Literacy: A Field of Evolving Terms, Definitions and Educational Approaches

Abstract

Everyone has an opinion about literacy. When differing opinions about literacy are represented as conflicts in the media, through print and online newspaper articles and editorials, talk-back radio and online spaces, the spectre of a literacy crisis is raised, ‘usually … in relation to socio-economic change of some kind’ (Snyder 2008: 7). While commentary is sought from politicians, employer groups, teachers, teacher unions, experts and parents, rarely, if ever, are students consulted. Everyone who believes there is a literacy crisis can give an example of the crisis in action: young people glued to their various electronic devices using text language instead of correct language; the young woman at the local store who can’t add up the prices on a few groceries, young employees who can’t follow written instructions and schools that fail to teach grammar or that teach a grammar parents don’t recognise.