ABSTRACT

Over the past fifteen years, along with these changes in policy, research in the field of adult language, literacy and numeracy has moved into new terrain. Conventional views on literacy (and numeracy) as abstract sets of skills have been challenged by researchers who developed a new understanding of reading and writing: not just as skills, but as social practices that are always embedded in particular cultural contexts and that are shaped by the purposes they serve and the activities they are part of. Similar ideas are being applied to numeracy and ESOL. This social practice view of literacy has provoked intense debates among academics, academics and practitioners and more recently policy-makers, not only about the nature of what literacy really is, but – more importantly – about how it is used by people in their everyday lives, how it is learned and how it can best be taught.