Contextualising Difficulties in Literacy Development Exploring Politics, Culture, Ethnicity and Ethics

This book provides a range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives on difficulties in literacy development. The high-profile team of contributors provide ethical and policy discussions, as well as contextualising individual and collective strategies to addressing difficulties in literacy development. The chapters break new ground by encompassing a wide range of perspectives related to critical literacy, socio-cultural, cognitive, and psychological viewpoints, to help inform practice, policy and research into literacy difficulties. Issues addressed include: *the different ways literacy can be conceptualised through social-science based disciplinary perspectives*the issues at the centre of current public and professional debates surrounding literacy difficulties and how these have impacted upon pedagogical responses *the impact of these wider political and social issues on individual students. This reader forms the basis of the Open University’s Difficulties in Literacy Development course, but will also be of interest to postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, education professionals and policymakers who are keen to address difficulties in literacy development.

Part 1 1. Policy Contexts and the Debates over How to Teach Literacy Part 2: What is Literacy: A Simple or Complex Process? 2. Literacy: In Search of a Paradigm 3. Framing the Issues in Literacy Education Part 3: Are there Increasing Difficulties with Literacy? 4. Explanations of the Current International 'Literacy Crises' 5. Simply Doing Their Job? The Politics of Reading Standards and 'Real Books' 6. When Will the Phonics Police Come Knocking? 7. Literacy Assessment and the Politics of Identities 8. Learning Difficulties and the New Literacy Studies: A Socially-Critical Perspective Part 4: What Political and Historical Considerations Shape Curricula and Programmatic Responses to Literacy Difficulties? 9. A Veteran Enters the Reading Wars: My Journey 10. Reading Recovery and Pause, Prompt, Praise: Professional Visions and Current Practices 11. How Inclusive is the Literacy Hour? 12. Developmental Dyslexia: Into the Future Part 5: How Does Social Class, Culture, Ethnicity and Gender Impact upon Literacy Difficulties? Can they be Addressed? 13. Texts in Context: Mapping out the Gender Differentiation of the Reading Curriculum 14. The Literacy Acquisition of Black and Asian 'English-as-Additional-Language' (EAL) Learners: Anti-Racist Assessment and Intervention Challenges 15. Bilingualism and Literacies in Primary School: Implications for Professional Development 16. Psychosocial Factors in the Aetiology and Course of Specific Learning Disabilities Part 6: The Impact of the Political, Social and Cultural upon Individual Difficulties with Literacy and their School Curricula 17. Myths of Illiteracy: Childhood Memories of Reading in London's East End 18. New Times! Old Ways? Part 7: Ethical and Social Justice Issues 19. Justice, Literacy, and Impediments to Learning Literacy 20. Reforming Special Education: Beyond 'Inclusion'

Janice Wearmouth, Gavin Reid, Janet Soler