Print Literacy Development

by Purcell-Gates, Victoria; Jacobson, Erik; Degener, Sophie

• ISBN13: 9780674015180
• ISBN10: 0674015185
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-11-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Is literacy a social and cultural practice, or a set of cognitive skills to be learned and applied? Literacy researchers, who have differed sharply on this question, will welcome this book, which is the first to address the critical divide. The authors lucidly explain how we develop our abilities to read and write and offer a unified theory of literacy development that places cognitive development within a sociocultural context of literacy practices. Drawing on research that reveals connections between literacy as it is practiced outside of school and as it is taught in school, the authors argue that students learn to read and write through the knowledge and skills that they bring with them to the classroom as well as from the ways that literacy is practiced in their own different social communities. The authors argue that until literacy development can be understood in this broader way educators will never be able to develop truly effective literacy instruction for the broad range of sociocultural communities served by schools.

Table of Contents

To Learn to Read and Write: Students Who Fail and Succeed	1	(11)
The LPALS Study	12	(11)
How Does Print Literacy Develop?	23	(6)
Literacy as Social Practice	29	(12)
Print Literacy as Cognitive Skill Development	41	(22)
The Seeming Incommensurability of the Social and the Cognitive	63	(18)
Print Literacy Development through a Widened Lens	81	(45)
The Course of Print Literacy Development in and out of School	126	(33)
Signs and Symbols: Research Implications for Best Practice	159	(16)
Notes	175	(12)
References	187	(16)
Index	203