Notion Of Literacy Research Articles

Teaching Multiliteracies to Chinese Students: Challenges and Insights

This article reports on a qualitative study of the graduate-level course “teaching multiliteracies.” At the time of the study, 24 of the 27 enrolled students were originally from China, and the experiences of 4 of these students are highlighted. Analysis examined how students’ figured worlds of education intersected with course concepts and suggests that, despite claiming to enjoy the class and to appreciate an expanded notion of literacy, students did not see how multiliteracies pedagogy could be compatible with the figured worlds of K–12 education in China. We argue that participants’ understandings of and challenges to course concepts help illuminate the complexities of teaching Western literacy pedagogies to Chinese students for teachers, researchers, and students themselves.

‘Poetry is dying’: Creating a (re)new(ed) pedagogical vision for teaching poetry

This conceptual article explores the experiential basis of poetry and its deep connections to human engagement with the world and with others. This exploration is presented as a foundation for developing an alternate pedagogical framework for effective poetry teaching in the context of literacy programs and practices in schools, and the traditions of literature teaching. The writing of the article emerges out of evidence that poetry teaching is experiencing somewhat of a decline or at least a lack of emphasis in the classroom and in the curriculum. This decline may be due, in part, to a current focus on more functional notions of literacy in schools, as opposed to creative, performative or personal forms of writing. Or, it may be due to perceptions that poetry is dull and elitist. I contend that an experiential basis to poetry teaching has the potential for positive reception by students and may promote a deeper and more sustained understanding of poetry and poetic language. Using a phenomenological approach, the article eclectically investigates the experiential core of engaging with poetry, with examples for analysis drawn from the poetry of T.S. Eliot. The aim of this analysis is to provide a theoretical foundation for an innovative pedagogical framework for teaching poetry. This framework or approach to poetry teaching is built on four principles: 1. Modelling of reading, writing and performing poetry by educators; 2. Integrating poetry across disciplines and more centrally in the curriculum; 3. Re-centring poetry in regard to where and how students read, write and perform poetry (including third spaces); and 4. Challenging traditional notions of what constitutes poetry and proposing instead a more radical and disruptive pedagogy for bringing poetry to the classroom. These four principles are designed to promote greater participation and ownership by students in reading, writing about, producing and sharing poetry with others. The four principles are conceived as part of a model for a new poetry pedagogy, and this model is designed to be usable for both policy frameworks and for literacy practices in the classroom.

EXPERIENCE OF DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ MULTIMODAL LITERACY IN THE DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

The paper presents a theoretical overview of the notion “multimodal literacy” in the context of the multiliteracies pedagogy focusing on the research relevant to developing notions of literacy for twenty-first century higher education standards. The relevance of the topic is explained by the fact that the modern world is becoming more and more pluralist and increasingly dependent on new technologies and different modes of communication, students require new transdisciplinary skills and methods of learning. The author examines the changing pattern of literacy as broad, multidimensional knowledge, skills and attitudes. Literacy is viewed as a personal sociocultural capacity the development of which provides every student with the rules how to solve problems, to relate to others and survive in diverse social settings, and creates numerous opportunities for enhancing critical thinking and reflection as well. The foundation for students’ multimodal literacy in the digital learning environment of a higher education institution through theoretical and applied frameworks of visual, media, information and multicultural literacy is considered. The diverse affordance of digital tools and range of multimodal genres offer engaging new avenues for students’ creative expression on the basis of developing multimodal literacy. It is emphasized that successful life in a world of multimodal information requires fluency in a broad range of literacies to consume and create texts in visual, audio, and written formats, to evaluate messages in a variety of mediums, and to gain sociocultural awareness and the ability to communicate and live in a global diverse society. Pedagogic techniques across disciplines (multimodal essay, digital mapping project) are highlighted in view of their effectiveness in developing multicultural literacy of undergraduate students. It is an empowering practice for modern educators to incorporate multimodal tasks into a diverse learning environment, which teaches critical thinking and multimodal skills, enhances audio-visual rhetoric, develops writing and oral communication skills, and aids in self-expression and self-reflection.

