Locating Literacy Theory in Out-of School Contexts

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
GSE Faculty Research
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Educational Foundations
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Hull, Glynda
Contributor
Abstract

In public discourse, literacy has long been associated with schooling. Talk about literacy crises is often accompanied by calls for better schools and more rigorous curricula, and images of reading and writing are closely connected to school-based or essayist forms of literacy. However, when we widen the lens of what we consider literacy and literate activities, homes, communities, and workplaces become sites for literacy use. It was in fact in these out-of-school contexts, rather than in school-based ones, that many of the major theoretical advances in the study of literacy have been made in the past 25 years. Studies of literacy out-of-school have been pivotal in shaping the field. Indeed, to talk about literacy these days, both in school and out, is to speak of events, practices, activities, ideologies, discourses, and identities, and at times to do so almost unreflectively, since these categories and terminology have become so much a part of our customary ways of thinking in academic domains. Through an exploration of three major theoretical traditions that have launched numerous studies of literacy, we show that in large part this new theoretical vocabulary sprang from examinations of the uses and functions of literacy in contexts other than school.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Book title
Series name and number
Publication date
2002-01-01
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Journal Issue
Comments
Reprinted by permission of the Publisher. From Glynda Hull and Katherine Schultz, School's Out! : Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice, New York: Teachers College Press, © 2001 by Teacher's College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.
Recommended citation
Collection