Looking at pedagogy, organisational practices and issues of representation, this conference theme would explore not just the range of literacy materials available (from primers to ‘real’ materials) and the pedagogies used for learning, but also focus on how these alternate approaches reflect existing social practices, or attempt to change them. It will also consider innovations in materials development and pedagogy, including those that pay attention to engagement with institutional literacy practices, to diverse and changing literacy environments, and to questions of social practice. Do the materials and pedagogies used for learning reproduce inequalities and create a further layer of representational inequalities, or do they contribute to a renegotiation of power relations? What is the value accorded to different types of texts within everyday cultural practice? How these materials, documents and texts are accessed and transacted contributes towards the formation of particular social statuses and hierarchies. The theme could address a range of questions around the representation in social life (and status) by different literacy materials, including for example elements of multi-modality, digital and other literacies; the role of particular types of materials in transforming gender and other social inequalities; and the influence of the organisation of a literacy class on the perception of its value.

Keynote speaker:

Dr. Cathy Kell, University of Waikato and Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand: ‘Literacy and the spaces in-between: scale and space as mediators of inequalities’.