Understanding Literacy Development

This book presents an account of literacy learning based on what effective teachers and learners actually do.

It demonstrates how literacy develops in social and communicative exchanges.

Learning to be literate - like all learning - involves negotiating meanings with others, through whom learners clarify, confirm and expand their understandings of literacy and how they can use it.

This approach demands a focus on learning itself, rather than on the alleged complexity of written language.

Failure to learn is due to failure in communication and this book establishes a framework to enhance the understandings required of children learning to read.

The book draws on videotaped research during literacy sessions in Australian schools and is designed primarily for primary teachers.

It will also interest academics and teacher educators.