From Comprehension to Interpretation: Rethinking the Nature of Literacy

• In Event: Artificial Intelligence, Learning, or Teaching

Abstract

This article invites a reorientation to literacy from a focus on reading as text comprehension to literacy being an interpretive capacity and an embodied repository of interpretive resources. I draw on the construct of “hermeneutical resources”—epistemic tools that enable understanding and being understood—from the field of epistemic justice in elaborating this proposal. I also explore the intersections of the proposed approach with two key strands in literacy research: cognitive perspectives, which emphasize comprehension processes, and critical literacy approaches, which foreground discourse, power, and social context. The aim is to show that this perspective is both familiar, even if it requires a shift in framing, and generative in facilitating dialogue across diverse research traditions on literacy development and education.

Author

• Maya Alkateb-Chami, Harvard University