ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic shift in thinking about literacy and the relationship of literacy practices across home, community, and school contexts. Until recently, research in literacy has been largely the domain of linguistics and psychology. Street (1984) posited that this research contributed to the autonomous model of literacy that has dominated our conceptions of, and discourse about, literacy for most of the last century. According to Street, the autonomous model regards literacy as an individualized skill that can be measured and calibrated to adapt to social structures, including the school, the workplace, and the economic imperatives of the day. However, more recent ethnographic, sociolinguistic, and critical sociological work has prompted a shift among many educators and researchers toward the view that reading and writing are not just a set of cognitive/linguistic skills, but complex social practices (e.g., Baker & Luke, 1991; Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000; Bloome & Green, 1984; Dyson, 1997, 2001; Purcell-Gates, 1997). That is, there is considerable variation in literacy practices, in the meanings ascribed to literacy, and in the ways in which literacy practices are carried out in different contexts. Thus, literacy cannot be measured in terms of “high” or “low” but rather according to the institutional contexts and power relationships that shape literacy uses.
