"Joanne Larson and Jackie Marsh's Making Literacy Real is easily the most theoretically sophisticated and practically useful discussion of sociocultural and critical approaches to literacy learning that has appeared to date." James Paul Gee, Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading, University of Wisconsin-Madison 

Making Literacy Real is an essential reference text for primary education students at undergraduate and graduate level who want to understand literacy theory and successfully apply it in the classroom. Doctoral students will find this a useful resource in understanding the relationship of theory to practice.

The authors explore the breadth of this complex and important field, orientating literacy as a social practice, grounded in social, cultural, historical and political contexts. They also present a detailed and accessible discussion of the theory and its application in the primary classroom.

The book covers Defining literacy – multimodalities and new literacies Digital literacies New Literacy Studies Critical literacy Sociocultural-historical theory Connecting theoretical frameworks Implications for teacher education and literacy research Each chapter examines a theoretical model, accompanied by a discussion of case study material with a leading figure in the field including Barbara Comber, Michele Knobel, Colin Lankshear, Barbara Rogoff and Brian Street.

Joanne Larson is the Michael W. Scandling Professor of Education and Chair of the Teaching and Curriculum program at the University of Rochester's Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

Jackie Marsh is Reader in Education at the University of Sheffield. She is currently President-Elect of the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA)

This edited collection examines the recent trend toward quick fix literacy programs in which entrepreneurs peddle packaged literacies that purport to resolve the pressure to raise achievement scores. Current accountability and standardization movements that feed the market for packaged literacies make this a timely book for university researchers, classroom teachers, and school or district administrators. The discourse surrounding the teaching and learning of literacy has been appropriated by the conservative right in such a way as to block not only a critique of the so-called literacy crisis, but also attempts to construct more meaningful solutions. Literacy as Snake Oil critically examines the consequences of packaged literacy on educational practice.

“This book is a cogent reminder of what we’ve known for the past eighty years but somehow keep managing to forget: that despite all the cyclical rhetoric about the one true method- science, pseudo-science, and evidence-based policy- literacy education is big business, with overt and obvious vested economic interests.”- Allan Luke, Professor and Head, Graduate School of Education, University of Queensland

Click here to read a book review on Literacy as Snake Oil in Teachers' College Record

Larson, J. (in press). New literacy studies. In C. Compton-Lilly (Ed.). Breaking the silence: Learning in social and cultural worlds. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Larson, J., Allen, A.R., Osborn, D. (forthcoming). Curriculum and the publishing industry. In B. McGraw, E. Baker, & P. Peterson (Eds). International Encyclopedia of Education, 3rd Edition. Philadelphia: Elsevier.

Larson, J. & Rios Aguilar, C. (2007). Speaking truth to policy. Language Arts 84(5), 456-464.

Larson, J. (2006). Multiliteracies, Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment. Theory into Practice, Special Issue edited by David Bloome and Peter Paul. New Jersey: Erlbaum