- Email: [email protected]
Literacy inequalities and social justice
International Journal of Educational Development 31 (2011) 577–579
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Educational Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev
Editorial
Literacy inequalities and social justice The topic of literacy is rarely far from the concerns of educationalists, politicians and the media. We are presented with the ‘latest’ information on standards, and comparisons and inequalities between the achievements of different groups, populations and countries. These representations of literacy frequently reveal large and telling literacy inequalities within and between countries (Nussbaum, 2006). Such inequalities concern a capability that is one of the most basic, and fundamental measures of educational achievement. Yet, one of the characteristics of such representations of literacy and literacy inequalities is that they are contested. Such contestation not only concerns the ‘data’ itself, but also its production and social construction – its conceptual and methodological foundations, and its discursive and ideological frames of reference. What are we to make of such debates? It is our view that contestation is a necessary feature of literacy research and policy discourse. It demonstrates the challenge of understanding and representing literacy and literacies as complex, pluralistic and changing phenomena. Debates over literacy (and literacy inequalities) are a necessary feature of an open and democratic process of public debate and deliberation. As deeply as one may feel committed to a particular understanding of literacy or the rigour of their particular study, there is no single approach to literacy teaching or research that could legitimately close such debates. The papers in this Special Issue inform and answer such questions from differing geographical contexts and theoretical perspectives. They were originally presented at a conference on ‘literacy inequalities’ at the University of East Anglia. The idea for this conference had come about through our involvement in the UN Literacy Decade Mid Term Review. ‘Literacy inequalities’ was a particular focus for the UNLD report (later published as part of the UNESCO (2008) report, The Global Literacy Challenge), particularly in terms of comparing literacy rates between and within countries. As a group of researchers coming from a new literacies/ ethnographic background, this starting point seemed problematic in assuming consensus on the questions of ‘whose literacy?’ ‘how is literacy measured/evaluated?’ and ‘literacy for what purpose?’. In the conference, we sought to re-examine the topic, and also to affirm our particular commitment to literacy within a democratic framework of social justice. We were therefore not simply interested in the ‘facts’ of literacy practices and literacy distribution, but as Fraser’s (2008) work on social justice suggests, also committed to examining the politics of ‘re-distribution, recognition and participation’. We recognised that it helps to keep the big ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘who’ questions of literacy in mind: What counts as literacy in that social context? How do we deal with different and co-existing literacy traditions? Why is the distribution of literacy important and how do we understand and explain such inequalities? What does it mean to have ‘enough’ literacy to function in a particular setting or society? And, who are involved in 0738-0593/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.04.003
defining and answering such questions? Through bringing together practitioners, policy makers and researchers in the conference, we also aimed to bring together quite different perspectives and views on these questions. How then do we understand literacy inequalities within such a plural and contested terrain? One way of tackling these issues – Maddox and Esposito (2011) suggest – is to think of literacy abilities and inequalities as if distributed across two dimensions. The first, ‘vertical’ dimension (or axis) would represent the amount or level of abilities that a person or group have within a particular form of literacy. That is the conventional way of looking at ‘how much’ literacy a person has, or whether they have ‘enough’ literacy or have reached a necessary ‘threshold’ – as if on a vertical scale. However, if we want to recognise the plurality of literacies that exist, then we also need a second ‘horizontal’ dimension (Maddox and Esposito, 2011). That would capture people’s different abilities in different forms of literacy. Questions of literacy inequalities and social justice not only need to ask about the distribution of literacy on single dimensions, but also the distribution of abilities across plural ‘literacies’, and the wider communicative repertoire. We might want to look, for example, at the distribution of academic literacies, digital literacies, dominant and vernacular literacies, languages and scripts. As Street suggests in this special issue, we may therefore want to consider what is ‘enough’ across multiple forms of literacy. Street’s work re-affirms the need for ethnographic accounts of literacy, of local meanings and practices, and questions the construction of a ‘lack’ of a single thing called literacy as self-evident indicator of inequality. The main barriers to that kind of pluralistic analysis of literacy inequalities is that certain forms of literacy tend to be given ‘privileged’ status in literacy measurement regimes (Hamilton, 2001). While some forms of literacy practice are now well established subjects of policy and academic enquiry, other minority and vernacular