Literacy in Bilingual and Multilingual Education

Abstract

Literacy is an issue of fundamental importance to educators, parents, and students. However, discussion of literacy learning and teaching has tended until relatively recently to be framed with monolingual populations in mind. In contrast, this contribution explores literacy from the perspective of bilingual and multilingual education in all its many different forms, focusing particularly on the methodological and theoretical developments of recent decades and the current state of knowledge, while also highlighting future directions for literacy-related pedagogy and practice. Six main areas have clear implications for the discussion of literacy in multilingual settings: new understandings of languages as dynamic systems; parallel developments in our understanding of literacy; attempts to capture the diversity of multilingual education; the influence of competing theories of learning on approaches to the teaching of reading and writing; and new understandings of the role of cultural difference for children's achievement in learning to read and write.

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