Literacy & Education: Understanding the New Literacy Studies in the Classroom (Pahl & Rowsell, 2005) advances an approach to multiliteracies education that has application from the middle years of schooling. Pahl & Rowsell add to the call for teachers & curriculum planners to build programs around local & individual difference as opposed to a standardized, one-size-fits-all approach. The authors argue that commonplace autonomous models of literacy dictate terms for the reader, whereas in an ideological model of literacy the reader & the context dictate the terms of how a text is read & understood. ‘Such a shift in thinking gives more power to the reader & the context as carriers of their own meanings, discourses & ideologies (Pahl & Rowsell, 2005, p. 79). As Jim Cummins (2005, p. 151) summarises in the afterwords, Pahl & Rowsell provide a radically different image of the literacy student, an image that is intelligent, imaginative & linguistically talented. This text also outlines pedagogies & strategies for building on students’ individual cultural & linguistic capital, promoting cognitive engagement & identity investment where students are able to employ a range of technical tools to be constructors & researchers of knowledge. As Allan Luke argues in the foreword, such provision is essential if we are to abide by our commitment to literacy as a means of social transformation
