This book provides a range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives on difficulties in literacy development. The high-profile team of contributors provide ethical and policy discussions, as well as contextualising individual and collective strategies to addressing difficulties in literacy development. The chapters break new ground by encompassing a wide range of perspectives related to critical literacy, socio-cultural, cognitive, and psychological viewpoints, to help inform practice, policy and research into literacy difficulties.

Issues addressed include:

*the different ways literacy can be conceptualised through social-science based disciplinary perspectives
*the issues at the centre of current public and professional debates surrounding literacy difficulties and how these have impacted upon pedagogical responses
*the impact of these wider political and social issues on individual students.

This reader forms the basis of the Open University’s Difficulties in Literacy Development course, but will also be of interest to postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, education professionals and policymakers who are keen to address difficulties in literacy development.

'The editors' choices are excellent and the new chapters writtem for the volume add up to a coherent and thought-provoking book on vital issues in literacy ... In sum the book as a whole offers a powerful critique of the technicist model of literacy that dominates policy in this country ... It elaborates the principles and practices on which effective literacy learning for all can be built, and it is for this reason that I recommend it to all those interested in literacy education: teachers, teacher educators, literacy researchers, education psychologists and especially policy makers.' - Kathy Hall, British Journal of Educational Studies

'strongly recommended to both students and practitioners who are curious about how literacy reflects, and is reflected in, diverse aspects of social life.' - Lyn Layton, British Journal of Special Education, Vol31, 1, 2004

Janice Wearmouth, Gavin Reid, Janet Soler