This is a varied collection of key writings from leading international scholars in the field of literacy. It makes a timely and important contribution to literary practices - essential reading for anyone involved in literary education.
Situated Literacies is a rich and varied collection of key writings from leading international scholars in the field of literacy. Each contribution, written in a clear, accessible style, makes the link between literacies in specific contexts and broader social practices. Detailed ethnographic studies of a wide variety of specific situations, all involving real texts and lived practices, are balanced with general claims about the nature of literacy. Contributors address a coherent set of issues: * the visual and material aspects of literacy * concepts of time and space in relation to literacy * the functions of literacies in shaping and sustaining identities in communities of practice * the relationship between texts and the practices associated with their use the role of discourse analysis on literacy studies These studies, along with a foreword by Denny Taylor, make a timely and important contribution to literacy theory and suggest directions for the further development of the field. Situated Literacies is essential reading for anyone involved in literary education.
In this seminal volume leading language and literacy scholars clearly articulate and explicate major social perspectives and approaches in the fields of language and literacy studies. Each approach draws on distinct bodies of literature and traditions and uses distinct identifiers, labels, and constellations of concepts; each has been taken up across diverse global contexts and is used as rationale and guide for the design of research and of educational policies and practices. Authors discuss the genesis and historical trajectory of the approach with which they are associated; offer their unique perspectives, rationales, and engagements; and investigate implications for understanding language and literacy use in and out of schools. The premise of the book is that understanding concepts, perspectives, and approaches requires knowing the context in which they were created, the rationale or purpose in creating them, and how they have been taken up and applied in communities of practice. Accessible yet theoretically rich, this volume is indispensible for researchers, students, and professionals across the fields of language and literacy studies.
The articles collected in this volume draw on or relate to a body of work that has become known as the 'New Literacy Studies' (NLS), which studies literacy as situated semiotic practices that vary across sites in specific ways that are socially shaped. The collection offers a body of empirically and theoretically based papers on literacy ethnography as well as providing engagements with critical issues around literacy and education. The articles offer complementary perspectives on research and theory in literacy studies and include research perspectives from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, as well as North and South America. The researchers are all concerned to take the work of the New Literacy Studies further by expanding on its conceptual resources and research sites.
By focusing on the textually mediated reactions of local residents, social movements, and media producers to policy changes implemented in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, this book studies the development of literacy as a tool to mobilize, perform, and disseminate protest. Researching Protest Literacies presents a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival research to analyse how traditional and technology-driven literacy practices informed a new cycle of social protest in favelas from 2006-2016. Chapters trace nuanced interactions, document changing power balances, and in doing so conceptualize five forms of literacy used to enact social change - campaigning literacies, memorial literacies, media-activist literacies, arts-activist literacies, and demonstration literacies. Building on these, the study posits protest literacies as a new way of researching the role of contemporary literacy in protest. This insightful monograph would be of interest to doctoral students, researchers, and scholars involved in the fields of literacy studies, arts education, and social movement studies, as well as those looking into research methods in education and international literacies more broadly.
Literacy for QTLS is written specifically with the needs of all those training to teach or currently working in the lifelong learning sector in mind. This highly practical and easy-to-use text will help you identify your areas of strength and weakness, develop your knowledge and skills in order to pass the national literacy test and adopt strategies that you can use to support the language and literacy skills of your own learners. Packed with test-your-knowledge questions, examples and recommendations for best practice, this book, closely linked to the QTLS standards, is essential reading for all those needing to ensure that their level of literacy and language is in line with the minimum core requirements.The text is accompanied by a Companion Website at www.pearsoned.co.uk/hickey, providing an electronic version of the self-audit sections, downloadable templates and additional resources.
Situated at the intersection of two of the most important areas in educational research today — literacy and technology — this handbook draws on the potential of each while carving out important new territory. It provides leadership for this newly emerging field, directing scholars to the major issues, theoretical perspectives, and interdisciplinary research pertaining to new literacies. Reviews of research are organized into six sections: Methodologies Knowledge and Inquiry Communication Popular Culture, Community, and Citizenship: Everyday Literacies Instructional Practices and Assessment Multiple Perspectives on New Literacies Research FEATURES Brings together a diverse international team of editors and chapter authors Provides an extensive collection of research reviews in a critical area of educational research Makes visible the multiple perspectives and theoretical frames that currently drive work in new literacies Establishes important space for the emerging field of new literacies research Includes a unique Commentary section: The final section of the Handbook reprints five central research studies. Each is reviewed by two prominent researchers from their individual, and different, theoretical position. This provides the field with a sense of how diverse lenses can be brought to bear on research as well as the benefits that accrue from doing so. It also provides models of critical review for new scholars and demonstrates how one might bring multiple perspectives to the study of an area as complex as new literacies research. The Handbook of Research on New Literacies is intended for the literacy research community, broadly conceived, including scholars and students from the traditional reading and writing research communities in education and educational psychology as well as those from information science, cognitive science, psychology, sociolinguistics, computer mediated communication, and other related areas that find literacy to be an important area of investigation.
This book is a guide to current research and debate in the field of literacies practice and education. It provides both an historical and lifespan view of the field as well as an overview of research methodologies with first-hand examples from a range of researchers involved in literacy research.
This book reviews what the authors term advocacy research in literacy education-research that explicitly addresses issues of social justice, equity, and democracy with the distinct purpose of social transformation. It surveys what educational researchers who are working for social justice have accomplished, describes current challenges, and outlines future possibilities. The first section maps the terrain of advocacy research in literacy education. The authors group this large and expanding body of research into four categories: Critical Literacy(ies); Radical Counternarratives in Literacy Research; Literacy as Social Practice; and Linguistic Studies. Each chapter describes the research area, traces its history, provides example studies, and assesses the contributions of research to advocacy work now and potentially in the future. The second section provides a deeper consideration of challenges to the field of advocacy research and suggests future directions for research and scholarship; this section reflects the need to complicate and trouble the terms and relations between and among social justice, ethics, democracy, freedom, and literacy. As a whole, this book is a response to the current popular understandings of literacy education that limit the efficacy of advocacy work in these troubled times-understandings that support the proliferation of standardized testing, teacher testing, and scripted lessons and programs, along with the privileging of particular forms of research. Intended for those who work or soon will work in literacy education-students, teacher educators, researchers, and practitioners-this book represents the authors' belief that it is time for advocacy workers to strengthen and intensify their efforts to promote the most principled, effective literacy education for democratic life. It is their hope that this book will contribute to such an effort.
The links between literacy and development have been the focus of research conducted by both economists and anthropologists. Yet researchers from these different disciplines have tended to work in isolation from each other. This book aims to create a space for new interdisciplinary debate in this area, through bringing together contributions on literacy and development from the fields of education, literacy studies, anthropology and economics. The book extends our theoretical understanding on the ways in which people’s acquisition and uses of literacy influence changes in agency, identity, social practice and labour market and other outcomes. The chapters discuss data from diverse cultural contexts (South Africa, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Peru, and Mexico), and from contrasting research paradigms. The contributors examine the significance of culture and socio-economic contexts in shaping such processes. As such, they contribute to our understanding of the role of literacy in processes of poverty reduction, and its importance to people’s capabilities and wellbeing. The themes covered include: the dynamics of literacy use in the production of agency, the enactment, negotiation and embodiment of new social identities - including gendered and religious identities; the impacts of literate identities and use on institutional relations and social participation; the dynamics of literacy ‘sharing’ and their externalities within and beyond households; formal analysis of the impacts of proximate illiteracy on labour market and health outcomes across men and women and social contexts. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies.