International Journal of Educational Development 31 (2011) 577–579

Editorial

Literacy inequalities and social justice

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International Journal of Educational Development

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The topic of literacy is rarely far from the concerns ofeducationalists, politicians and the media. We are presented withthe ‘latest’ information on standards, and comparisons and inequal-ities between the achievements of different groups, populations andcountries. These representations of literacy frequently reveal largeand telling literacy inequalities within and between countries(Nussbaum, 2006). Such inequalities concern a capability that is oneof the most basic, and fundamental measures of educationalachievement. Yet, one of the characteristics of such representationsof literacy and literacy inequalities is that they are contested. Suchcontestation not only concerns the ‘data’ itself, but also itsproduction and social construction – its conceptual and methodo-logical foundations, and its discursive and ideological frames ofreference. What are we to make of such debates? It is our view thatcontestation is a necessary feature of literacy research and policydiscourse. It demonstrates the challenge of understanding andrepresenting literacy and literacies as complex, pluralistic andchanging phenomena. Debates over literacy (and literacy inequal-ities) are a necessary feature of an open and democratic process ofpublic debate and deliberation. As deeply as one may feel committedto a particular understanding of literacy or the rigour of theirparticular study, there is no single approach to literacy teaching orresearch that could legitimately close such debates.

The papers in this Special Issue inform and answer suchquestions from differing geographical contexts and theoreticalperspectives. They were originally presented at a conference on‘literacy inequalities’ at the University of East Anglia. The idea forthis conference had come about through our involvement in theUN Literacy Decade Mid Term Review. ‘Literacy inequalities’ was aparticular focus for the UNLD report (later published as part of theUNESCO (2008) report, The Global Literacy Challenge), particularlyin terms of comparing literacy rates between and within countries.As a group of researchers coming from a new literacies/ethnographic background, this starting point seemed problematicin assuming consensus on the questions of ‘whose literacy?’ ‘howis literacy measured/evaluated?’ and ‘literacy for what purpose?’.In the conference, we sought to re-examine the topic, and also toaffirm our particular commitment to literacy within a democraticframework of social justice. We were therefore not simplyinterested in the ‘facts’ of literacy practices and literacy distribu-tion, but as Fraser’s (2008) work on social justice suggests, alsocommitted to examining the politics of ‘re-distribution, recogni-tion and participation’. We recognised that it helps to keep the big‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘who’ questions of literacy in mind: What countsas literacy in that social context? How do we deal with differentand co-existing literacy traditions? Why is the distribution ofliteracy important and how do we understand and explain suchinequalities? What does it mean to have ‘enough’ literacy tofunction in a particular setting or society? And, who are involved in

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defining and answering such questions? Through bringingtogether practitioners, policy makers and researchers in theconference, we also aimed to bring together quite differentperspectives and views on these questions.

How then do we understand literacy inequalities within such aplural and contested terrain? One way of tackling these issues –Maddox and Esposito (2011) suggest – is to think of literacyabilities and inequalities as if distributed across two dimensions.The first, ‘vertical’ dimension (or axis) would represent the amountor level of abilities that a person or group have within a particularform of literacy. That is the conventional way of looking at ‘howmuch’ literacy a person has, or whether they have ‘enough’ literacyor have reached a necessary ‘threshold’ – as if on a vertical scale.However, if we want to recognise the plurality of literacies thatexist, then we also need a second ‘horizontal’ dimension (Maddoxand Esposito, 2011). That would capture people’s different abilitiesin different forms of literacy. Questions of literacy inequalities andsocial justice not only need to ask about the distribution of literacyon single dimensions, but also the distribution of abilities acrossplural ‘literacies’, and the wider communicative repertoire. Wemight want to look, for example, at the distribution of academicliteracies, digital literacies, dominant and vernacular literacies,languages and scripts. As Street suggests in this special issue, wemay therefore want to consider what is ‘enough’ across multipleforms of literacy. Street’s work re-affirms the need for ethno-graphic accounts of literacy, of local meanings and practices, andquestions the construction of a ‘lack’ of a single thing called literacyas self-evident indicator of inequality.

The main barriers to that kind of pluralistic analysis of literacyinequalities is that certain forms of literacy tend to be given‘privileged’ status in literacy measurement regimes (Hamilton,2001). While some forms of literacy practice are now wellestablished subjects of policy and academic enquiry, other minorityand vernacular literacies (and more often than not, the literacypractices of minority and dominated peoples), find themselves instruggles for recognition and representation within educationalsystems and in representations (Collins and Blot, 2003; Blommaert,2008; Juffermans, in this issue). In this respect we can perhaps add athird dimension of analysis – that of disciplinary and institutionalperspectives and power. There are well rehearsed debates betweendisciplines over the legitimacy of contrasting approaches tostudying literacy, what they include, recognise and neglect (seeHamilton and Barton, 2000; Blum et al., 2001).

