ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the processes of knowledge creation in ethnographies of literacy. Brian Street’s notion of literacy as ideological practice is grounded in a different perspective: all uses of literacy, within schools, in everyday life and in research, are socially situated and framed by dominant discourses and practices. The chapter illustrates what this perspective means by examining the processes of knowledge creation during a recent ethnography of literacy teaching. It offers a nuanced account of what constitutes a valid ethnographic inquiry into the practices of literacy teaching in primary schools in England. The practices and contexts within which literacy teaching took place were more complex and diverse than what the government’s policy suggests. Primary literacy teaching in England was regulated by a national curriculum that sets out the statutory requirements for what and how to teach reading and writing. Synthetic phonics–a specific method of teaching literacy–was part of these requirements.
