Exploring Multiple Literacies from Homes and Communities: A Cross-cultural Comparative Analysis

More recently, a wave of research that addresses the multiple pathways to literacy that children follow is the syncretic literacy studies. This chapter reviews particular examples from studies undertaken with some theoretical approaches. The studies reviewed in this chapter move far beyond a limited view of literacy as isolated features of decoding and encoding sound to text to show the intricate ways that literacy can unfold when fostered and used for authentic communicative purposes. Various contexts of children's life such as religious, school, home, and after school settings are spaces for learning and developing literacy. The vast majority of research projects have focused on schools as the site where literacy takes place, on monolingual communities, and on literate societies that privilege written as opposed to oral language.