Local Literacies - Glenys Waters

Waters, Glenys. Local Literacies: Theory and Practice. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1998.

Waters says that literacy workers need to investigate what type of literacy they are promoting to make sure they are not isolated from or in conflict with community values, beliefs, and practices. She traces people's definitions for literacy over time on pages 395-398 including the following:

• able to "sign their name on a piece of paper" (US before WWII)
• "able to understand simple written instructions" (Levine)
• "the ability to read and write in the mother tongue" (Bhola)
• "in a language that [a person] speaks, can read the understand anything he would have understood if it had been spoken to him, and who can write, so that it can be read anything that he can say"(vernacular language work - Gudschinsky of SIL)
• "a means of gaining useful knowledge and skills" (functional -UNESCO)
• "in social settings -- constructing meanings together for mutual purposes" (social constructions/contexts)
• "[skills] to understand their situations better, to study and think about their world, and to work out ways to improve their lives" (critical literacy)
• (395-398)

Critical literacy synthesizes functional literacy's idea that people are able to improve their lives (though this is not always a result of economic production), social constructionism's idea that learning is social and situated, and that language variety is something to be valued.  Although most of my own literacy reading has focused on critical literacy, Waters also offers a possible critique on many critical literacy workers who may have strong biases and commitments related to socialism, democracy, and anti-religious attitudes that may conflict with community values, and consulting the community on literacy program directions is essential.  The strength she sees with a critical literacy approach is the deep thinking it encourages, but she promotes reflective practice in general. 

Waters also acknowledges that literacy programs are part of literacy systems, and the interconnected subsystems that need to be considered that impact the success of any programs include the following:

• ideological
• policy & planning
• institution-building & organizational
• mobilizational
• professional support
• curriculum & program development
• media & materials
• orientation & training
• teacher-learner
• post-literacy
• evaluation

Waters also acknowledges the "great reading debate" in the US, Australia, and New Zealand based on whole-word and phonics approaches to teaching reading, but encourages teachers not to get caught up in the debate, but rather learning principles.  Although she focuses on reading alphabetic print, she writes that "reading is deciphering an abstract code," which is applicable to more recent multimodal approaches (71).  She identifies four reading stages including reading readiness, mediated reading, the "magic moment", and fluency (75-76).

Waters sees reading and writing instruction as supporting each other and that beginning writers need to understand that writing is a process (325).  Like other writers, she notes that beginning writers tend to use a narrative style, but need to be given opportunities for writing for other purposes (341).