This book defines literacy broadly as it explores concepts within core subjects and shows how to make standards-based literacy the goal and outcome of school reform. It imagines a future digital medium where educational technology is worthy of the spirit our children bring to it.
Classrooms and schools centered on learners and learning can be intellectually exciting places. This book attends to that concern while giving a great deal of attention to connecting overlapping themes to good teaching.
"Literacy Today" sets out to challenge teachers to make literacy and learning more relevant and lasting for their students. By providing a standards-based context for connecting basic subjects, it encourages teachers to reflect upon their practices while building a conceptual framework for new directions and new approaches to the curriculum. As the concept of literacy expands to meet the needs of today's complex world, teachers need all the assistance that they can get. The standards movement does notauthoritatively tell teachers what to do. rather, it helps them make decisions about what to teach, what to spend time on, and what to eliminate from the curriculum. This books gives teachers a road map and a literacy-intensive destination. It highlights some of the better routes and helps teachers with good activities and professional development along the way.

Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer examines the origin of the Greek alphabet. Departing from previous accounts, Roger Woodard places the advent of the alphabet within an unbroken continuum of Greek literacy beginning in the Mycenean era. He argues that the creators of the Greek alphabet, who adapted the Phoenician consonantal script, were scribes accustomed to writing Greek with the syllabic script of Cyprus. Certain characteristic features of the Cypriot script--for example, its strategy for representing consonant sequences and elements of Cypriot Greek phonology--were transferred to the new alphabetic script. Proposing a Cypriot origin of the alphabet at the hands of previously literate adapters brings clarity to various problems of the alphabet, such as the Greek use of the Phoenician sibilant letters. The alphabet, rejected by the post- Bronze Age "Mycenaean" culture of Cyprus, was exported west to the Aegean, where it gained a foothold among a then illiterate Greek people emerging from the Dark Age.

This edited book brings together an international cast of contributors to examine how academic literacy is learned and mastered in different tertiary education settings around the world. Bringing to the fore the value of qualitative enquiry through ethnographic methods, the authors illustrate in-depth descriptions of genre knowledge and academic literacy development in first and second language writing. All of the data presented in the chapters are original, as well as innovative in the field in terms of content and scope, and thought-provoking regarding theoretical, methodological and educational approaches. The contributions are also representative of both novice and advanced academic writing experiences, providing further insights into different stages of academic literacy development throughout the career-span of a researcher. Set against the backdrop of internationalisation trends in Higher Education and the pressure on multilingual academics to publish their research outcomes in English, this volume will be of use to academics and practitioners interested in the fields of Languages for Academic Purposes, Applied Linguistics, Literacy Skills, Genre Analysis and Acquisition and Language Education.

The major shift going on today in the technologies of reading and writing raises important questions about conventional conceptions of literacy and its role in education, society, and culture. What are the important characteristics of electronic forms of reading and writing distinguishing them from printed forms? To what extent and in what ways is literacy being transformed by new technologies? This central question is addressed in this volume from diverse, multidisciplinary perspectives. The contributing authors focus on a guiding question in one of the following areas, which correspond to the major sections of the book:
*Transforming Texts. What are the new differences between printed and electronic texts, and what are the implications of new textual forms for defining literacy, especially in regard to teaching and learning in schools?
*Transforming Readers and Writers. How do electronic reading and writing change conceptualizations of literacy development from childhood through adulthood?
*Transforming Classrooms and Schools. What are the effects of introducing new reading and writing technologies into schools and classrooms?
*Transforming Instruction. How can instruction be adapted in response to the changing literacy landscape, and how can teachers and students exploit forms of reading and writing to enhance teaching and learning?
*Transforming Society. What are the broad societal implications of the increasing prevalence of electronic forms of reading and writing?
*Transforming Literacy Research. What are the questions that must be addressed as digital reading and writing become more common, and what approaches to research will be most useful in addressing those questions?
This volume is the result of an interactive process. The contributors met as a group to discuss drafts of their chapters at a one-day meeting convened and sponsored by the National Reading Research Center, and had read each others' chapters prior to this gathering. That meeting was followed by a two-day conference attended by approximately 180 researchers, educators, and policymakers who responded to an open invitation to present papers and to attend sessions focusing on the six major themes of the book. Contributors then revised their chapters based on interactions with fellow contributors, conference participants, and volume editors. Thus, this work is more than just a compilation of the individual authors' views. Rather, it represents a synthesis of a broad range of current thinking about how literacy is being and may be transformed by technology.

