about   schedule   publications   articles   links   gallery   testimonials   contact

Contextualising Difficulties in Literacy Development
Routledge/Falmer/OU, 2002
Co-editors Janet Soler and Janice Wearmouth

Product Description
Together with Addressing Difficulties in Literacy Development, this reader forms the basis of the Open University's Difficulties in Literacy Development course, and is ideal for similar courses nationally and internationally.

From the Back Cover
This book provides a range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives on difficulties in literacy development. The high-profile team of contributors provides 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.
  • social, cultural and ethnic factors which impact upon difficulties in literacy development.
  • the impact of these wider political and social issues on individual students.
This book will be of interest to postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, education professionals and policy makers who are keen to address difficulties in literacy development.

Table of Contents
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"

Product Details
 Paperback: 344 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (19 Sep 2002)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0415289017
ISBN-13: 978-0415289016
Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.6 x 1.6 cm

 
Copyright Gavin Reid 2010