Discusses important characteristics of the new communication order, providing a context for an overview of research in the field of literacy and technology studies consistent with the New Literacy Studies view of literacy as a set of social practices. Particular attention is given to theoretical and empirical aspects of the Australian Digital…

Assesses an attempt to bring the analysis of multimodal texts of cultural interest to students into a critical literacy foundation course in the humanities at a South African University. Shows how the course privileged cultural capital and reproduced patterns of privilege. Argues that acknowledging multimodal texts raises new and interesting…

Explores the relevance of Bernstein's work on horizontal and vertical discourse for understanding the nature of the school literacy curriculum and its relationship to literacy practices in the wider community. Takes issue with some of the political strategies advocated within British New Literacy Studies and seeks to re-invigorate attention to…

Outlines different priorities of current policy and research in literacy education in Australian schools. Suggests that a number of generic and specific factors contribute to these differences: differences in perspective and responsibility of policymakers and researchers, different underlying theoretical assumptions, and changes in the current…

Provides an overview of issues in the literacy policy field from a social practices perspective. Outlines a central dilemma in both theory and practice in adult literacy work: that practice theory has not impacted on literacy policy in large parts of the world. Suggests there is an ever-widening gap between literacies of everyday life and the…

Analyzes results from a study that examined how experienced teachers work with students in the early stages of writing. Examines the process of composition as involving a cycle of two phases: engagement and reflection. Children's difficulties in sustaining their attention across successive phases of this cycle are attributed to specific problems…

Describes and evaluates an undergraduate course in reading and writing across the curriculum at a university in Singapore, whose agenda was shaped by discourses on critical pedagogy and critical language awareness. Discusses the benefits and and limitations of a critical reading and writing program. (Author/VWL)

Traces developments of English as an additional language in state-sector schools in England. Argues that the current conceptualization of EAL is linked to a particular view of the social integration of a linguistically and ethnically diverse society. Suggests that current thinking has led to questionable perceptions and practices associated with…

Students in English education typically have to live in (at least) two worlds: departments of English in which they receive their disciplinary training, and departments or schools or programs of education in which they work to develop the pedagogical content knowledge they need to teach in that discipline. Often those worlds are far apart. In this…

Language teacher identity is an emerging subject of interest in research on language teacher education and teacher development. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which teacher identity is theorized. The present article explores ways of theorizing language teacher identity by presenting three data-based studies of teacher…

Concerns about identity in educational research and theory have understandably focused on politically salient identity categories, especially class, race/ethnicity, and sex/gender. This focus contributes to political discourse, but offers a simplistic if not totally misleading picture of which identities are observably relevant in educational…

This article seeks to link the dynamics of oil with the spread of English in the Arabian Gulf region. It argues that "oil" sustains certain social, economic, and political conditions that (a) provide a fertile environment for the expansion of English and that (b) disproportionately serve the economic interests of the English-speaking nations of…

There is a substantial amount of literature documenting the attitudinal resistance of Muslims towards English and the supposed conflict between English and Islam. This article provides a critical review of the writings and research on the issue and discusses some of the reasons behind this resistance, focusing on Muslims in Malaysia. It argues…

This article argues that since the British colonial era, Muslims in South Asia have responded to English in three ways: (a) rejection and resistance, (b) acceptance and assimilation, and (c) pragmatic utilization. These responses continue in Pakistan and are respectively associated with the traditionalist ulema, the Westernized middle and upper…

Christian missionaries have played a crucial role not only in assisting past and current forms of colonialism and neocolonialism, not only in attacking and destroying other ways of being, but also in terms of the language effects their projects have engendered. The choices missionaries have made to use local or European languages have been far…