Ruqaiya Hasan and Geoff Williams

Literacy in our society is an issue of major concern, controversy surrounding its social practice fuels current debates in education and much has been written about it. However in much of this discourse the importance of ideas about language in literacy education has not been at the forefront. The thought provoking papers in this volume address some of the key aspects of the literacy debate from the perspective of a language based theory of learning.
The contributions range from the theoretical to the practical and from everyday development of language at home to the workplace. Featured here are papers which interpret literacy demands on students across the secondary curriculum, by authors who are working in and around Martin's 'genre-based' movement, as well as those which present alternative perspectives.