Introduction: the New Zealand context for literacy

It is argued in this chapter that New Zealand's reputation as a ‘highly literate and print-orientated society’ (Wilkinson, 1998, 144) has been due in part to the isolation and independence borne originally of our geographical position or ‘islandness’ and, through the 20th century in particular, to a strong ‘home grown’ literacy teaching and learning pedagogy in our schools, high rates of library membership, newspaper and magazine readership, a strong commitment to the wide canon of literature and, more recently, to our own burgeoning adult and children's literature.

The argument, however, has been sorely tested in recent times. Like many other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, New Zealand has been challenged to maintain literacy standards in English in the face of worldwide instantaneous communication, globalization and access to popular culture, mobility and mass migration, socio-lingual and cultural diversity and, more recently, effects on the literacy achievement of those most likely to struggle in times of economic constraint. To add complexity to an already challenging field, the very notion of what it means to be literate has shifted from simply being able to read and write to the wider concept of literacies: the range of functional, academic, ‘new literacies’, multi-literacies and critical ways of ‘reading the world’ (Freire and Macedo, 1987; Gee, 2008; Healy, 2008; Kalantzis, Cope and Cloonan, 2010; Lankshear and Knobel, 2003; Leu, 2000; Wink, 2010).

Healy encapsulates this shift in emphasis when she suggests:

Libraries and librarians have now the opportunity, and the obligation, to powerfully reassert their place as key information providers in classrooms, schools, communities and homes as the intersecting lines of knowledge, skills and communication and the literacy curriculum, inquiry processes and information resources become the pivotal drivers of 21st-century life.