ABSTRACT
For example, teachers and students may share a cultural model for how to do reading group or how to enact reading aloud during a recitation lesson. In any specific event the particular way in which the reading practice is enacted may vary from the abstract, cultural model (although nonetheless being recognizable to all as an enactment of that abstract cultural model of reading). Cultural practices (and, correspondingly, literacy practices) are not just held in the minds of a group of people but are also “held” in the material structure and organization of a setting. For example, in the United States, elementary school classrooms are often designed with an alcove that fits a table and a set of six to eight chairs. Reading programs and textbooks that the school purchases often present lessons for use in a reading group, and teacher evaluations are often set up to examine how teachers use reading groups. In brief, the classroom literacy practice of “reading group” is held by the classroom architecture, the bureaucracy, and others both inside and outside the classroom as well as being a shared, cultural model held cognitively by the teacher and the students.