The role of interaction and corrective feedback is central to research in second language learning and teaching, and this volume is the first of its kind to explain and apply design methodologies and materials in an approachable way. Using examples from interaction, feedback and task studies, it presents clear and practical advice on how to carry out research in these areas, providing step-by step guides to design and methodological principles, suggestions for reading, short activities, memory aids and an A-Z glossary for easy reference. Its informative approach to study design, and in-depth discussions of implementing research methodology, make it accessible to novice and experienced researchers alike. Commonly used tools in these paradigms are explained, including stimulated recalls, surveys, eye-tracking, metanalysis and research synthesis. Open research areas and gaps in the literature are also discussed, providing a point-of-departure for researchers making their first foray into interaction, feedback and task-based teaching research.

The chapters in this volume are based on presentations made at a recent conference on Cognitive and Linguistic Foundations of Reading Acquisition: Implications for Intervention Research. This was the third in a series of meetings on the subject of brain development, language acquisition, reading, and dyslexia, with the embracing title of The Extraordinary Brain. The researchers who participated have made contributions to the theoretical and empirical understanding of how children learn to read. They were asked to address not only what they have learned from their research, but also to discuss unsolved problems. This dialogue prompted numerous questions of both a theoretical and applied nature, generated heated debate, and fuelled optimism about the important gains that have been made in the scientific understanding of the reading process, especially of the critical role played by phonological abilities.

This second edition of Jay David Bolter's classic text expands on the objectives of the original volume, illustrating the relationship of print to new media, and examining how hypertext and other forms of electronic writing refashion or "remediate" the forms and genres of print. Reflecting the dynamic changes in electronic technology since the first edition, this revision incorporates the Web and other current standards of electronic writing. As a text for students in composition, new technologies, information studies, and related areas, this volume provides a unique examination of the computer as a technology for reading and writing.

A comprehensive overview of important contemporary issues in the field of reading research from the mid 1980s to mid 1990s, this well-received volume offers readers an examination of literacy through a variety of lenses--some permitting microscopic views and others panoramic views. A veritable "who's who" of specialists in the field, chapter authors cover current methodology, as well as cumulative research-based knowledge.
Because it deals with society and literacy, the first section provides the broadest possible view of literacy. The second section defines the range of activities culturally determined to be a part of the enterprise known as literacy. The third focuses on the processes that individuals engage in when they perform the act of reading. The fourth section visits the environment in which the knowledge that comprises literacy is passed on from one generation to the next. The last section, an epilogue to the whole enterprise of reading research, provides apt philosophical reflection.

"Electronic Literacies" is an insightful study of the challenges and contradictions that arise as culturally and linguistically diverse learners engage in new language and literacy practices in online environments.
The role of the Internet in changing literacy and education has been a topic of much speculation, but very little concrete research. This book is one of the first attempts to document the role of the Internet and other new digital technologies in the development of language and literacy. Warschauer looks at how the nature of reading and writing is changing, and how those changes are being addressed in the classroom. His focus is on the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse learners who are at special risk of being marginalized from the information society.
Based on a two-year ethnographic study of the uses of the Internet in four language and writing classrooms in the state of Hawai'i--a Hawaiian language class of Native Hawaiian students seeking to revitalize their language and culture; an ESL class of students from Pacific Island and Latin American countries; an ESL class of students from Asian countries; and an English composition class of working-class students from diverse ethnic backgrounds--the book includes data from interviews with students and teachers, classroom observations, and analysis of student texts. This rich ethnographic data is combined with theories from a broad range of disciplines to develop conclusions about the relationship of technology to language, literacy, education, and culture. Central to Warschauer's discussion and conclusions is how contradictions of language, culture, and class affect the impact of Internet-based education. While Hawai'i is a special place, the issues confronted here are similar in many ways to those that exist throughout the United States and many other countries: How to provide culturally and linguistically diverse students traditionally on the educational and technological margins with the literacies they need to fully participate in public, community, and economic life in the 21st century.

This volume foregrounds the disciplinary literacy approach to college teaching and learning with in-depth discussions of theory and research, as well as extensive classroom illustrations. Built upon the current work of READ (Reading Effectively Across the Disciplines), a disciplinary literacy program at New York City College of Technology, it presents a broad collection of methodologies, strategies, and best practices with discipline-specific considerations. It offers an overview of the program informed by evidence-based research and practices in college disciplinary learning, describing how its unique model addresses the literacy needs of students in STEM and professional studies. Chapter authors, including administrators, literacy specialists, and content experts discuss program design, professional development, and assessments. They also outline strategies to foster disciplinary literacy pedagogy and college success in five content areas, including Accounting, Architecture, Biology, Electromechanical Engineering, and Mathematics.

