ABSTRACT
In this article I shall refer to four groups of readers involved in my teaching and research in recent years.' I shall argue that the notion of 'literacy practices' rather than that of 'literacy' is helpful in unravelling some of the contradictions implicit in being a teacher of reading/literacy/English in the context of competing models of what English is. Some of the issues I shall raise have had a good airing recently in the UK, in the struggle of English teachers against the writers of the National Curriculum! in which literacy is regarded as a unitary, single skill defined by what a reader can or cannot read: thus, for young readers literacy is assumed to emerge
from the mastery of a set of phonic blends, progression through a structured skills programme, the acquisition of standard syntactic structures in speech and writing, and the experience of reading tried-and-tested 'classic' texts for children. English teachers have perceived that much would be at risk should this view of literacy prevail, not least the cultural and personal identities of large groups of children - those who do not speak standard English varieties at home, those whose first language is not English, and those whose reading matter does not include canonical texts. An irony of this unresolved struggle is that English teachers themselves do not quarrel with most of the major goals of their opponents, and have said so throughout.