Adolescents' Agentic Work on Developing Personal Pedagogies on Social Media

AbstractWhile current research points out that young people are developing emerging culture of learning in informal spaces, less is known about such digital literacy practices in the Asian contexts where the notion of literacy tends to refer to school literacy. Research on young people's online participatory culture continues to suggest that social media offer affinity spaces where extensive knowledge is acquired, constructed and produced outside of schools. In this paper, we use two case studies on social media as illustrative examples to understand how adolescents shape their learning online. We aim to contribute to the ongoing dialectics on social media and learning by examining how adolescents exhibit agency online. We argue that social media such as Facebook offer high learner agency environments for adolescents to participate in self‐initiated enterprise and allow them to develop personal trajectories for learning. The case studies presented in this paper suggested that the adolescents' pursuit of their passions on online affinity spaces gave rise to intellectual friendships and the development of personal pedagogies.

Crossing Borders, Crossing Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Lines Across America ed. by Barbara Couture and Patti Wojahn

Reviewed by: Crossing Borders, Crossing Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Lines Across America ed. by Barbara Couture and Patti Wojahn Adam Hubrig Crossing Borders, Crossing Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Lines Across America Barbara Couture and Patti Wojahn, Eds. University Press of Colorado, 2016. 314 pp. Crossing Borders, Crossing Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Lines Across America Barbara Couture and Patti Wojahn, Eds. University Press of Colorado, 2016. 314 pp. At a time when both physical and symbolic borders from national borders to socio-economic inequality are at the front of political debate, the exigency of Crossing Borders, Drawing Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Lines Across America cannot be overstated. The collection explores the rhetorics of borders and their immediate implications for our students, our classrooms, and our communities. The essays in this collection operate in concert to highlight how the rhetoric of lines impacts democratic discourse as well as offer sites of intervention for rhetoricians and compositionists. The collection opens with a foreword by Nancy Welch titled "Crossing the Threshold." Welch's forward presents the main theme of the collection to "explore how borders are socially, historically, and linguistically constructed—and thus how they can be rhetorically examined and contested" (xi). Welch praises the collection authors for their recognition that the rhetoric of consciousness raising is inherently limited in rhetorical effect, but identifies this sort of rhetorical education a necessary threshold to cross—by teachers and students alike—for meaningful change to be achieved (xii). In chapter one, collection editors Couture and Wojahn highlight the book's organization and major themes. The book, divided into two sections, first concerns itself with "symbolic" boundaries, and the authors' investigate imagined borders, like a national boundary and spirituality. The second section explores "living borders" and Couture and Wojahn's sites of inquiry center on dismantling and challenging the rhetoric of spaces. The collection editors preview how several disparate threads of border rhetoric are gathered up to offer broader insights into thinking about the rhetorics of difference. Part one opens with Victor Villanueva's thoughtful application of Kenneth Burke's rhetorical trope of the metonym to interrogate a hegemonic sense of nationalism in "Metonymic Borders and Our Sense of Nation." Metonym, is defined by Villanueva [End Page 157] as "a reduction with grand representational possibilities" (31), and he continues to use this rhetorical trope to unpack American cultural identity. Drawing on an American understanding of "nation" as complicated by its relationship to Puerto Rico and establishing how a sense of "nation" is deeply racialized, Villanueva argues that both a collective understanding of "border" and "nation" are "metonymy, a fiction within a fiction of a nation, a trope that serves racism in an era that no longer admits racism" (34). From this argument, Villanueva urges "We, the rhetoricians, can instead accept that part of what we must do […] is both to see and to publicize the rhetoric at play and then work to demystify and dymythify the ideological" (41), a pressing call to action for public rhetoric scholars. Christopher Schroeder continues inquiry into imagined borders in chapter three as he productively scrutinizes how notions of literacy and language create their own borders and boundaries and how code-switching works to cross these boundaries. Schroeder's examination of a multilingual press in Chicago and an advice column written primarily in English that mixes Spanish into responses, seeks to challenge "tacit English-only language policies that reflect misunderstandings about the relative role of English within the larger debates… over the official designation of an official language, linguistic civil and political rights and educational policies for minority students" (52). Through this linguistic study of code-switching, Schroeder underscores how hierarchical perspectives about English are often tied to cultural identity. In chapter four, Jonathan P. Rossing examines the potential of humor as a rhetorical intervention into cultural processes that create marginalized identities. Through a study of Stephen Colbert's satirical representation of a conservative pundit, Rossing examines how rhetorically savvy humor "appropriates and defamiliarizes common arguments about immigration so as to call into question their logic" and ultimately deconstruct notions of racial borders (63). Rossing offers humor as site to create new meanings, perspectives, and understandings (69). While Rossing acknowledges that "humor...