The focus of this volume is the book production of the Frankish regions of Western Europe in the early Middle Ages. By means of a detailed scrutiny of individual manuscripts, groups of manuscripts, and categories of texts, Dr McKitterick shows how they can be used to throw light on questions such as women and literacy, the knowledge of canon and secular law, and the English contribution to the religious culture of the Continent . Some of the studies are more concerned with palaeography and the achievements of particular scriptoria; studies; others look primarily at the fact of production, the dissemination of the texts, and their implications for intellectual and cultural history. Au centre de ce volume se trouve la production du livre dans les regions franques d'Europe occidentale au debut du Moyan Age. Au travers d'un examen approfondi de manuscrits individuels, de groupes de manuscrits et de categories de textes, le docteur McKitterick demontre l'utilisation qui peut en Atre faite afin d'eclaircir un certain nombre de questions dont: les femmes et l'alphabetisation, la connaissance du droit canon et seculaire, ainsi que la contribution anglaise A la culture religieuse de continent. Certaines des etudes s'attachent plus specifiquement A la paleographie et aux resultats de certains scriptoria; d'autres examinent avant tout le fait mAme de la production, la dissemination des textes et leurs implications quant A l'histoire intellectuelle et culturelle.

The idea behind this book is that in complex societies like our own there are different worlds of literacy that exist side by side. People belong to different cultural groups: we lead different lives, we read and write different things in different ways and for different purposes. The idea that literacy is embedded in social context, that there are different literacies, is now accepted. This book presents a range of case studies describing some of these worlds of literacy and is carefully organised by theme, so as to bring out both the differences and connections between them. It will be a source book for students on courses of literacy studies. The case studies span the whole age range, but the book focuses particularly on the variety of uses of literacy in adult life, both inside and outside of formal education. The authors argue that in order to understand literacy and help people learn to read and write, we must look beyond school to the everyday uses of written communication. The contributors come from diverse backgrounds: they include students and teachers in adult basic education, higher education and schools: others are community publishers and researchers, several of whom are internationally known. They share a commitment to plain, accessible language. The book is extensively illustrated and 'sign-posted' to enable readers to move easily between case studies and themes. This makes it a book to dip into which can also be enjoyed by anyone concerned with the role of written communication in education and society as a whole. The themes that are dealt with include different voices, literacy and identity, the role of literacy in making choices and change, collaborative writing and creating new forms of written expression; gender and literacy, bilingual literacy, spoken and written language, children and adult learners, public and private uses of literacy, and bureaucratic literacy.

This edited volume unpacks the familiar concepts of language, literacy and learning, and promotes dialogue and bridge building within and across these concepts. Its specific interest lies in bridging the gap between Literacy Studies (or New Literacy Studies), on the one hand, and SLA and scholarship in learning in multilingual contexts, on the other. The chapters in the volume center-stage empirical analysis, and each addresses gaps in the scholarship between the two domains. The volume addresses the need to engage with the concepts, categorizations and boundaries that pertain to language, literacy and learning. This need is especially felt in our globalized society, which is characterized by constant, fast and unpredictable mobility of people, goods, ideas and values. The editors of this volume are founding members of the Nordic Network LLL (Language, Literacy and Learning). They have initiated a string of workshops and have discussed this theme at Nordic meetings and at symposia at international conferences.

The acquisition and maintenance of literacy is of pressing interest and concern to educators and educational policy makers worldwide. What are the common themes, the common questions, and the unique circumstances and initiatives that spring from this interest and concern? To address these questions, Understanding Literacy Development: A Global View brings together leading experts from around the world to explore ways to best provide teaching and learning opportunities, tailored to specific educational needs, to help all children become better readers. The premise is that current generic "one-size-fits-all" approaches are inappropriate for many children and can lead to underachievement and failure. The contributors write from a stance that reflects not only their own particular expertise and experience, but also sheds light on literacy development across cultures, countries, and circumstances. Taken together, chapters in this volume target a wide and comprehensive set of literacy issues, and offer an extensive exploration of the complexities of literacy development, including issues related to early literacy, school instruction, family literacy, adolescent and adult literacy, and teacher development. At a time when education is burdened by increasing economic pressure to do more with less, it is imperative that educators and decision makers at all levels have access to current, broad-ranging, and in-depth information and evidence to inform their choices. This volume, compiling critical research on a wide spectrum of literacy concerns, is an invaluable tool for scholars, teacher educators, professionals and graduate students in the fields of literacy education, early childhood education, educational psychology, educational policy, and related areas.

