Critical Approaches To Literacy In Theory And Practice by Brian Street

The effects of these critical engagements with social theory, educational applications and policy is that New Literacy Studies is now going through a productive period of intense debate that firstly establishes and consolidates many of the earlier insights and empirical work and secondly builds a more robust and perhaps less insular field of study. A major contribution arising from the work cited here has been the attempt to appeal beyond the specific interests of ethnographers interested in the "local" in order to engage with both educationalists interested in literacy acquisition and use across educational contexts, both formal and informal, and with policy makers more generally. That practical engagement, however, will still need to be rooted in sound theoretical and conceptual understanding if the teaching and studying of literacy are to avoid being simply tokens for other interests. We still, then, need to analyze and contest what counts as "literacy" (and numeracy); what literacy events and practices mean to users in different cultural and social contexts-- the original inspiration for NLS - but also what are the "limits of the local"; and, as the writers cited here indicate, how literacy relates to more general issues of social theory regarding textual, figured worlds, identity and power. 

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