Notes on Media Literacy and Illiteracy

As an uncritical theoretical presupposition, the notion of literacy has led to formalistic, bookish philosophy. The constipated philosophical discourse adjudged worthwhile by literati and digirati falls historically into a line of dogmatic argument and counterargument within academic tradition submerged in subjective-idealist solipsism, petit-bourgeois political apologetics, and economic escapism. Careerist generalization of literacy from the ability to read print to include metaphoric uses of the term “literacy” to all media, while comfortably foggy to irrationalists, adds little to our understanding of print or other media except by increasing the gloom that prevails among privileged, neo-liberal pettifoggers.

The Need for Cosmopolitan Literacy in a Global Age: Implications for Teaching Literature

AbstractGiven the realities of this increasingly connected, complex, and conflicting age, governments and policymakers around the world are recognizing the importance of global education. The field of literacy has not been immune to the pressure to globalize. Today, the notion of literacy must account not merely for social processes but also for global processes. The global turn in literacy studies affirms the cultural and linguistic diversity of students and acknowledges the need to empower them with a plurality of literacies—critical, digital, information, and multilingual literacies, among others—to prepare them for future workplaces. Among the range of new literacies, the most fundamental is cosmopolitan literacy because it entails critical, aesthetic, and empathetic skills and dispositions needed to engage with diverse values in our globalized world. In this commentary, the author discusses the principles informing cosmopolitan literacy and how it can be developed through literature.

Constructing the Literate Child in the Library: An Analysis of School Library Standards

I examine one set of elementary school library standards (New York City School Library System, n.d.) in an effort to analyze the impact that the standards might have on literacy experiences for young children in one urban school setting. Employing a critical discourse analysis framework, I examine the language that the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum uses to privilege certain kinds of knowledge construction. Focusing on the descriptions of knowledge, inquiry, and informational literacy constructed by the standards, I argue that the Information Fluency Continuum perpetuates notions of literacy and inquiry that are linear and hierarchical. I argue that educator conceptions of inquiry, engagements with texts, and social responsibility practices must be widened. Rather than expecting students to follow a sequential set of steps, libraries might be a space where students are given agency to decide when and how they would engage in literacy and pursue inquiries.

¡Puño en Alto! The Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign and What it Means for Literacy Today

Modern notions of literacy can be informed by past successes in the field of literacy. One of the most successful national literacy campaigns occurred in Nicaragua in 1980 and was called Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización (CNA). The fight against illiteracy to provide a space for marginalized voices in Nicaragua is a story worth telling to current literacy professionals in the United States, who are painfully aware of high illiteracy rates in certain geographic areas and among particular populations. First is an historical accounting of the literacy campaign by contextualizing the background of Nicaragua's political and social situation. Next is an explanation regarding how critical pedagogy can be useful in reading the historical event. Last, a critical lens is used to decipher what lessons might be taken from Nicaragua's literacy campaign to identify critical issues and inform the difficult decisions in literacy education today in the United States.

Modern Scientific Literacy: A Case Study of Multiliteracies and Scientific Practices in a Fifth Grade Classroom

This study investigates the convergence of multiliteracies and scientific practices in a fifth grade classroom. As students’ lives become increasingly multimodal, diverse, and globalized, the traditional notions of literacy must be revisited (New London Group 1996). With the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013a) in many states, either in their entirety or in adapted forms, it becomes useful to explore the interconnectedness multiliteracies and scientific practices and the resulting implications for scientific literacy. The case study included a fifth grade classroom, including the students and teacher. In order to create a rich description of the cases involved, data were collected and triangulated through teacher interviews, student interviews and focus groups, and classroom observations. Findings reveal that as science activities were enriched with multiliteracies and scientific practices, students were engaged in developing skills and knowledge central to being scientifically literate. Furthermore, this study establishes that characteristics of scientific literacy, by its intent and purpose, are a form of multiliteracies in elementary classrooms. Therefore, the teaching and learning of science and its practices for scientific literacy are in turn reinforcing the development of broader multiliteracies.

