Revisiting Lytle

• PURPOSE 1: to argue that in order to better understand literacy development in adulthood, we must apply a socio-cultural method (as opposed to a "linear and decontextualized" approach--which has, up to this point, dominated). "This article argues that understanding literacy development in adulthood requires a rethinking of current assumptions about the needs and capabilities of so-called low-literate adults, about conflicting conceptions of literacy, and about the nature of learning in adult life" (400)
• PURPOSE 2: to argue for/propose a conceptual framework that she has posited to document adults' literacy development over time. "In order to frame and be informed by such an agenda for inquiry, we need to construct richer conceptual frameworks encompassing adults' beliefs, practices, language processes, and plans" (400).

BIG PICTURE: generating new knowledge about literacy development in adulthood (397)

In this article I argue that addressing these issues requires, first of all, that we question prevailing assumptions about the capabilities and lifestyles of the less-than-literate adult, unpack conflicting conceptions of literacy, and explore what adult learners and educators count as learning, both in and out of formal contexts. Second, we need to construct a richer conceptual framework for inquiring into the many facets of literacy development in adulthood, a framework that includes the cultural scripts adults bring to, and take from, learning; their family, school, and community histories; their specific and global intentions; their sucessful experiences learning and teaching in other facets of their lives; their knowledge of the world; and in particular their tacit and shifting awareness of the forms and functions of written language, as experienced in the contexts of daily life. (378)

Knowledge of what adults choose to do with literacy and the ways these choices reflect social, cultural, and cognitive similarities and differences can form and reform literacy policy and program design. (379)

...a conceptual framework for literacy development in adulthood (379)

Understanding literacy development in adulthood, then, requires looking beyond the experience of adults enrolled in programs to explore the functions and uses of literacy by adults in a range of contexts including families, workplaces, unions, stores, churches, and community organizations. (379)

Because it may be more fruitful to assume competency, rather than deficiency, looking outside programs means identifying instances of adults with limited abilities to read and write functioning in complex social environments requiring a range of intellectual and social skills (379-80).

...the purposeful use and development of literacy within the broad contours of a person's personal and social world. (380)

The section called "Locating Literacy" identifies and explains two different ways of thinking about literacy: the decontextualized approach ("linear and decontextualized notions of literacy as skills and tasks" [385]) and the socio-cultural approach ("studies of literacy practices in diverse cultures and communities" [385]). This is really helpful:

Street's "ideological model" of literacy "in which practices differ from group to group within a society as well as from society to society (381)

A person's literacy profile might be conceptualized as a contemporary quilt in progress, a kind of patchwork whose configuration is closely linked to specific settings characterized by specific opportunities and constraints. (382)

As Scribner (1987) explained it, literacy is not a feature or attribute of a person, but literacy as practice: a range of activities people engage in for a variety of purposes. (382)

Rather than positioning literacy development of individuals in relation to a normative framework, then, this perspective suggests that individuals function within complex, interrelated social and cultural systems. (382)

Cross-cultural research on literacy in different communities argues for investigating the literacy development of adult learners by exploring the particular practices that adults themselves see as meaningful under different circumstances, and that reflect their own purposes and aspirations. (382)

An ideological approach to development argues for the systematic study, over time, of what counts as literacy to different groups and individuals within societies, of the varied literacy events or activities in which they participate, of adults' intentions, and of their knowledge of specific uses, functions, and forms of literacy (382).

One thing that is becoming increasingly clear to me from this re-reading is the extent to which Lytle is focused on "adult literacy programs" and not adults enrolled in formal programs of post-secondary education. (see first line, top of p. 384) For example, on 384, she references individually oriented, community-based, and family literacy programs.

...systematic inquiry into adults' experiences with written language in their daily lives (385)

...a useful conceptual framework for understanding literacy in adulthood (385)

The working framework currently involves four interrelated dimensions of literacy development over time. (386)

Beliefs

• ...include adults theories or knowledge about language, literacy, teaching, and learning (386)
• ...adults own evolving conceptual frameworks or theories about language, literacy, teaching, and learning. (387)

Adult learners bring to literacy programs beliefs about language and learning that inform and sometimes constrain their own development. (387)

Understanding adults' belief systems also requires paying attention, initially and over time, to where these beliefs have originated, as adults recount and reinterpret their past experiences with language and learning by describing attitudes, expectations, and self-attributions acquired during previous schooling. (388)

No matter how much time was actually spent in school, adult learners bring with them powerful images of schooling from the common culture; often these appear to function as scripts or plans, infusing learners' attitudes and expectations about what counts as learning in adult literacy programs. Alternatively, these beliefs can themselves become the subject of inquiry and examination in literacy programs. (388)

Self-sponsored learning, outside the contexts of school, is also an important source of beliefs... (389)

Although there has been a limited amount of research directly investigating beliefs in adult literacy ( ), researchers and practitioners can draw on a considerable literature of theory and research on children, adolescents, and adults in the areas of metacognition ( ) and attribution theory ( ), as well as on sociolinguistic and sociocognitive approaches to literacy ( ). (387)

Literacy Practices

• ...the range and variation of literacy activities that learners use in their everyday lives. (390)
• Included here are the contexts in which adults, individually or collaboratively, use some form of written language: types and uses, settings, and modes of engagement. (390)
• Treating practice rather than inferred skill as the "primary unit of observation and analysis" (390)

...looking for literacy outside formal educational contexts. (390)

In the Adult Literacy Evaluation Project, it has been found that some literacy practices of adult learners may be culturally different from, or simply new to, university-based and practitioner researchers, requiring an openness to learners distinctive ways of living and learning. (391)--I'm thinking here of workplace literacy practices, about which many writing teachers in colleges may have little knowledge.

Reading and Writing Processes

• ...how adults use oral and written language processes (392)
• ...adult learners' repertoires of ways to manage particular reading and tasks, and the products of these transactions (392)
• the more specific moment-to-moment transactions learners have with texts (their own and others), which can be observed by a teacher or researcher and/or reported by the learners themselves. (393)

Think-aloud protocols capture some of the adult readers' moment to moment thoughts during the process of reading (393)

The processes dimension of literacy development highlights readers' and writer's behaviors immediately before, during, and after reading and writing, and how these behaviors reflect adults' beliefs. (394)

Documenting adults' reading and writing through protocols and interviews makes literacy processes visible and accessible for discussion and analysis, not only for researchers but also for learners. (394)

Plans

• ...attempts to capture what adults themselves indicate they want to learn--their overall intentions as well as more specific goals--and the ways they go about making learning happen within the instructional context. (394)

When adults who enter programs are given the opportunity at the outset to explore a range of possibilities, they typically go beyond general interest in "becoming better readers" to name particular reading and writing tasks they hope to accomplish, often for specific purposes and audiences. (395)