ABSTRACT
We worked closely with students to explore the types of reading and writing that they did other than college work. This chapter offers an overview of the range and diversity of these students’ literacy practices. Overall, this chapter illustrates the wide range of reading and writing that students generally participate in as part of their everyday lives and strongly challenges certain over-generalised portrayals of college students as lacking in literacy. We show how everyday uses of literacy are not to be dismissed, but are complex practices comprising capabilities which are often invisible in college. (For further detail about this aspect of the research, see Smith 2005b, 2006; Smith and Edwards 2004.)
Box 2.1 Researching students’ everyday literacy practices: the lecturers’ perspective
Reading and writing can serve many different purposes in different settings. Students were often surprised when we identified the different kinds of reading and writing that they did as ‘literacy’, and this reflected how some literacy practices are validated as such by institutions such as schools and colleges whereas other kinds of reading and writing are not. Aaron Bassett, a student participant studying at Anniesland College, said: ‘What the literacies project really has helped me to realise is that it’s not just in essays and it’s not just in novels where you use literacy, it’s really in my day-to-day life.’