Native Continuities in Colonial Mexico

Native Continuities in Colonial Mexico Mónica Díaz (bio) The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City barbara mundy Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015 256 pp. Honor and Personhood in Early Modern Mexico osvaldo f. pardo Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015 248 pp. Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500−1800 peter villella Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016 368 pp. Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Native Archive and the Circulation of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico amber brian Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press 2016 208 pp. The way in which scholars approach early modern Mexican culture and history has changed considerably over the years, due in part to the sources upon which they rely. The influence of theoretical methodologies that questioned master narratives of conquest and Eurocentric notions of literacy during the 1980s and '90s allowed for the study and discovery of previously unacknowledged sources mainly produced by indigenous peoples. The work of ethnohistorians, and particularly those working in the New Philology led by James Lockhart, has made a lasting impact on the way scholars in the humanities and social sciences approach and write about indigenous peoples' cultures and histories in the Americas.1 The four [End Page 539] books reviewed here attest to the fact that those trends are still current and are also good examples of the groundbreaking scholarship that is being produced about early modern Mexico. They have all been influenced in one way or another by the aforementioned changes in methodological research, which is evident by the central role that native knowledge plays in their intellectual inquiry. All four books are openly and consciously aiming at revising well-established historiographical paradigms and offering alternative and more nuanced readings of dominant historiographical narratives about Mexico and its people. Each author's work is clearly informed by his or her own academic discipline, but they all have an interdisciplinary take on the materials and the methods they use in their analysis. Barbara Mundy's book is openly grounded within the discipline of art history, yet she reads a variety of materials that range from native codices to maps, sculpture, and manuscripts in indigenous languages; and she analyzes them from the perspective of theories of space, producing a highly engaging book that crosses disciplinary boundaries. The same can be said about Amber Brian's and Osvaldo Pardo's work. While informed by their training as literary scholars, both Brian and Pardo use ethnohistorical methods and place archival research at the center of their analytical endeavors. They not only carry out close readings of primary materials but more importantly they place them within a sociohistorical context to provide a much more complex picture of the cultural dynamics of the time they study. Working from the discipline of history, Peter Villella also engages in cultural readings of archival materials, and he analyzes more traditional indigenous historiographical accounts, usually studied by literary critics, in tandem with documents of a bureaucratic nature. He attends to discourse analysis in the sources he studies, and pays special attention to uses of language and rhetoric. Through their interdisciplinarity, these authors draw connections between documents, colonial subjects, and European actors to make evident the network of intellectual relationships that existed and the implications that this had in the making of early modern Mexico. ________ Several parallels can be drawn between the four books under review; however, the most salient one is their argument for the continuity of a significant and active indigenous presence throughout the colonial period, in clear opposition to more traditional historiographical narratives that emphasize [End Page 540] rupture with the native past. This dominant line of historiography has emphasized the losses that many indigenous groups experienced after succumbing to European colonial power. Its focus has been to identify instances of resistance and to chart the survival of "authentic" aspects of native culture. In general, the dominant narrative has been to recognize a tenuous indigenous elite that faded away by the end of the seventeenth century, and the absorption and later interpretation of indigenous knowledge by a cadre of Creoles and mestizos. However, the books reviewed here offer a more nuanced narrative, one that allows for the prevalence of indigenous groups...

Teaching a Second or Foreign Language Based on Literacy Notions

Nowadays, litearcy has become the most prominent issue which must be paid attention in terms of second or foreign language teaching. In addition, this can be a prospective paradigm for the purpose of building the innovative teaching and learning process as well as enhancing the studetns’ schemata in relation to reading and writing particularly. Therefore, this study is aimed to describe as well as prove whether the notions of literacy is appropriate or not for teaching second or foreign language, on the other hand, it also presents a number of relevant theories and also previous studies which reflect notions of literacy its self. However, there are still handicaps as well as constraints towards the implementation of literacy in terms of non native language teaching, the finding in various studies show the evidences which are related to the function of literacy as supplementary sucject or course in certain schools or colleges. Regarding the study, literacy is considered to be the affective as well as innovative strategy that can function to assist the students in acquiring the second or foreign language. Thus, notions of literacy not only conveys the traditional limits of reading and writing skills but also beyond the skills of text-centric literary interpretation.

