Situating Literacies and Community Literacy Programs: A Critical Rhetoric for Institutional Change
Jeffrey Thomas Grabill
- School: Purdue University (0183)
- Degree: Ph.D.
- Date: 1997; pp: 264
- Advisor: Sullivan, Patricia
- Source: DAI-A 58/09, p. 3505, Mar 1998
- Subjects: Language, Rhetoric And Composition (0681); Education, Language and Literature (0279)
- ProQuest Document Number: 736653031
- ISBN: 0-591-58886-2
- UMI Number: AAT 9808450
Abstract:
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This study explored the possibilities for community literacy practices through an examination
that crossed the gaps between university and community contexts. A primary methodology for
accomplishing its purposes was an institutional case that described a community literacy
program and interrelated the practices of that program with the arguments of various literacy
theories about what its practices were or should be. The study points to limitations in the
ways some literacy theories construct 'literacy,' particularly those that 'abstract' the
concept. The study also argues that it is important to understand how a community literacy
institution defines literacy within that local context. Its focal argument is that
'institutions' (like schools, workplaces, community literacy programs) are a fundamental
factor in establishing the meaning and value of literacy in a given context. In this regard,
the study argues that inquiry into the meanings and values of literacy should account for
local institutional structures, and that in attempts to change the meanings of literacy,
a local institution must focus on changing the institution itself, not just the learners.
Toward beginning the process of advocating local institutional change, the study develops
a set of heuristics for inquiry into literacy and a rhetoric for institutional change
that are useful for helping to create politically and ethically 'just' and 'democratic'
literacy institutions.
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