literacies (and more often than not, the literacy practices of minority and dominated peoples), find themselves in struggles for recognition and representation within educational systems and in representations (Collins and Blot, 2003; Blommaert, 2008; Juffermans, in this issue). In this respect we can perhaps add a third dimension of analysis – that of disciplinary and institutional perspectives and power. There are well rehearsed debates between disciplines over the legitimacy of contrasting approaches to studying literacy, what they include, recognise and neglect (see Hamilton and Barton, 2000; Blum et al., 2001). Many statistical approaches to literacy measurement tend to adopt standardised measures for what counts as literacy, and are less inclined to enter into debates over what counts as literacy. These include psychometric approaches that are now increasingly dominant in international measures of literacy. The papers in this Special Issue, in contrast, are strongly influenced by ethnographic
578
Editorial / International Journal of Educational Development 31 (2011) 577–579
perspectives, where questions of power and the status of literacies come to the fore. The debates between disciplines can inform, and to some extent offer points of synergy and collaboration. However, as we suggest above, they also function to provide a creative tension, to democratise and sharpen the debate, in ways that further illuminate literacy inequalities. 1. Literacy policies and social justice As mentioned above, the concern for policy has historically been to measure the adequacy of literacy in some universal sense. However, in recent decades, the movement and migration of people across contexts and the changing nature and flexibility of the labour force has created new pressures and demands, not only of a material nature, in terms of linguistic skills and resources, but equally ideological in nature, in terms of recreating and asserting one’s identity. As Collins shows through examples of immigrant communities in the United States, schools as social institutions can play both reproductive and transformative roles; but schools and other literacy encounters within the current dynamic of globalisation, require both a historical and multi-level analysis that can link situated communicative activities to broad-scale institutional processes. While there is a contextual indeterminacy of language use, linked to its ‘constructed’ and ‘performative’ nature, it is equally shaped by political constraints or social conflicts. Rao goes on to show how migrant workers, especially a majority from the developing world, integrated at the lowest levels of the labour market, frequently end up rejecting basic education in the mainstream language, provided through schools and often of low quality, in favour of alternate literacies that can at least uphold their identities. Focus on alternate languages (in this case Quranic Arabic) and institutions that respect their working class identity (in this case the madrasas) form the locus of a respectable social life. Here the scale of analysis extends beyond national boundaries – devalued at home, but respected overseas. One can find many examples where people moving across contexts – whether students, workers, or others – face new demands in terms of languages, scripts and cultures, with implications for learning new literacies that can be empowering by both reducing social and economic inequalities and facilitating more equitable possibilities for mutual engagement. Bartlett, however, has less optimistic findings. In the case of Haitian immigrants into the Dominican Republic, she finds official documents and literacy practices being used to exercise state power vis-a`-vis the immigrants. While the state arbitrarily awards or withholds legal documents, their interpretation by agents of the state is further shaped by gender, race, social capital and situation. Rather than interrupting inequalities, state literacies here become a tool for exploiting immigrant populations. Literacies and inequalities are contextual and so are they relational. Policies then can never move towards achieving social justice goals through one-size-fits-all programme strategies. Schooled literacies have in fact become one way of perpetuating, reproducing and maintaining hierarchies of the elite. Recognising and giving credence to the plurality of literacies, rather than placing them in a hierarchical order, the second or horizontal dimension mentioned above, is key to attaining social justice goals. The UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2008 identified Nigeria as one of the ten countries in the world which had an out-of-school population of over 10 million. Rao was conducting fieldwork on a different project in Nigeria at that time, and in discussion with both policy-makers and practitioners she realised that a large number of these out of school children actually studied in Quranic schools, not recognised as a legitimate educational institution by global and national policymakers and statisticians, hence counted as out-of-school, even though they were learning for at least 8–10 years in these institutions. This example brings out the inherent ‘value bias’ in
