In recent years, literacy educators have increasingly recognised the importance of addressing a broader range of texts in the classroom. This article raises some critical concerns about a particular approach to this issue that has been widely promoted in recent years-- the concept of "multimodality". Multimodality theory offers a broadly…

After briefly reviewing how reading is conceptualised in the "Progress in International Reading Literacy Study" and the English National Curriculum, this article examines two unofficial reading activities in a class of 10-11-year-olds' to see how far these activities match up with the official definitions of reading, or whether they…

In this paper, I give an account of the ways in which narratives and identities change over space and time. I give an account of a mobile and changing human subject, one who does not simply express or represent her- or himself through narrative, but is constructed and reconstructed through narrative. I draw on Paul Ricoeur's concepts of "narrative…

The novel, it has generally been assumed, was from its very beginnings a literary form designed to be read by solitary, silent individuals. One consequence of this assumption is that the class novel, read amid all the noise and sociality of the classroom, tends to be treated as a preparation for more authentic, private reading, or even as a poor…

Evidence suggests (Ofsted, 2007) that the role of the Subject Leader is crucial in how well poetry is taught in schools. This paper attempts to provide some insights on "what it is like" to coordinate poetry teaching in a primary school. Some of the data confirm elements of the findings from earlier research on the state of poetry in schools,…

Literacy is traditionally narrowly conceptualised as a set of skills related to accessing and generating written or printed text. For children designated as having severe learning difficulties (SLD), who are unlikely to develop these "conventional" literacy skills, such a conception implies their semi-literacy or nonliteracy. Although conceptions…

This work describes a survey conducted in Syros Island in Greece. The intention was to ascertain kindergarten teachers' perceptions about early literacy and the skills and knowledge they consider as important for pre-school aged children. The participants were all the kindergarten teachers of the island (N = 19) and the data were collected during…

This article argues that digital games and school-based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts--ancillary print and multimodal texts about digital games--can play in connecting pupils' gaming literacy practices to "traditional" school-based literacies…

Despite a push to develop high levels of active engagement in learning by helping students reflect, refine and extend their ideas through effective questioning strategies, evidence suggests that teacher-dominated interaction patterns permeate classroom instruction. This Initiate, Respond and Evaluate process leads students to maintain a passive…

Although priding itself on high rates of literacy achievement, New Zealand's track record in the last two decades has noticeably declined. Successive New Zealand governments have invested heavily in trying to redress this decline with limited success. Demographic changes in population due to immigration provide a partial explanation, but arguably,…

This paper positions local literacy issues against a backdrop of increasing global ethnolinguistic diversity. National language choices are generally influenced by wider debates on the "politics of location," so decisions about language(s) associated with teaching literacy in schools tend to occur at the intersection of national and international…

Scotland provides an interesting context for studying adult literacy in that it is one of the few countries that explicitly acknowledge the idea of literacy as a social practice. By drawing on two initiatives we illustrate literacy learning derived from a mixture of social practice and critical literacy perspectives. Together they provide insights…

This paper explores primary school children's ability to engage with "the power of the text" by tackling persuasive writing in the form of an advertisement. It is eclectically framed within genre theory and rhetorical studies and makes use of linguistic tools and concepts. The paper argues that writing research has not built upon earlier…

Recent research in England suggests that opportunities for children's and young people's reading for pleasure may have been curtailed as a result of other curriculum imperatives. Under pressure to raise standards, there has been a strong emphasis on meeting objectives and managing the curriculum, but reasons for reading in the first place appear…

In this article I explore one day in the life of a primary classroom in which teacher and children are "playful social" insiders in digital worlds. I argue that this snapshot offers glimmers of unimagined ways forward in teaching in digital worlds. The classroom culture is one of challenge, collective intelligence and reflection. The teacher's own…