Many statistical approaches to literacy measurement tend toadopt standardised measures for what counts as literacy, and areless inclined to enter into debates over what counts as literacy.These include psychometric approaches that are now increasinglydominant in international measures of literacy. The papers in thisSpecial Issue, in contrast, are strongly influenced by ethnographic

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perspectives, where questions of power and the status of literaciescome to the fore. The debates between disciplines can inform, andto some extent offer points of synergy and collaboration. However,as we suggest above, they also function to provide a creativetension, to democratise and sharpen the debate, in ways thatfurther illuminate literacy inequalities.

1. Literacy policies and social justice

As mentioned above, the concern for policy has historically beento measure the adequacy of literacy in some universal sense.However, in recent decades, the movement and migration of peopleacross contexts and the changing nature and flexibility of the labourforce has created new pressures and demands, not only of a materialnature, in terms of linguistic skills and resources, but equallyideological in nature, in terms of recreating and asserting one’sidentity. As Collins shows through examples of immigrantcommunities in the United States, schools as social institutionscan play both reproductive and transformative roles; but schoolsand other literacy encounters within the current dynamic ofglobalisation, require both a historical and multi-level analysis thatcan link situated communicative activities to broad-scale institu-tional processes. While there is a contextual indeterminacy oflanguage use, linked to its ‘constructed’ and ‘performative’ nature, itis equally shaped by political constraints or social conflicts. Rao goeson to show how migrant workers, especially a majority from thedeveloping world, integrated at the lowest levels of the labourmarket, frequently end up rejecting basic education in themainstream language, provided through schools and often of lowquality, in favour of alternate literacies that can at least uphold theiridentities. Focus on alternate languages (in this case Quranic Arabic)and institutions that respect their working class identity (in this casethe madrasas) form the locus of a respectable social life. Here thescale of analysis extends beyond national boundaries – devalued athome, but respected overseas. One can find many examples wherepeople moving across contexts – whether students, workers, orothers – face new demands in terms of languages, scripts andcultures, with implications for learning new literacies that can beempowering by both reducing social and economic inequalities andfacilitating more equitable possibilities for mutual engagement.

Bartlett, however, has less optimistic findings. In the case ofHaitian immigrants into the Dominican Republic, she finds officialdocuments and literacy practices being used to exercise statepower vis-a-vis the immigrants. While the state arbitrarily awardsor withholds legal documents, their interpretation by agents of thestate is further shaped by gender, race, social capital and situation.Rather than interrupting inequalities, state literacies here becomea tool for exploiting immigrant populations.

Literacies and inequalities are contextual and so are theyrelational. Policies then can never move towards achieving socialjustice goals through one-size-fits-all programme strategies.Schooled literacies have in fact become one way of perpetuating,reproducing and maintaining hierarchies of the elite. Recognisingand giving credence to the plurality of literacies, rather than placingthem in a hierarchical order, the second or horizontal dimensionmentioned above, is key to attaining social justice goals. The UNESCOGlobal Monitoring Report 2008 identified Nigeria as one of the tencountries in the world which had an out-of-school population ofover 10 million. Rao was conducting fieldwork on a different projectin Nigeria at that time, and in discussion with both policy-makersand practitioners she realised that a large number of these out ofschool children actually studied in Quranic schools, not recognisedas a legitimate educational institution by global and national policy-makers and statisticians, hence counted as out-of-school, eventhough they were learning for at least 8–10 years in theseinstitutions. This example brings out the inherent ‘value bias’ in

much of policy, with not only informal learning being seen as inferiorto formal learning, but hierarchies established within formallearning itself, privileging what is seen as ‘western education’ overmore local and indigenous forms of education and learning.

While literacy theories and analysis are now quite advanced interms of recognising values, context and plurality, the dialoguewith policy needs continued strengthening. What does literacysignify to people, what are the skills and knowledge they have orwould like to acquire and what are the meanings they give to this?Advocacy, which is nuanced and sensitive, needs to be promotedthrough the dialogue between academics, policy-makers andpractitioners. Monitoring then needs to be about more thannumbers in school or out of it, with particular skills or without,rather looking at the relational aspects of literacies and howempowering they have been in terms of enabling groups toenhance their life choices.