much of policy, with not only informal learning being seen as inferior to formal learning, but hierarchies established within formal learning itself, privileging what is seen as ‘western education’ over more local and indigenous forms of education and learning. While literacy theories and analysis are now quite advanced in terms of recognising values, context and plurality, the dialogue with policy needs continued strengthening. What does literacy signify to people, what are the skills and knowledge they have or would like to acquire and what are the meanings they give to this? Advocacy, which is nuanced and sensitive, needs to be promoted through the dialogue between academics, policy-makers and practitioners. Monitoring then needs to be about more than numbers in school or out of it, with particular skills or without, rather looking at the relational aspects of literacies and how empowering they have been in terms of enabling groups to enhance their life choices. 2. Literacy, change and contestation Reflecting on how policy makers have engaged with the notion of ‘literacy inequalities’ over the decades, we have been struck by an increasing emphasis on addressing ‘access’ (to literacy) as the solution. Influenced by the Education for All agenda, many countries have identified marginalised groups (in terms of those who have ‘less’ literacy) and developed specific programmes or strategies for their inclusion, as illustrated by the case of Nigeria: ‘adult literates (majority females) in rural communities and urban slums, youth out of school (girls and boys), pastoral nomads, nomadic communities, almajiris, women in purdah, adults involved in different trades, adults in confinement in prisons are the main targets for literacy interventions’ (UNESCO, 2006). By focusing literacy initiatives on particular groups – those who have been identified as not having ‘enough’ literacy – policy has clearly prioritised the ‘vertical’ dimensions of literacy discussed above. The implications of this are not just that different literacies are overlooked (the second, horizontal dimension) but also signal a move away from the notion of literacy as a force for social change. The EFA agenda has strongly influenced the dominant discourse around literacy today – a focus on getting marginalized groups into formal education, assuming a narrower definition of ‘literacy’ (reading and writing), and seeing literacy as an end not a means. By contrast, earlier Freirean-inspired adult educators saw literacy as a means of political and social mobilisation, which had relevance not only for the marginalized or ‘oppressed’ groups participating in programmes, but also for the whole population in terms of challenging dominant attitudes and initiating structural change. This relates to our third dimension and the role that literacy can play in contesting and transforming the institutional structures that perpetuate social inequalities. Looking at literacy as a process for challenging and transforming inequalities around gender, poverty, language, ethnicity and disability, therefore implies a shift away from discussions on increasing access to adult education or schooling. Within the dominant Education For All policy discourse, the strong emphasis on attainment and outcomes means that the words ‘literacy’ and ‘education’ are often used interchangeably. There is also an assumption that social changes can be made through education alone – through changing participants’ attitudes or raising their awareness of their rights. Focusing on our third ‘dimension of literacy’ provides the opportunity to investigate how literacy practices sustain or challenge dominant power relationships, and the significance of changing literacy environments and practices. This might include exploration of the processes through which adult literacy programmes challenge or reinforce dominant languages and literacies of power. Chopra’s paper points to the need for ‘literacy inequalities’ to be analysed from the wider
Editorial / International Journal of Educational Development 31 (2011) 577–579
perspective of political and social change – rather than being limited to a consideration only of educational concerns and contexts. Her paper uses three ethnographic vignettes to demonstrate how constructions of the gendered illiterate Indian villager as a homogeneous group, empowered by adult education programmes, are challenged by their self-identification, often located within shifting hegemonic constraints. As well as moving ‘outside’ education to consider the interconnections between literacy and wider social and political change, we are also concerned to look ‘inside’ institutions where literacy is learned and practised – within classrooms, communities and organisations. We suggest that analysing pedagogy, organisational practices and issues of representation, involves exploring not only the range of literacy materials available (from primers to ‘real’ materials or REFLECT visuals made by participants) and the pedagogies used for learning, but also enables us to analyse how these differing approaches reflect existing social practices, or attempt to change them. As Kell’s article suggests, such investigations raise questions which help to interrogate the links between what we have described above as the second and third dimensions of literacy inequalities: do the materials and pedagogies used for learning reproduce inequalities and create a further layer of representational inequalities, or do they contribute to a renegotiation of power relations? What is the value accorded to different types of texts within everyday cultural practice? Based on her ethnographic research in South Africa and New Zealand, Kell uses the concept of ‘recontextualisation’ and ‘literacy events’ to analyse what happens when texts shift across contexts and its implications for power relations. Her paper shows how these materials, documents and texts are accessed, transacted and contribute to the formation of particular social statuses and hierarchies. We view these questions on pedagogy, texts and practice as integrally linked to issues around research methodology and planning