ABSTRACT
The almost archetypal innocence of a scene in which one person helps another learn to read or write is matched by the ideological innocence claimed by the disciplines that once exclusively informed that scene-Psychology, Human Development, and Educational Measurement. But the study of reading and writing has become a political pursuit. The most significant events in recent theorizing about reading and writing have been the applications of critical perspectives from sociology, anthropology, history, politics, linguistics, and economics to the study of literacy and literacy education. These perspectives, exemplified in anthologies edited by Baker and Luke (1991), Street (in press/1992), and Wagner (1987), have not only contextualized but have often countered the three traditionally dominant accounts of literacy: the growth-through-heritage account, the cognitive-psychological account, and the skills-and-measurement account (Gilbert, 1989, see especially Chapter 1).
