ABSTRACT
The study of literacy in everyday contexts can be seen as a starting point for any endeavor aimed at reading promotion. I want to make three basic claims as a result of examining people’s everyday reading and writing. The first of these is that the meanings and uses of literacy in the home and community are many and varied. This means that a starting point for education can be to reflect on everyday literacy practices, understanding how they are often distinctive to a particular time and place. Educators, researchers, students and parents can increase their understanding of literacy by researching their own practices. Second, studies of everyday reading and writing emphasize that reading is increasingly one of a variety of ways in which people make sense of the world; also, people treat different media in an integrated way, not necessarily distinguishing reading print from other forms of sense making. The teaching of reading needs to be in the context of a range of media. Third, it can be seen that most learning about literacy takes place outside schools; it starts in the home before children go to school, it continues alongside schooling, and it carries on in the home and community right through adulthood into old age. School learning needs to be located within the broader context of learning in the home and the community, and homes can be seen as important sites for learning, both for adults and for children.