approaches. Significantly, much of the research on ‘literacy inequalities’ in recent decades has been influenced by a quantitative paradigm – aiming to measure attainment in literacy and the associated benefits. Several of the papers in this Special Issue offer insights into the different perspective that ethnographic research can offer through a detailed account of the process, rather than outcomes. Brian Street draws on theoretical debates within the field of New Literacy Studies and examples of literacy programmes to analyse the ways in which an ethnographic perspective on literacy practices can contribute to a conceptualisation of ‘inequalities’. This kind of research often reveals much about changing literacies (both in terms of how literacies are changing and initiating change) and inequalities. Through an ethnographic analysis of how a text written in Mandinka language by a non-formally educated man is transformed by a formally educated urban man, Juffermans gives an unusual insight into the ‘freedom’ that indigenous literacies can offer for creative expression. This contrasts with ‘standardised’ dominant languages which have fixed rules about spelling. Drawing on Kress (2000), Juffermans reveals how ‘spelling in local languages remains an affair of creativity rather than convention’ and goes on to explore how the formally educated man in particular uses his knowledge of English literacy conventions to rewrite the Mandinka text. Through this example, he identifies an inequality in the very ‘infrastructure’ of a small language like Mandinka, which leads people to borrow elements of other spelling systems, notably English. Juffermans suggests that literacy planners could learn from the processes of change and creativity revealed through this case study – so that rather than trying to standardise indigenous languages ‘from above’ (for the educational reasons of making a language simpler to learn to read and write), planners could recognise that ‘powerful languages’ (such as English) already co-exist with African local languages and offer a resource that learners can draw upon to develop ‘grassroots spelling’.
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In a policy context, such ethnographic research can thus demonstrate the potential to promote literacy as a process of engaging critically with existing inequalities, whether around disability, poverty, gender, ethnic group or as in Jufferman’s case study – inequalities within the language itself. Language policy has often been influenced by our first and second dimensions – using mother tongue teaching for minority groups as a bridge to a language of power. Bilingual literacy education, for all groups in the population, could however begin a process of literacy challenging such language inequalities (the third dimension) and part of this process might involve more explicit examination of such programmes within what Juffermans has called the ‘multilingual ecology’ of the area. Hamilton and Pitt explore literacy policy in a different context, and show how changes in literacy discourses in the UK shape rationales for literacy policy, and how changing models of the learner can be located within the wider political economy. Their paper points us towards a greater self-consciousness of the ways in which literacy inequalities are framed, and how they frame their subjects as global citizens. All the papers in this special issue can similarly contribute to deconstructing dominant policy discourses and exposing assumptions that have limited the ways in which literacy inequalities are discussed, researched and addressed through policy. We hope that the discussions initiated through this collection of papers may move us a step towards closing the gap between research and policy that Zavala notes in her reflective endpiece – and which has proved a continuous challenge, particularly for those committed to ethnographic approaches within the New Literacy Studies. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.04.003. References Blommaert, B., 2008. Grassroots Literacies: Writing, Identity and Voice in Central Africa. Routledge, New York/London. Blum, A., Goldstein, H., Guerin-Pace, F., 2001. International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS): an analysis of international comparisons of adult literacy. Assessment in Education 8 (2), 225–246. Collins, J., Blot, R., 2003. Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power and Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Fraser, N., 2008. Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalising World. Columbia University Press, New York. Hamilton, M., 2001. Privileged literacies: policy, institutional process and the life of the IALS. Language and Education 15, 178–196. Hamilton, M., Barton, D., 2000. The international adult literacy survey: what does it really measure? International Journal of Education 46 (5), 377–389. Kress, G., 2000. Early Spelling: Between Convention and Creativity. Routledge, London. Maddox, B., Esposito, L., 2011. Sufficiency Re-examined: A Capabilities Perspective on the Assessment of Functional Adult Literacy. Journal of Development Studies 47 (9) (September). Nussbaum, M., 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Belknap Press, Cambridge MA/London. UNESCO, 2006, Report of a two day national workshop on needs assessment and validation of national action plan for LIFE in Nigeria, 29th - 30th November 2006. UNESCO, 2008. The Global Literacy Challenge: a profile of youth and adult literacy at the mid-point of the United Nations Literacy Decade 2003-2012. UNESCO, Paris, available from the website: unesdoc.unesco/0016/001631/org/images/ 163170e.pdf.
