Grounded Literacy

Recent years have seen enormous interest in the
nature of literacy within modern societies. Several
studies have focused on the literacy practices of
young children, but detailed longitudinal work with
adolescents is relatively rare. This book attempts
to understand the nature of young people s literacy
through a cultural study of the media practices of a
group of young people living in an English coastal
town. The author was the students teacher for two
years preceding the project and visited them
periodically over more than three years to conduct
small-group interviews. Previous studies of young
people s cultural practices have frequently focused
on the use of specific media forms, such as
television or information technology, at a specific
point in time. This work focuses on the students
use over time of a range of media, including moving
image, sound, print and ICT, arguing that the
youngsters practices should be viewed less as
discrete competencies than as processes of
multi-modal literacy. It will be of interest to
educators, parents and everyone who wishes to grasp
the nature of contemporary literacy.