ABSTRACT
This chapter explores question of whether the idea of practices continues to be an important one in responding to the shifts. It examines application of and response to the last round of the Progress in Reading Literacy Survey in South Africa and contrast this with a study of a classroom in Cape Town where a teacher prepares her students for a standard, centrally distributed test. The chapter argues that the contrast between these two shows the critical role that situated practices continue to play in research on literacy. An alternative way of describing the autonomous model of literacy with regard to schooling contexts that does indeed involve a ‘multi-level analysis’ is to say that it involves ‘seeing like a state’ in J. Scott’s memorable phrase. The ideological status of literacy as the highest form of language use causes what flexibility and fluidity there is in classroom languaging to disappear when the administrative grid of standard and centralised testing is applied.