Bryan Maddox Sheila Aikman Nitya Rao Anna Robinson-Pant* University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom *Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1603 592857 E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Robinson-Pant).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Educational Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev
Editorial
Literacy inequalities and social justice The topic of literacy is rarely far from the concerns of educationalists, politicians and the media. We are presented with the ‘latest’ information on standards, and comparisons and inequalities between the achievements of different groups, populations and countries. These representations of literacy frequently reveal large and telling literacy inequalities within and between countries (Nussbaum, 2006). Such inequalities concern a capability that is one of the most basic, and fundamental measures of educational achievement. Yet, one of the characteristics of such representations of literacy and literacy inequalities is that they are contested. Such contestation not only concerns the ‘data’ itself, but also its production and social construction – its conceptual and methodological foundations, and its discursive and ideological frames of reference. What are we to make of such debates? It is our view that contestation is a necessary feature of literacy research and policy discourse. It demonstrates the challenge of understanding and representing literacy and literacies as complex, pluralistic and changing phenomena. Debates over literacy (and literacy inequalities) are a necessary feature of an open and democratic process of public debate and deliberation. As deeply as one may feel committed to a particular understanding of literacy or the rigour of their particular study, there is no single approach to literacy teaching or research that could legitimately close such debates. The papers in this Special Issue inform and answer such questions from differing geographical contexts and theoretical perspectives. They were originally presented at a conference on ‘literacy inequalities’ at the University of East Anglia. The idea for this conference had come about through our involvement in the UN Literacy Decade Mid Term Review. ‘Literacy inequalities’ was a particular focus for the UNLD report (later published as part of the UNESCO (2008) report, The Global Literacy Challenge), particularly in terms of comparing literacy rates between and within countries. As a group of researchers coming from a new literacies/ ethnographic background, this starting point seemed problematic in assuming consensus on the questions of ‘whose literacy?’ ‘how is literacy measured/evaluated?’ and ‘literacy for what purpose?’. In the conference, we sought to re-examine the topic, and also to affirm our particular commitment to literacy within a democratic framework of social justice. We were therefore not simply interested in the ‘facts’ of literacy practices and literacy distribution, but as Fraser’s (2008) work on social justice suggests, also committed to examining the politics of ‘re-distribution, recognition and participation’. We recognised that it helps to keep the big ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘who’ questions of literacy in mind: What counts as literacy in that social context? How do we deal with different and co-existing literacy traditions? Why is the distribution of literacy important and how do we understand and explain such inequalities? What does it mean to have ‘enough’ literacy to function in a particular setting or society? And, who are involved in 0738-0593/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.04.003
defining and answering such questions? Through bringing together practitioners, policy makers and researchers in the conference, we also aimed to bring together quite different perspectives and views on these questions. How then do we understand literacy inequalities within such a plural and contested terrain? One way of tackling these issues – Maddox and Esposito (2011) suggest – is to think of literacy abilities and inequalities as if distributed across two dimensions. The first, ‘vertical’ dimension (or axis) would represent the amount or level of abilities that a person or group have within a particular form of literacy. That is the conventional way of looking at ‘how much’ literacy a person has, or whether they have ‘enough’ literacy or have reached a necessary ‘threshold’ – as if on a vertical scale. However, if we want to recognise the plurality of literacies that exist, then we also need a second ‘horizontal’ dimension (Maddox and Esposito, 2011). That would capture people’s different abilities in different forms of literacy. Questions of literacy inequalities and social justice not only need to ask about the distribution of literacy on single dimensions, but also the distribution of abilities across plural ‘literacies’, and the wider communicative repertoire. We might want to look, for example, at the distribution of academic literacies, digital literacies, dominant and vernacular literacies, languages and scripts. As Street suggests in this special issue, we may therefore want to consider what is ‘enough’ across multiple forms of literacy. Street’s work re-affirms the need for ethnographic accounts of literacy, of local meanings and practices, and questions the construction of a ‘lack’ of a single thing called literacy as self-evident indicator of inequality. The main barriers to that kind of pluralistic analysis of literacy inequalities is that certain forms of literacy tend to be given ‘privileged’ status in literacy measurement regimes (Hamilton, 2001). While some forms of literacy practice are now well established subjects of policy and academic