ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two studies that have captured the New Literacy in context, as it is worked in English classes in British high schools and as it stands up to other methods of writing in a huge meta-study of composition research in the United States. In an effort to offer a literacy which reaches beyond a series of isolated skills, the New Literacy crosses another divide, this time between the traditional schoolbook exercise in reading or writing and a literacy with its roots in the culture outside the classroom. The work of both Heath and J. C. Harste, V. A Woodward, and E. Burke suggests a form of literacy that is more continuous with students' experience. The New Literacy advocate may be tempted to treat literacy in this generalized, autonomous fashion. But it is clear that New Literacy programs place their emphasis on the way in which literacy is worked and the ends to which it is turned.
