This essay offers a commentary on how the relationship between language and literacy practices in and out of school has been conceptualized. It draws upon two new books in the field. Shirley Brice Heath's new book, "Words at Work and Play: Three Decades in Family and Community Life," which makes use of rich ethnographic accounts of children's…

The concept of voice permeates perspectives on reading and writing and has helped guide both literacy research and teaching. However, what voice is for scholars, researchers, and teachers takes many guises, some in apparent contradiction to others. We offer a theoretical perspective on the concept of voice, situating it within sociocultural…

The purpose of this research was to examine whether adults rely on morphemic spelling rules or word-specific knowledge when spelling simple words. We examined adults' knowledge of two of the simplest and most reliable rules in English spelling concerning the morphological word ending -s. This spelling is required for regular plural nouns (e.g.,…

This review represents research employing discourse analysis conducted by scholars interested in literacy issues in education across the age span--preschool to adult--during the last 10 years. Drawing from more than 300 studies, we discerned that a common theme was understanding how the literacy education of all students can be successfully…

This study assessed the utility of document prevalence and familiarity as predictors of adult document literacy performance. Three indexes--quantifying document prevalence, document familiarity, and the frequency of document use--were constructed using survey responses from an adult community sample and documents collected from government agencies…

This article systematically reviews research on the achievement outcomes of four types of approaches to improving the reading of middle and high school students: (1) reading curricula; (2) mixed-method models (methods that combine large-and small-group instruction with computer activities); (3) computer-assisted instruction; and (4)…

This study extends the literature on the relation between reading practices and individual characteristics of participants in adult education who have low literacy skills. Reading practices describe individuals' reading frequency for different types of written material, such as books, newspapers, magazines, technical materials, and work documents.…

This is a compilation of two separate reports on international literacy research from France and Argentina. In the reports from France, research correspondent Jacques Fijalkow detailed three research projects that included the following: (1) A description of adult literacy skills; (2) An investigation of how study-abroad students were integrated…