Fostering Community Literacy

Abstract

If we conceive literacy practices as a set of activities around texts, including understanding and composing, but also the whole complex of social relations and actions related to making and communicating meaning, then literacy becomes inextricable from community, and from the ways that members of a community address the problems that concern them. Yet we do not know enough about how communities learn; how multiple funds of knowledge can be negotiated, synthesized, and used; and how to bridge knowledge and action, research and practice across the community. This paper presents a framework for fostering community literacy. It describes two action research projects addressing community literacy needs, with special attention to how information and communication technologies can be shaped to support community-wide inquiry and action in a participatory, equitable manner.