Learning to Read as a Social Practice. Remembering Brian Street

Group Submission Type: Panel Session

Proposal

The panel honors and remembers Brian Street’s extraordinary contribution to the field of literacy. His seminal ideas of literacy as a social practice challenged dominant approaches to learning to read, and questioned the idea that people living in conditions of poverty are illiterate.

Brian helped found the field of New Literacy Studies and influenced policy approaches to education internationally, working with agencies like UNESCO, and supporting grassroots organizations that sought to understand and build on local literacy practices, rather than borrowing “one-size fits all” models from elsewhere. He worked constantly to establish connections, between theory and practice, across different cultural contexts, and across disciplines.

This session is based on a special issue of UNESCO’s Prospects, guest edited by Brian Street, on Learning to Read: From Policy to Practice. The publication was one of Brian’s final contributions to the field, before his untimely death. The session draws together some key points arising from selected contributions in this special issue: Learning to read is of increasing public concern. Learning to read is complex; it takes place in formal, non-formal, and informal learning contexts, which involve assemblages of identities and artefacts, and are open to ideological pressures and to power plays. There is no one right way to teach reading but researching reading as social practices is a necessary first step to teaching.

The session brings together leading scholars in the field, whose work and thinking were shaped, on many levels, by Brian’s writing and teaching.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Global Literacy

Chair

• Mmantsetsa Marope, UNESCO International Bureau of Education

Presenters

• David Bloome, Ohio State University

• Minjeong Kim, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Maria Lucia Castanheira, Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil

• Elizabeth Maria da Silva, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil

• Judy Kalman, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Mexico

• Iliana Reyes, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Mexico

Individual Presentations

• Storytelling: Learning to read as social and cultural processes - David Bloome, Ohio State University; Minjeong Kim, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• The schooling of texts in the pedagogy courses - Maria Lucia Castanheira, Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil; Elizabeth Maria da Silva, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil

• On literacy, reading, and learning to read in Mexico - Judy Kalman, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Mexico; Iliana Reyes, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Mexico

Discussant

• Dan Wagner, University of Pennsylvania