ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the gap between the needs of our times and the policies one's have in place to achieve them. At the level of society there are two significant areas of change with implications for literacy: one economic, the other cultural and demographic. The last bastion of teacher control was the how of teaching and learning – pedagogy. As a policy text the National Literacy Strategy has few spaces for teachers to exercise their own judgement. To make the shift from a uni-dimensional to a multi-dimensional perspective requires firstly a recognition of the evolving nature of literacy. As literacy educators, policy-makers, and researchers, we have to ask ourselves whether we are in the print business or in the literacy business. Critical literacy involves asking learners to question the taken-for-granted assumptions about the world.
