Critical literacy emerged out of a Freirean approach.

It is premised on the belief that students need to have the ability to do more than a technical analysis of language, that texts in everyday life are not innocuous, neutral texts requiring simple decoding and response (Luke et all, 2001, p113), and that students need to be also able to do a reading of the cultures around, behind, underneath, alongside, after and within the text (ibid, italics in original). The job of the critical literacy teacher is to give students tools for weighing and critiquing, analyzing and appraising textual techniques and ideologies, values and positions (ibid, p112). 60s Multiliteracies The New London Group (1996) present a pedagogy of multiliteracies that attempts to broaden an understanding of literacy and literacy teaching and learning to include negotiating a multiplicity of discourses (p.61). Their purpose is respond to changing working and private lives, in a more complex and changing world. They suggest multiliteracies is multiple in two ways, they are: Culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalised societies Burgeoning variety of text forms They have proposed four components for their new pedagogy Situated practice Overt instruction Critical framing Transformed practice Anstey and Bull (2006) suggest [m]ultiliteracies means being cognitively and socially literate with paper, live, and electronic texts. It also means being strategic, that is, being able to recognize what is required in a given context, examine what is already known, and then, if necessary modify that knowledge to develop a strategy that suits the context and situation. A multiliterate person must therefore be a problem solver and strategic thinker, that is, an active and informed citizen (p.23). 90s

Proponents of whole language believe oral and written modes of language are similar and that we can use what we know about oral language in the teaching of written language. The focus on meaning making, on the whole of the language, on reading and writing for real purposes in context. Whole language is an approach to literacy used particularly in primary schools. Edelsky (2006) suggests whole language is constructing meaning from text in a situation (p161), that a whole language framework insists that we become skilled language users not that we learn language skills (p 162) she wants every learner to have the opportunity to become a skilled language user her book is called With literacy and justice for all. 70s-80s Four Roles Model The work done by Allan Luke and Peter Freebody on an approach to literacy in Queensland in the 90s is called the four roles mode. The basic proposition of the four roles model is that effective literacy in complex print and multi-mediated societies requires a broad and flexible repertoire of practices (2003 p53). The four roles are: Breaking the code Participating in the meaning of text Using texts functionally Critically analyzing and transforming texts 90s

Sociocultural approaches to literacy

New Literacy Studies emerged out of Brian Streets work on autonomous and ideological models of literacy. He (2000) suggests the dominant literacy discourse of autonomous skills-based delivery (p27) marshals powerful alliances and resources (p28). This may account for what Street sees as an ambivalent relationship still between practice and theory (p28). He believes it is approaching literacy as a social practice that provides a way of making sense of variations in the uses and meanings of literacy in contexts rather than reliance on the barren notion of literacy skills, rates, levels that dominate contemporary discourse about literacy (p23). Streets understanding has been taken up both in traditional classrooms and outside them. Street distinguishes between literacy events and literacy practices. A literacy event is observable, it involves reading or writing, but practices are not so observable, that is why it is often meaningless to ask people about literacy alone . because what might have given meaning to literacy events may actually be something that is not, in the first instance, thought of in terms of literacy at all (21-22). For Street literacy practices refer to the broader cultural conception of particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing in cultural contexts (p22).

80s