The Underground

As a literacy researcher interested in the social and material worlds in which literacies are shaped, animated, and circulated, I have observed that much of what happens in the worlds of children’s literacies is clandestine, unrecognized – that is, in/visible, in that it takes place in the margins of places children gather and generally on the periphery of adult noticing. Informed by these observations, inquiring into what is happening in the margins—the edges of classrooms, playgrounds, homes, and cultures, places and spaces in which children are engaging in literacy practices that don’t necessarily conform to ways the adults in their lives conceptualize literacy—is a critical direction for literacy research and classroom pedagogical practice. However, too often those in the position to make decisions around school literacy programming and assessment have narrow ideas regarding what counts as literacy and how students should engage with it. In taking a narrow view, it is easy for those with decision-making capacities to miss the important literacy practices children and youth are engaging, simply because they are not attuned to looking for it.