Deaf Studies, Oral Tradition, and Old English Texts

Building from past work in oral theory that has productively nuanced notions of literacy and orality as multi-faceted and deeply interconnected concepts, this essay calls for an equally complex model for our understanding of the hearing experience itself, focusing in particular on Anglo-Saxon England. To this end, relevant approaches emerging from medieval studies, studies in oral tradition, and — most importantly — Deaf studies are triangulated with the goal of more fully understanding the scant and often cryptic clues that survive to us in such places as law codes, medical texts, literature, and archeological records. Scholars in Deaf studies have long applied interpretive models from oral theory to analyze the cultural expressivity of signed storytelling; the influence of Deaf studies, however, has yet to be fully felt in the fields of oral theory or Anglo-Saxon studies. Opening a dialogue across disciplines can help counteract the potential for audism inherent in “oral” tradition studies, and focusing more sharply on a specific region and period effectively complicates the history of deafness in pre-modern eras. Most importantly, close attention to Deaf studies opens awareness to categories of “hearing” and “deafness” as they were socially constructed in the early medieval world.

Enquadramento dos cuidados de saúde a idosos em contexto rural

INTRODUCTION Health care of elderly people in the rural context constitutes a relevant and current topic due to demographic change, setting an aging and lonely population. It’s in this framework, which analyzes the health caring into account of the autonomy, justice and equity, on a narrow connection with the environment. OBJECTIVES It is therefore necessary to further our knowledge of health care for the elderly in rural context guided by the following objectives: (i) present the socio-demographic portrait of the elderly; (ii) briefly describe the health status of the elderly; (iii) to assess the perception of the elderly’s quality of life. METHODS This is a descriptive and correlational study, using the perception of the scale of quality of life (WHOQOL-Bref) and Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a sample of 339 elderly living in rural villages. RESULTS The results show mostly a female sample, married (55.5%), living alone (41.3%) with a low level of education (60.2%). We witness the predominance of Osteoarticular disorder (75.2%), and 87.3% of our sample take medication, more than 5 drugs, predominantly the pharmacological class of cardiovascular (92.4%) and analgesics (91.8%). Older people perceive the quality of life as good, being higher in men (58.2%), and the female shows more feelings of loneliness and worse perception of quality of life. CONCLUSIONS It is imperative reshape the practice of healthcare professionals in implementing concrete programs and actions that take into account notions of literacy and accessibility in health and intersectional action models and (co) participating.

TEXTS, TALK AND TECHNOLOGY: THE LITERACY PRACTICES OF BILINGUALLY-EDUCATED STUDENTS

ABSTRACT It is widely recognized that to be literate in today's world requires conscious, creative and critical deployment of language (and other semiotic devices) for different social purposes, contexts and audiences (FREEBODY & LUKE, 1990, 2003). This notion of literacy as social practice (BARTON & HAMILTON, 2000; STREET, 1995) has been extended to include the idea of multiliteracies (NEW LONDON GROUP, 1996; KALANTZIS & COPE, 2012), in recognition of the roles technology and digital text use and production play in young people's lives. However, the literacy practices of primary school-aged students, as they enact them in their daily in-school and out-of-school lives, remain under-investigated. This is particularly the case with bilingually-educated students whose literacy practices, involving texts, talk and technology, are deployed across languages. The research reported here investigated the literacy practices and language use of 68 students at three primary schools in Melbourne, Australia. Each of these schools offered bilingual programs to their students (involving instruction in Mandarin Chinese or Vietnamese, along with English). Data collected through individually administered questionnaires and small group interviews reveal these students live highly multilingual lives, where sophisticated linguistic choices and translanguaging are part of both their in-school and out-of-school lives. The research revealed that direct connections are made between the languages learned at school and personal, family and community literacy practices. As such, the students were found to attach high levels of importance to becoming biliterate, and powerfully attest to the linguistic, educational, social and functional benefits of bilingualism and a bilingual education. The research findings provide valuable insights into bilingual and multilingual practices involving texts, talk and technology. This article posits that bilingual education, as implemented at the three research sites, enhances students' learning and their sense of personal identity, as well as affording them skills and understandings they deploy in their own increasingly technology-mediated lives.