2. Literacy, change and contestation

Reflecting on how policy makers have engaged with the notionof ‘literacy inequalities’ over the decades, we have been struck byan increasing emphasis on addressing ‘access’ (to literacy) as thesolution. Influenced by the Education for All agenda, manycountries have identified marginalised groups (in terms of thosewho have ‘less’ literacy) and developed specific programmes orstrategies for their inclusion, as illustrated by the case of Nigeria:‘adult literates (majority females) in rural communities and urbanslums, youth out of school (girls and boys), pastoral nomads,nomadic communities, almajiris, women in purdah, adultsinvolved in different trades, adults in confinement in prisons arethe main targets for literacy interventions’ (UNESCO, 2006). Byfocusing literacy initiatives on particular groups – those who havebeen identified as not having ‘enough’ literacy – policy has clearlyprioritised the ‘vertical’ dimensions of literacy discussed above.The implications of this are not just that different literacies areoverlooked (the second, horizontal dimension) but also signal amove away from the notion of literacy as a force for social change.The EFA agenda has strongly influenced the dominant discoursearound literacy today – a focus on getting marginalized groups intoformal education, assuming a narrower definition of ‘literacy’(reading and writing), and seeing literacy as an end not a means. Bycontrast, earlier Freirean-inspired adult educators saw literacy as ameans of political and social mobilisation, which had relevance notonly for the marginalized or ‘oppressed’ groups participating inprogrammes, but also for the whole population in terms ofchallenging dominant attitudes and initiating structural change.This relates to our third dimension and the role that literacy canplay in contesting and transforming the institutional structuresthat perpetuate social inequalities.

Looking at literacy as a process for challenging and transform-ing inequalities around gender, poverty, language, ethnicity anddisability, therefore implies a shift away from discussions onincreasing access to adult education or schooling. Within thedominant Education For All policy discourse, the strong emphasison attainment and outcomes means that the words ‘literacy’ and‘education’ are often used interchangeably. There is also anassumption that social changes can be made through educationalone – through changing participants’ attitudes or raising theirawareness of their rights. Focusing on our third ‘dimension ofliteracy’ provides the opportunity to investigate how literacypractices sustain or challenge dominant power relationships, andthe significance of changing literacy environments and practices.This might include exploration of the processes through whichadult literacy programmes challenge or reinforce dominantlanguages and literacies of power. Chopra’s paper points to theneed for ‘literacy inequalities’ to be analysed from the wider

Editorial / International Journal of Educational Development 31 (2011) 577–579 579

perspective of political and social change – rather than beinglimited to a consideration only of educational concerns andcontexts. Her paper uses three ethnographic vignettes to demon-strate how constructions of the gendered illiterate Indian villageras a homogeneous group, empowered by adult educationprogrammes, are challenged by their self-identification, oftenlocated within shifting hegemonic constraints.

As well as moving ‘outside’ education to consider the inter-connections between literacy and wider social and political change,we are also concerned to look ‘inside’ institutions where literacyis learned and practised – within classrooms, communities andorganisations. We suggest that analysing pedagogy, organisationalpractices and issues of representation, involves exploring not onlythe range of literacy materials available (from primers to ‘real’materials or REFLECT visuals made by participants) and thepedagogies used for learning, but also enables us to analyse howthese differing approaches reflect existing social practices, orattempt to change them. As Kell’s article suggests, such investiga-tions raise questions which help to interrogate the links betweenwhat we have described above as the second and third dimensionsof literacy inequalities: do the materials and pedagogies used forlearning reproduce inequalities and create a further layer ofrepresentational inequalities, or do they contribute to a renegotia-tion of power relations? What is the value accorded to different typesof texts within everyday cultural practice? Based on her ethno-graphic research in South Africa and New Zealand, Kell uses theconcept of ‘recontextualisation’ and ‘literacy events’ to analysewhat happens when texts shift across contexts and its implicationsfor power relations. Her paper shows how these materials,documents and texts are accessed, transacted and contribute tothe formation of particular social statuses and hierarchies.

We view these questions on pedagogy, texts and practice asintegrally linked to issues around research methodology andplanning approaches. Significantly, much of the research on ‘literacyinequalities’ in recent decades has been influenced by a quantitativeparadigm – aiming to measure attainment in literacy and theassociated benefits. Several of the papers in this Special Issue offerinsights into the different perspective that ethnographic research canoffer through a detailed account of the process, rather than outcomes.Brian Street draws on theoretical debates within the field of NewLiteracy Studies and examples of literacy programmes to analyse theways in which an ethnographic perspective on literacy practices cancontribute to a conceptualisation of ‘inequalities’. This kind ofresearch often reveals much about changing literacies (both in termsof how literacies are changing and initiating change) and inequalities.

