Consideraciones Metodológicas

In contrast to the concept of literacy as skills and tasks, literacy as situated social practice, situated literacies and the socio-cultural or the socio-linguistics model, emanate from New Literacy Studies as they all refer to literacy as culturally and contextually situated. These concepts have similarities with literacy for transformation but, though ideological, are less focused on changing the social order.

The theories of situated literacies developed in different contexts at different times in the industrialised and the developing world. These theories have led to detailed analyses of how people in different communities use literacy for the different purposes required by their social and cultural situation. Literacy conceptualised as social practice includes different aspects – social literacies, community literacies and literacy for livelihoods.

In South Carolina Shirley Bryce-Heath analysed literacy practices in three communities in her seminal workWhat no Bedtime Story Means? (Heath, 1983). She described the cultural nature of parents’ literacy practices as they introduced books to their preschool children. This work informed Street whose important bookLiteracy in Theory and Practice (1984) challenged the theory of literacy as a set of abstract and transferable skills. Based on fieldwork in an Iranian community termed illiterate by the authorities, he noted a wide variety of literacy uses. He argued that communicative practices involving reading and writing are deeply embedded in social, cultural, economic and political contexts and literacy should not be regarded as a neutral technical process, an “independent variable” transferable to all contexts (Street, 1984:2). He termed this neutral technical process the “autonomous” model of literacy and argued in contrast that all literacy is “ideological”, implicated in power relations and embedded in specific cultural meanings and practices. Literacy programmes must therefore be contextually and culturally situated if they are to be successful.

Heath (1983:80) first developed the concept of literacy events stating that a “literacy event” is:

An occasion in which a piece of writing or reading is integral to the nature of the participant interactions and their interpretive processes.

The concept of “events” assists in identifying the specific literacy tasks people engage in. Street expanded this to develop the theory of literacy “events” and “practices”. Literacy “events” can be described as specific literacy “happenings”. Street (1995:2) stated that

“Literacy practices” refers to both behaviour and the social and cultural

conceptualisations that give meaning to the uses of reading and writing. Literacy practices incorporate not only ‘literacy events’, as empirical occasions to which literacy is integral, but also folk models of those events and the ideological preconceptions underpinning them.

A key feature of New Literacy Studies was the use of ethnographic methods to identify communities’ literacy events and practices. This distinction between specific activities which involved reading or writing increased interest among researchers who undertook important ethnographic studies on the use of literacies in different communities. These studies included literacy in the northern town of Lancaster, England (Barton and Hamilton, 1998), literacy usage in the household and in the public sphere in China (Stites, 2001), economic uses of literacy among peasants in Bangladesh (Maddox, 2001), literacy in Peru (Aikman, 2001) and in Cameroon (Cheffy, 2008). Literature on adult literacy among nomadic and travelling communities included literacy among the Fulani (Ezeomah, 2006), the Rabari (Dyer and Choksi, 2001; Dyer, 2006) as well as on the education of children (Bosch, 2006; Carr-Hill, 2006; Le Roux, 1999). These studies focused on local text mediated social and cultural interactions, literacy usage and practice and led to the

concept of “literacies” – no single literacy but many literacies. The majority of studies were undertaken to increase understanding of literacy in the “development” context of low income countries and they problematise the dominant discourse of literacy as important for increasing economic production.

The concepts of socially conscious and learner-centered programmes practiced in UK in the 1970’s are also relevant to Gypsies and Travellers. Whether these literacy programmes can be categorised under the NLS approach is open to discussion. Formal ethnographic studies were not carried out, but the practical literacy demanded in the environment was researched and the difficult and emotional issues of the time such as unemployment were addressed. While there are difficulties in operationalising NLS in the development context,

the availability of reprographic resources in the UK made possible the instant production of materials according to a student’s immediate need (Stock, 1982).

The programmes also incorporated elements from the then current “worker writer” movement, which challenged “the master narrative” and published writing by previously unheard voices. Literacy students were encouraged to construct their own reality and a sense of themselves, their culture and community through the practice of recording their memories and experiences. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable reading materials for adult learners. As the material they produced was relevant to the lives of other

learners it was highly motivating, became very popular and, where resources were available, the stories were published and circulated including two stories by Gypsies living in Westborough29_{. Some of these voices were critical of the existing social order but this}

was an outcome rather than the purpose and I would refer to these programmes as ‘situated’ rather than ‘transformational’.

Advocates of literacy as a social practice embedded in institutional and cultural

relationships recognise, but place less emphasis, on the cognitive process of reading and writing or the technical skills required. Meaning is seen as a sociological process not a private internal cognitive state or event (Gee, 1996; Lankshear, 1997). The concept of literacy as an internal psychoanalytical process is minimised. There is little in the NLS literature on how children or adults master the technical processes of reading and writing as outlined above (cf. 3.2.1.) and no consideration of the merits of synthetic or analytical phonics (Brooks’ et. al., 2007). The focus of NLS is on the context and the situated text, not the learning process.