This book provides a deeper understanding of the phone-based composing practices of youth and their implications for literacy learning. In the United States, smartphone use among teens is nearly universal, yet many youth who are avid digital composers still struggle with formal schooled literacy. The widespread and rapid embrace of smartphones by youth from all income levels has had a substantial impact on the way that young people approach the act of composing, yet to date, little to no work has explored digital photography and text curation through popular apps like Twitter and Instagram and their impact on literacy, including formal schooled literacy. As more schools are moving to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) models and lifting classroom bans on cellphones, classroom teachers need information about the affordances of phones for formal literacy learning, which this book provides. This book will also be of interest to those in courses in the fields of education, new literacies, cultural studies/youth culture, literacy studies, communication arts, and anthropology of education/social sciences. This book could be used in a course on online/Internet ethnography. It could also be used in a more general research methods course to illustrate the combination of online and offline data collection. Outside of research methods courses, it could be used in courses on literacies, digital literacies, youth culture, popular culture and media, or mobile learning.

This book discusses current issues in literacy teacher education and illuminates the complexity of supporting self-efficacious educators to teach language and literacy in the twenty-first century classroom. In three sections, chapter authors first detail how teacher education programs can be revamped to include content and methods to inspire self-efficacy in pre-service teachers, then reimagine how teacher candidates can be set up for success toward obtaining this. The final section encourages readers to ruminate on the interplay among teacher candidates as they transition into practice and work to have both self- and collective- efficacy.

This book serves as a succinct resource on the cognitive requirements of reading. It provides a coherent, overall view of reading and learning to read, and does so in a relatively sparse fashion that supports retention. The initial sections of the book describe the cognitive structure of reading and the cognitive foundation upon which that structure is built. This is followed by discussions of how an understanding of these cognitive requirements can be used in practice with standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction, to advance the teaching of reading and the delivery of interventions for students who encounter difficulties along the way. The book focuses on reading in English as its exemplar, but shows how its framework can be adapted to understand the broad cognitive requirements for reading and learning to read in any phonologically-based orthography. It provides a way for reading professionals to think about reading and its development and gives them mechanisms that, coupled with such understanding, will help them link what children must know to become strong readers to what teaching can best provide through the competent use of available tools. In this way, the book will help reading professionals be both efficient and effective in what they provide all their students and be much better equipped to support those students who struggle to learn to read.

This book is based on the power of stories to support children in all areas of their lives. It examines the role narratives can play in encouraging growth in contexts and domains such as personal and family identity, creative movement, memory and self-concept, social relationships, or developing a sense of humor. Each chapter describes innovative and research-based applications of narratives such as movement stories, visual narratives to develop historical thinking, multimodal storytelling, bibliotherapy, mathematics stories, family stories, and social narratives. The chapters elaborate on the strength of narratives in supporting the whole child in diverse contexts from young children on the autism spectrum improving their social skills at school, to four- and five-year-olds developing historical thinking, to children who are refugees or asylum-seekers dealing with uncertainty and loss. Written by accomplished teachers, researchers, specialists, teaching artists and teacher educators from several countries and backgrounds, the book fills a gap in the literature on narratives. "...this work delves into the topic of narratives in young children's lives with a breadth of topics and depth of study not found elsewhere." "Collectively, the insights of the contributors build a convincing case for emphasizing story across the various disciplines and developmental domains of the early childhood years." "The writing style is scholarly, yet accessible. Authors used a wide array of visual material to make their points clearer and show the reader what meaningful uses of story "look like"." Mary Renck Jalongo, Journal and Book Series Editor Springer Indiana, PA, USA

This book shows that reading-writing is a two-way street that is burgeoning with research activity. It provides a comprehensive and updated view on reading-writing connections by drawing on extant research and findings. It puts forward a new conception of literacy, one that establishes reading and writing connections as the primeval ground for building literacy science. It shows how an integrative view of literacy can have deep and lasting effects on conceptualizing literacy development in several orthographies and on improving literacy instruction and remediation worldwide. The book examines in detail such issues as modeling approaches to reading-writing relations, literacy development, reading and spelling across orthographies and integrative approaches to literacy instruction and remediation.