enquiry, other minority and vernacular literacies (and more often than not, the literacy practices of minority and dominated peoples), find themselves in struggles for recognition and representation within educational systems and in representations (Collins and Blot, 2003; Blommaert, 2008; Juffermans, in this issue). In this respect we can perhaps add a third dimension of analysis – that of disciplinary and institutional perspectives and power. There are well rehearsed debates between disciplines over the legitimacy of contrasting approaches to studying literacy, what they include, recognise and neglect (see Hamilton and Barton, 2000; Blum et al., 2001). Many statistical approaches to literacy measurement tend to adopt standardised measures for what counts as literacy, and are less inclined to enter into debates over what counts as literacy. These include psychometric approaches that are now increasingly dominant in international measures of literacy. The papers in this Special Issue, in contrast, are strongly influenced by ethnographic
578
Editorial / International Journal of Educational Development 31 (2011) 577–579
perspectives, where questions of power and the status of literacies come to the fore. The debates between disciplines can inform, and to some extent offer points of synergy and collaboration. However, as we suggest above, they also function to provide a creative tension, to democratise and sharpen the debate, in ways that further illuminate literacy inequalities. 1. Literacy policies and social justice As mentioned above, the concern for policy has historically been to measure the adequacy of literacy in some universal sense. However, in recent decades, the movement and migration of people across contexts and the changing nature and flexibility of the labour force has created new pressures and demands, not only of a material nature, in terms of linguistic skills and resources, but equally ideological in nature, in terms of recreating and asserting one’s identity. As Collins shows through examples of immigrant communities in the United States, schools as social institutions can play both reproductive and transformative roles; but schools and other literacy encounters within the current dynamic of globalisation, require both a historical and multi-level analysis that can link situated communicative activities to broad-scale institutional processes. While there is a contextual indeterminacy of language use, linked to its ‘constructed’ and ‘performative’ nature, it is equally shaped by political constraints or social conflicts. Rao goes on to show how migrant workers, especially a majority from the developing world, integrated at the lowest levels of the labour market, frequently end up rejecting basic education in the mainstream language, provided through schools and often of low quality, in favour of alternate literacies that can at least uphold their identities. Focus on alternate languages (in this case Quranic Arabic) and institutions that respect their working class identity (in this case the madrasas) form the locus of a respectable social life. Here the scale of analysis extends beyond national boundaries – devalued at home, but respected overseas. One can find many examples where people moving across contexts – whether students, workers, or others – face new demands in terms of languages, scripts and cultures, with implications for learning new literacies that can be empowering by both reducing social and economic inequalities and facilitating more equitable possibilities for mutual engagement. Bartlett, however, has less optimistic findings. In the case of Haitian immigrants into the Dominican Republic, she finds official documents and literacy practices being used to exercise state power vis-a`-vis the immigrants. While the state arbitrarily awards or withholds legal documents, their interpretation by agents of the state is further shaped by gender, race, social capital and situation. Rather than interrupting inequalities, state literacies here become a tool for exploiting immigrant populations. Literacies and inequalities are contextual and so are they relational. Policies then can never move towards achieving social justice goals through one-size-fits-all programme strategies. Schooled literacies have in fact become one way of perpetuating, reproducing and maintaining hierarchies of the elite. Recognising and giving credence to the plurality of literacies, rather than placing them in a hierarchical order, the second or horizontal dimension mentioned above, is key to attaining social justice goals. The UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2008 identified Nigeria as one of the ten countries in the world which had an out-of-school population of over 10 million. Rao was conducting fieldwork on a different project in Nigeria at that time, and in discussion with both policy-makers and practitioners she realised that a large number of these out of school children actually studied in Quranic schools, not recognised as a legitimate educational institution by global and national policymakers and statisticians, hence counted as out-of-school, even though they were learning for at least 8–10 years in these institutions. This example brings out the inherent ‘value bias’ in