Families’ roles in children’s literacy in the UK throughout the 20th century

This paper explores the changing roles of families in children’s developing literacy in the UK in the last century. It discusses how, during this time, understandings of reading and writing have evolved into the more nuanced notion of literacy. Further, in acknowledging changes in written communication practices, and shifting attitudes to reading and writing, the paper sketches out how families have always played some part in the literacy of younger generations; though reading was frequently integral to the lives of many families throughout the past century, we consider in particular the more recent enhancement of children’s literacy through targeted family programmes. The paper considers policy implications for promoting young children’s literacy through work with families.

The Hermit and The Poet

The notions of literacy and citizenship have become technologised through the demands for measurable learning outcomes and the reduction of these aspects of education to sets of skills and competences. Technologisation is understood here as the systematisation of an art, rather than as intending to understand technology itself in negative terms or to comment on the way technology is used in teaching and learning for literacy and citizenship. Technologisation is approached here in terms of the understanding of literacy and citizenship as things (qualities, sets of skills) that one has. Being literate and being a citizen are brought together here in order to consider the implications of their technologisation for academic writing in the university. Drawing on the phenomenology of Gabriel Marcel the understanding of literacy and citizenship in terms of having is problematized, as is the distinction between having and being. This opens the way for a richer understanding of being literate and being a citizen explored through the figures of the Hermit and the Poet in Thoreau’s Walden. The question of what we write in the name of in the university is considered in the light of this and of a particular notion of the public.

Young Learners’ Transactions With Interactive Digital Texts Using E-Readers

ABSTRACTThis year-long qualitative study draws from multimodal theory and New Literacies Studies to document the digital literacy experiences of a diverse group of 2nd-graders using e-readers. Twenty-first century classrooms must expand traditional notions of literacy to prepare students for the ever-changing, media-rich world. Students participated in small-group digital reading workshops, where they read interactive picture books. The data mainly drew from transcripts of student interactions and open-ended interviews and were analyzed through a combination of comparative and discourse analyses. The author argues that multimodal texts offer opportunities for rehearsal of literacy practices, engagement, talk as a choice of reader response, and student agency. Even though personal digital devices offer opportunities for independent reading, young readers still need social interactions around books to co-construct meaning. The study found the students spent additional time reading and successfully mediated the available resources as they engaged in digital reading.

Multimodal analysis for critical thinking

This paper proposes a pedagogical approach for teaching and learning critical thinking through multimodal analysis – that is, ‘multimodal analysis for critical thinking'. The approach builds on the conviction that students require competencies that move beyond traditional notions of literacy to meet the changing demands posed by media and technology in the twenty-first century. The approach takes a social semiotic view toward critical multimodal literacy, which aims to provide students with an analytical metalanguage for the systematic analysis of multimodal texts and videos. The pedagogical approach is facilitated through the use of purpose-built software applications with comprehensive analytical frameworks designed to support the systematic teaching and learning of multimodal analysis, with a view to developing the critical literacy skills needed for life in the digital age. The potential efficacies of the approach are illustrated via the exposition of software functionalities and the sample analyses of a printed text with image components, and a short advocacy video.

The possibilities of re-engagement: cultures of literacy education and so-called NEETs

This article reports on a study into literacy education for young people identified as not in education, employment or training (so-called NEETs) and who were attending courses with further education (FE) providers. The study aimed to gain insights into how literacy is being taught to NEET students, to identify factors that influenced delivery and to gather teachers’ and student teachers’ views on what constituted effective practice in this area. This small-scale study researched the ways in which literacy classes were delivered in 14–19 provision across a range of further education settings. It focused specifically on Foundation Learning and functional skills classes. The participants worked in 11 different FE settings in the West Midlands region of England. These settings included colleges, training providers, a sixth form college and a dedicated ‘unit’ within a college with a distinct curriculum offer. The data was gathered from student teachers’ reflective journal entries and follow-up interviews. Interviews were also conducted with experienced literacy teachers in different providers. The data showed that much of the provision for NEET students taught literacy through a technical approach that included a focus on grammar, word classes and apostrophe use. Teachers in these same providers also reported low levels of engagement amongst their students. More positively, the research also discovered literacy provision that engaged with students through innovative holistic curricula. However, existing funding and assessment regimes as well as traditional notions of literacy were found to present barriers to this kind of provision. The study concluded that existing marketised funding arrangements and prescriptive curricula militate against the (re)engagement of students that fall into NEET categories.