Literacy and Education: Understanding the New Literacy Studies in the Classroom

Literacy and Education represents a comprehensive look at how to rethink, redefine, and redesign language in the classroom to meet contemporary needs.

'This long awaited, accessible text shows how key research strands into the nature of contemporary literacy can reinvigorate classroom practice. Technological advances have transformed literacy practices in all spheres of learners’ lives and Pahl and Rowsell show through real examples, how pedagogical practice can accommodate these developments. This is a must for all those involved in all levels of literacy education.' - Dr. Julia Davies, Deputy Head of the School of Education, The University of Sheffield.

'In this book, Pahl and Rowsell pose the question we should all be asking: "As literacy teachers, how can we possibly mediate between a print-governed, grapho-phonic model of literacy juxtaposed against a multidimensional, multiliterate, multimodal model of literacy?" This is one of the most pressing questions in contemporary education. This book sets out, in an accessible manner, to construct an answer. To do this it draws on key theorists and their work, and weaves carefully chosen vignettes together with analysis, subtle argument and practical applications to literacy classrooms.

This is a timely and important book for literacy educators as it highlights and discusses the implications of fundamental shifts in the ways in which we create, disseminate and read new and older forms of text.

This eminently accessible text speaks directly to practitioners who are attempting to make sense of the rapidly changing cultures and technologies as well as to undergraduates who are, for the first time, engaging with recent research and theory in relation to the practices of literacy.

This is a book that seamlessly blends theory and practice. It describes key theorists and their work in clear terms, but more than this, Pahl and Rowsell make direct connections to classroom practice, making this a particularly useful book for classroom teachers and student teachers.

Provides a useful analytic toolbox from which classroom teachers and teachers-in-preparation can draw to think about literacy practices' - Dr Victoria Carrington, Reader in Language and Literacy, University of Plymouth