Through an ethnographic analysis of how a text written inMandinka language by a non-formally educated man is transformedby a formally educated urban man, Juffermans gives an unusualinsight into the ‘freedom’ that indigenous literacies can offer forcreative expression. This contrasts with ‘standardised’ dominantlanguages which have fixed rules about spelling. Drawing on Kress(2000), Juffermans reveals how ‘spelling in local languages remainsan affair of creativity rather than convention’ and goes on to explorehow the formally educated man in particular uses his knowledge ofEnglish literacy conventions to rewrite the Mandinka text. Throughthis example, he identifies an inequality in the very ‘infrastructure’of a small language like Mandinka, which leads people to borrowelements of other spelling systems, notably English. Juffermanssuggests that literacy planners could learn from the processes ofchange and creativity revealed through this case study – so thatrather than trying to standardise indigenous languages ‘from above’(for the educational reasons of making a language simpler to learn toread and write), planners could recognise that ‘powerful languages’(such as English) already co-exist with African local languages andoffer a resource that learners can draw upon to develop ‘grassrootsspelling’.

In a policy context, such ethnographic research can thusdemonstrate the potential to promote literacy as a process ofengaging critically with existing inequalities, whether arounddisability, poverty, gender, ethnic group or as in Jufferman’s casestudy – inequalities within the language itself. Language policy hasoften been influenced by our first and second dimensions – usingmother tongue teaching for minority groups as a bridge to alanguage of power. Bilingual literacy education, for all groups inthe population, could however begin a process of literacychallenging such language inequalities (the third dimension)and part of this process might involve more explicit examination ofsuch programmes within what Juffermans has called the‘multilingual ecology’ of the area. Hamilton and Pitt exploreliteracy policy in a different context, and show how changes inliteracy discourses in the UK shape rationales for literacy policy,and how changing models of the learner can be located within thewider political economy. Their paper points us towards a greaterself-consciousness of the ways in which literacy inequalities areframed, and how they frame their subjects as global citizens.

All the papers in this special issue can similarly contribute todeconstructing dominant policy discourses and exposing assump-tions that have limited the ways in which literacy inequalities arediscussed, researched and addressed through policy. We hope thatthe discussions initiated through this collection of papers maymove us a step towards closing the gap between research andpolicy that Zavala notes in her reflective endpiece – and which hasproved a continuous challenge, particularly for those committed toethnographic approaches within the New Literacy Studies.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in

the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.04.003.

References

Blommaert, B., 2008. Grassroots Literacies: Writing, Identity and Voice in CentralAfrica. Routledge, New York/London.

Blum, A., Goldstein, H., Guerin-Pace, F., 2001. International Adult Literacy Survey(IALS): an analysis of international comparisons of adult literacy. Assessment inEducation 8 (2), 225–246.

Collins, J., Blot, R., 2003. Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power and Identity.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Fraser, N., 2008. Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a GlobalisingWorld. Columbia University Press, New York.

Hamilton, M., 2001. Privileged literacies: policy, institutional process and the life ofthe IALS. Language and Education 15, 178–196.

Hamilton, M., Barton, D., 2000. The international adult literacy survey: what does itreally measure? International Journal of Education 46 (5), 377–389.

Kress, G., 2000. Early Spelling: Between Convention and Creativity. Routledge, London.Maddox, B., Esposito, L., 2011. Sufficiency Re-examined: A Capabilities Perspective

on the Assessment of Functional Adult Literacy. Journal of Development Studies47 (9) (September).

Nussbaum, M., 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Member-ship. Belknap Press, Cambridge MA/London.

UNESCO, 2006, Report of a two day national workshop on needs assessment andvalidation of national action plan for LIFE in Nigeria, 29th - 30th November 2006.

UNESCO, 2008. The Global Literacy Challenge: a profile of youth and adult literacy atthe mid-point of the United Nations Literacy Decade 2003-2012. UNESCO, Paris,available from the website: unesdoc.unesco/0016/001631/org/images/163170e.pdf.

Bryan MaddoxSheila Aikman

Nitya RaoAnna Robinson-Pant*

University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ,

United Kingdom

*Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1603 592857E-mail address: a.robinson-pant@uea.ac.uk (A. Robinson-Pant).