This article describes our collaborative inquiry, three teacher educators/researchers of literacy from different institutions who shared a concern about how few teacher candidates in our programs neither viewed themselves as readers nor possessed a love of reading, qualities we view as key to supporting all children as lifelong readers, writers,…

Web skimming may be a kind of literacy but it's not the kind that matters most. In this article, the author contends that web skimming indicates a decline of literacy. The author discusses research conducted by Jakob Nielsen, a Web researcher, on how users skim web pages. He shows how the web is damaging the right way to read.

Discusses literacy in the author's own family and asks whether the term "family literacy" can really refer with any accuracy to any group of people or to any set of behaviors. Argues that literacy educators must resist abstractions and generalizations and focus upon the particularities that help shape the individual literacies of their…

Explores changes in reading behavior in Israel between 1970 and 1990. Shows that: electronic media has not displaced print media, the majority of the population uses all the available print media, active reading correlates with activities considered high culture, newspapers are less functional, and traditional illiteracy is making a comeback due…

Describes the shifts in the author's literacy in the three years she has been a mother. Discusses the two books she has had time to read for pleasure, as well as the books she has written and edited (in her role as a teacher educator). Shares how this reflects the fragmented, challenging, exhilarating existence of motherhood. (SR)

Examines literacy practices in their sociohistorical contexts, drawing examples of religious reading practices and stances from Orthodox Jewish reading practices. Notes that religious reading practices highlight the repertoire of reading genres, strategies, and stances that members of modern multicultural societies learn to control. Concludes that…

In examining the nature of literacy in ancient Athens, this paper reviews the work of key modern scholars and their positions in the debates concerning the development of literacy in Greece, the oral culture preceeding this, and the technology that enabled it to occur. Following an introduction surveying the viewpoints of Rhys Carpenter, L. H.…

In Portugal, the word "literacy" acquired public importance in October 1995, in the first national literacy assessment report. In the last few years, "reading habits" and not "literacy" became a privileged research object, and it is the amount and kind of reading that is being measured, with the results taken as…

The history of reading is a fast growing and controversial area of the emerging field of book history. Methods for researching the evolution and patterns of literacy and of reading habits are not yet established, and knowledge of information sources is still limited. (MSE)

Taking a sociocultural framework borrowed from Michel de Certeau, this paper suggests a pedagogy of reading as practice that makes readers of foreign literary texts aware of their own privileged foreign cultural position in contrast to that of native readers. (JL)

A study examined the reading behaviors of college students--in particular it asked why aliteracy occurs among college students. A survey designed to identify the aliterate population was administered to a psychology class of 40 students from a variety of majors, and included both genders, some ethnic variety (mostly Anglo), and a range of ages.…

The findings of a three-week visit in China by a study team of American scholars to examine the state of reading research and instruction in Chinese schools and universities are presented in the various articles of this report. Following an introduction describing the particulars of the visit, the report presents these articles: (1) "Chinese…

Several of the papers in this collection describe university programs or provide practical suggestions for using technology to enhance literacy instruction; other papers focus on a diverse range of issues, instructional strategies, and research findings related to different aspects of literacy. Papers in the collection are: "A Community of…

The majority of current college freshmen see no place in their lives for reading as an opportunity for intellectual or emotional enjoyment. They read only the most utilitarian texts--appliance instructions or road signs, for example. A teacher cannot "make" students read anything, but he or she can help them find ways to like reading;…