This volume offers a comprehensive account of language development from a Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) perspective, integrating theory and data from a wide range of research studies. The book begins by taking an in-depth look at SFL theory and its focus on texts, highlighting the metafunctional nature of language and the ways in which individuals' repertoires of meaning-making resources develop as they interact with the world and with others. Grounded in an SFL approach, the successive chapters consider in turn the key stages of language development, from infancy to school settings to additional, second, and foreign language learning contexts. Each chapter incorporates a range of SFL studies to demonstrate shifts in language development across these stages, but also the discussion of other functional perspectives to examine the ways in which these different approaches inform one another. A concluding chapter considers the implications of these studies for future research as well as for pedagogical practices in literacy teaching. In its consideration of the relationship between SFL theory and its application to language development, this book will be key reading for students and scholars in Systemic Functional Linguistics, language and education, and literacy studies.

This book critically engages with theoretical shifts marked by the 'multilingual turn' in applied linguistics, and articulates the complexities associated with naming and engaging with the everyday language practices of bi/multilingual communities. It discusses methodological approaches that enable researchers and educators to observe and interact with these communities and to understand their teaching and learning needs. It also highlights pedagogical approaches and instructional strategies involved with learning and teaching language and/or content curriculum to students across various learning and educational contexts. The book addresses recent debates on the multi/plural turn in applied linguistics and articulates the limitations of these debates - particularly the absence of discussion of social power relations and contexts in applying different theoretical lenses. It features empirical research from primarily North American classrooms to highlight how plurilingual pedagogies take shape in unique educational contexts, resisting monolingual approaches to language in education. Furthermore, it includes commentary/response pieces from established scholars in dialogue with recent plurilingual research in the field, to put the work in critical perspective within extant theories and literature.

Family Literacies demonstrates, through reference to empirical research, how shared reading practices operate in a wide range of families, with a view to supporting families in reading with their pre-school children. At the heart of this book, written by two highly experienced experts in the field, is a fascinating project that captured diverse voices, and experiences by parents, children and other family members. Rachael Levy and Mel Hall deploy a rich and distinctive theoretical framework, drawing on insights from literacy studies, education and sociology. Family Literacies presents an account of shared reading practices in homes, focusing attention on what motivates parents to read with their children as well as revealing what parents may need if they are to begin and sustain shared reading activity. The authors show the many ways in which reading is centrally embedded in many aspects of family life, arguing that this has particular implications for children as they start school. Situated within a socio-cultural discourse, this book explains why it is important to understand how and why shared reading takes place in homes so that all families can be supported in reading with their children. Family Literacies is essential reading for all those who are studying and researching literacy practices, especially those involving young children. The book will also be of value to students, practitioners and researchers in education and applied linguistics who are working with families and have an interest in the study of family practices. The authors' findings have major implications for how parents can be encouraged to develop positive reading relationships with their children.

In this book, the author investigates a central issue in language testing research: What are the key features that contribute to item difficulty in a reading test? Results of various statistical analyses of the multiple-choice reading items from the Austrian 2009 baseline reading test show a significant correlation between empirical item difficulty and both cognitive processes and metacognitive strategies. The findings thus provide evidence of the construct validity of the baseline reading test on the one hand, but are equally relevant to teaching practice on the other hand. The teaching of reading at lower secondary level in the Austrian context needs to focus more on cognitive processes of different complexity and the active teaching of metacognitive reading strategies.

Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach integrating insights from conversation analysis, narrative analysis, and narratology, this book theorizes teaching around narrative prose in each level of education, with a focus on a new framework of Pedagogic Literary Narration which emphasizes the practice of shared novel reading and the importance of the role of the teacher in mediating this practice. // With insights taken from a comprehensive set of transcripts taken from actual classrooms, the volume focuses on the convention in native-tongue literary study in which teachers and students read a novel shared over lessons, combining periods of reading aloud with those of questioning and discussion. In so doing, Gordon seeks to extend existing methodologies from literary and social science research toward informing teaching practice in literary pedagogy and address the need for a theorization of literary pedagogy which considers the interrelationship between text-in-print and text-through-talk. Transcripts are supported with comprehensive analyses to help further explicate the research methodology and provide guidance on implementing it in the classroom. // This book is a valuable resource for scholars in language and education, literary studies, narrative inquiry, and education research.