much of policy, with not only informal learning being seen as inferior to formal learning, but hierarchies established within formal learning itself, privileging what is seen as ‘western education’ over more local and indigenous forms of education and learning. While literacy theories and analysis are now quite advanced in terms of recognising values, context and plurality, the dialogue with policy needs continued strengthening. What does literacy signify to people, what are the skills and knowledge they have or would like to acquire and what are the meanings they give to this? Advocacy, which is nuanced and sensitive, needs to be promoted through the dialogue between academics, policy-makers and practitioners. Monitoring then needs to be about more than numbers in school or out of it, with particular skills or without, rather looking at the relational aspects of literacies and how empowering they have been in terms of enabling groups to enhance their life choices. 2. Literacy, change and contestation Reflecting on how policy makers have engaged with the notion of ‘literacy inequalities’ over the decades, we have been struck by an increasing emphasis on addressing ‘access’ (to literacy) as the solution. Influenced by the Education for All agenda, many countries have identified marginalised groups (in terms of those who have ‘less’ literacy) and developed specific programmes or strategies for their inclusion, as illustrated by the case of Nigeria: ‘adult literates (majority females) in rural communities and urban slums, youth out of school (girls and boys), pastoral nomads, nomadic communities, almajiris, women in purdah, adults involved in different trades, adults in confinement in prisons are the main targets for literacy interventions’ (UNESCO, 2006). By focusing literacy initiatives on particular groups – those who have been identified as not having ‘enough’ literacy – policy has clearly prioritised the ‘vertical’ dimensions of literacy discussed above. The implications of this are not just that different literacies are overlooked (the second, horizontal dimension) but also signal a move away from the notion of literacy as a force for social change. The EFA agenda has strongly influenced the dominant discourse around literacy today – a focus on getting marginalized groups into formal education, assuming a narrower definition of ‘literacy’ (reading and writing), and seeing literacy as an end not a means. By contrast, earlier Freirean-inspired adult educators saw literacy as a means of political and social mobilisation, which had relevance not only for the marginalized or ‘oppressed’ groups participating in programmes, but also for the whole population in terms of challenging dominant attitudes and initiating structural change. This relates to our third dimension and the role that literacy can play in contesting and transforming the institutional structures that perpetuate social inequalities. Looking at literacy as a process for challenging and transforming inequalities around gender, poverty, language, ethnicity and disability, therefore implies a shift away from discussions on increasing access to adult education or schooling. Within the dominant Education For All policy discourse, the strong emphasis on attainment and outcomes means that the words ‘literacy’ and ‘education’ are often used interchangeably. There is also an assumption that social changes can be made through education alone – through changing participants’ attitudes or raising their awareness of their rights. Focusing on our third ‘dimension of literacy’ provides the opportunity to investigate how literacy practices sustain or challenge dominant power relationships, and the significance of changing literacy environments and practices. This might include exploration of the processes through which adult literacy programmes challenge or reinforce dominant languages and literacies of power. Chopra’s paper points to the need for ‘literacy inequalities’ to be analysed from the wider
Editorial / International Journal of Educational Development 31 (2011) 577–579
perspective of political and social change – rather than being limited to a consideration only of educational concerns and contexts. Her paper uses three ethnographic vignettes to demonstrate how constructions of the gendered illiterate Indian villager as a homogeneous group, empowered by adult education programmes, are challenged by their self-identification, often located within shifting hegemonic constraints. As well as moving ‘outside’ education to consider the interconnections between literacy and wider social and political change, we are also concerned to look ‘inside’ institutions where literacy is learned and practised – within classrooms, communities and organisations. We suggest that analysing pedagogy, organisational practices and issues of representation, involves exploring not only the range of literacy materials available (from primers to ‘real’ materials or REFLECT visuals made by participants) and the pedagogies used for learning, but also enables us to analyse how these differing approaches reflect existing social practices, or attempt to change them. As Kell’s article suggests, such investigations raise questions which help to interrogate the links between what we have described above as the second and third dimensions of literacy inequalities: do the materials and pedagogies used for learning reproduce inequalities and create a further layer of representational inequalities, or do they contribute to a renegotiation of power relations? What is the value accorded to different types of texts within everyday cultural practice? Based on her ethnographic research in South Africa and New Zealand, Kell uses the concept of ‘recontextualisation’ and ‘literacy events’ to analyse what happens when texts shift across contexts and its implications for power relations. Her paper shows how these materials, documents and texts are accessed, transacted and contribute to the formation of particular social statuses and hierarchies. We view these questions on pedagogy, texts and practice as integrally linked to issues around research methodology and planning approaches. Significantly, much of the research on ‘literacy inequalities’ in recent decades has been influenced by a quantitative paradigm – aiming to measure