ABSTRACT
In Part II, we shift the focus from the interplay between the “local and the central” (Street, 2001, pp. 14-15) to a closer look at the local, analyzing literacy practices in multiethnic and multilingual classrooms. The concept of literacy practices has its genealogy in the social turn (see this volume’s Introduction), particularly the work of Scribner and Cole (1981), Heath (1982,1983), Barton and his associates (Barton, 1994; Barton & Ivanič, 1991), Gee (1996), and Street (1984,1993,1995). This section also investigates the related concept of literacy events-situations and interactions involving reading and writing that are socially and culturally meaningful (see, e.g., Goodman & Wilde, 1992; Heath, 1982).1 The notion of literacy practices is generally construed as more encompassing, linking “the events and patterns around literacy” to “something broader of a social and cultural kind” (Street, 2001, p. 11).2
