies associated with different mediums and tools, including the technological, visual, and mathematical, and literacies associated with using information technology. (Contains 58 references.) (NKA)

This article examines the potential of practitioner research to contribute to understandings of critical and transformative literacy theories. Drawing upon the work of intellectual historian Dominick LaCapra (2004), we investigate how practitioner research can reconcile theories proliferated from universities with those generated by practitioners, who conceptualise literacy from their work with students in classrooms and communities. Following a review of scholarship by literacy teachers, we examine examples of practitioner inquiry conducted in a graduate literacy course to discuss the following: What happens when school- and community-based practitioners are in dialogue with academic literature in the field of literacy? How can practitioner research encourage educators to develop their own working theories of literacy practice? And what can the broader field of literacy learn from activist practitioner researchers? In conclusion, we suggest several interconnected ways that practitioner research methodologies can inform more dialectical understandings of literacy practice and theory.

Developing literacy competencies has become a central component of educational policy in British Columbia (BC), with policies calling for province-wide assessment and school accountability. Based on the critical policy analysis (Blaikie & Soussan, 2000) of provincial and school district documents, complemented by semi-structured interviews of senior government officials, district-based administrators, and literacy coordinators, this article discusses how the synergistic effect of the policy discourses of accountability and assessment framed the ways of thinking, conceptually and practically, about literacy mainly in terms of its instrumental value in holding public schools accountable to performance indicators. The article concludes by discussing the necessity of redefining literacy to challenge the view of literacy as a mere set of technical and human skills for economic growth to shift the dialogue toward policy alternatives that view literacy as set of capabilities for sociocultural and political change.

School's out: Bridging out-of-school literacies …, 2002

Routledge eBooks, 2018

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2006

This paper analyses personal observations made of a family social interaction, in the eyes of Bill Green's 1988 3D literacy model, to better understand the impact of culture on language, and how participants derived meaning throughout the engagement.

Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 2012

Sociocultural perspectives on literacy include various theories focused on the myriad ways in which people use literacy in context, which include a strong emphasis on power relations. Yet, these theories also have important differences, and many in the field of literacy do not clearly differentiate among them. I provide a critical overview of influential sociocultural perspectives on literacy, focusing on three major perspectives: (1) literacy as social practice, (2) multiliteracies, and (3) critical literacy. In an effort to support researchers in framing their scholarly work and to support practitioners and other consumers of research make sense of research, I discuss the ways in which each theory would answer the question, "What is literacy?" as well as the affordances and limitations of these theories in terms of literacy development, literacy use, and literacy instruction.

Reading Research Quarterly, 2005

In her report, Shelley Peterson offers a glimpse of research recently conducted by three Canadian researchers that involves professional practice, multicultural education, and media literacies. This research was funded by federal grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

1998

Abstract Research into literacy published in journals such as the Journal of Literacy Research spans a range of disciplines and areas of study (eg, reading, English education, composition). Even individual studies frequently take up interdisciplinary perspectives (eg, anthropological, sociological, linguistic, educational, textual). The results are journals far ranging in their reach and rich in the knowledge they bring to literacy issues.

UCLA, 2010

According to the popular discourse, America is facing a tremendous literacy crisis. Poor children and children of color trail their affluent and White counterparts on traditional literacy assessments. Employers complain that workers do not possess requisite literacy skills at a time when changing communications technologies are making old and new literacy skills mandatory for participation in the global economy or even civic life. As all of this happens, urban schools continue to fail to provide access to literacies of power for their students as they also fail to account for the local and popular cultural literacies that their students bring with them into the classroom. The true literacy crisis is that educators and researchers have not figured out how to decrease the literacy achievement gap; a gap that carries with it severe social, economic, and political consequences. Of course, nothing is inevitable, and there have been historic moments when populations have gained access to literacies of power as they also intervened in their conditions of oppression. Even now, literacy educators and scholars possess the potential to create positive, conceptually grounded and empirically tested strategies for transformative literacy education that can not only change classroom practices, but the world itself. This course examines historical, cultural, and critical contexts of literacy theory and research in hopes to produce scholars and educators who are able to theorize, create, and/or investigate these transformational practices. It begins with an examination of the historical legacy of literacy as a vehicle to freedom and empowerment for marginalized populations. Students will read literature covering the Cuba literacy campaign and the struggles of African-Americans in the United States as they consider (and reconsider) the role of literacy education in social transformation. The class will also investigate the major paradigms of literacy theory and research during the past half century examining myths about great divides between oral and literate societies and the transformation from “culturally neutral” theories of literacy to cross cultural and sociocultural theories. The course will also consider the impacts of the revolution in communications technologies on the nature of literacy and on contemporary new media literacy practices. Finally, the course will examine theories of critical literacy education and examples of literacy praxis in classroom and out of school settings.

2016

This chapter provides an overview of what literacy is and why it is important, along with some key questions designed to assess background knowledge related to literacy teaching and learning. At the end of the chapter, tips are provided to students and teacher educators for how to get the most from the textbook. A series of activities is also provided to deepen understanding of literacy and to facilitate planning for becoming an effective teacher of literacy.