There can be few areas of education which have been more controversial than the teaching of literacy. In an increasingly information-dense society, the ability to make sense of and to produce text is crucial to success, and literacy has understandably assumed the burden of the benchmark of 'educatedness'.

This four-volume collection covers the major debates about exactly what it means to be literate and how literacy can best be taught. Rather than centering on the emotional reaction of mass media debates, this set focuses on research findings into processes and pedagogy.