attainment in literacy and the associated benefits. Several of the papers in this Special Issue offer insights into the different perspective that ethnographic research can offer through a detailed account of the process, rather than outcomes. Brian Street draws on theoretical debates within the field of New Literacy Studies and examples of literacy programmes to analyse the ways in which an ethnographic perspective on literacy practices can contribute to a conceptualisation of ‘inequalities’. This kind of research often reveals much about changing literacies (both in terms of how literacies are changing and initiating change) and inequalities. Through an ethnographic analysis of how a text written in Mandinka language by a non-formally educated man is transformed by a formally educated urban man, Juffermans gives an unusual insight into the ‘freedom’ that indigenous literacies can offer for creative expression. This contrasts with ‘standardised’ dominant languages which have fixed rules about spelling. Drawing on Kress (2000), Juffermans reveals how ‘spelling in local languages remains an affair of creativity rather than convention’ and goes on to explore how the formally educated man in particular uses his knowledge of English literacy conventions to rewrite the Mandinka text. Through this example, he identifies an inequality in the very ‘infrastructure’ of a small language like Mandinka, which leads people to borrow elements of other spelling systems, notably English. Juffermans suggests that literacy planners could learn from the processes of change and creativity revealed through this case study – so that rather than trying to standardise indigenous languages ‘from above’ (for the educational reasons of making a language simpler to learn to read and write), planners could recognise that ‘powerful languages’ (such as English) already co-exist with African local languages and offer a resource that learners can draw upon to develop ‘grassroots spelling’.
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In a policy context, such ethnographic research can thus demonstrate the potential to promote literacy as a process of engaging critically with existing inequalities, whether around disability, poverty, gender, ethnic group or as in Jufferman’s case study – inequalities within the language itself. Language policy has often been influenced by our first and second dimensions – using mother tongue teaching for minority groups as a bridge to a language of power. Bilingual literacy education, for all groups in the population, could however begin a process of literacy challenging such language inequalities (the third dimension) and part of this process might involve more explicit examination of such programmes within what Juffermans has called the ‘multilingual ecology’ of the area. Hamilton and Pitt explore literacy policy in a different context, and show how changes in literacy discourses in the UK shape rationales for literacy policy, and how changing models of the learner can be located within the wider political economy. Their paper points us towards a greater self-consciousness of the ways in which literacy inequalities are framed, and how they frame their subjects as global citizens. All the papers in this special issue can similarly contribute to deconstructing dominant policy discourses and exposing assumptions that have limited the ways in which literacy inequalities are discussed, researched and addressed through policy. We hope that the discussions initiated through this collection of papers may move us a step towards closing the gap between research and policy that Zavala notes in her reflective endpiece – and which has proved a continuous challenge, particularly for those committed to ethnographic approaches within the New Literacy Studies. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.04.003. References Blommaert, B., 2008. Grassroots Literacies: Writing, Identity and Voice in Central Africa. Routledge, New York/London. Blum, A., Goldstein, H., Guerin-Pace, F., 2001. International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS): an analysis of international comparisons of adult literacy. Assessment in Education 8 (2), 225–246. Collins, J., Blot, R., 2003. Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power and Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Fraser, N., 2008. Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalising World. Columbia University Press, New York. Hamilton, M., 2001. Privileged literacies: policy, institutional process and the life of the IALS. Language and Education 15, 178–196. Hamilton, M., Barton, D., 2000. The international adult literacy survey: what does it really measure? International Journal of Education 46 (5), 377–389. Kress, G., 2000. Early Spelling: Between Convention and Creativity. Routledge, London. Maddox, B., Esposito, L., 2011. Sufficiency Re-examined: A Capabilities Perspective on the Assessment of Functional Adult Literacy. Journal of Development Studies 47 (9) (September). Nussbaum, M., 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Belknap Press, Cambridge MA/London. UNESCO, 2006, Report of a two day national workshop on needs assessment and validation of national action plan for LIFE in Nigeria, 29th - 30th November 2006. UNESCO, 2008. The Global Literacy Challenge: a profile of youth and adult literacy at the mid-point of the United Nations Literacy Decade 2003-2012. UNESCO, Paris, available from the website: unesdoc.unesco/0016/001631/org/images/ 163170e.pdf.
Bryan Maddox Sheila Aikman Nitya Rao Anna Robinson-Pant* University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom *Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1603 592857 E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Robinson-Pant).