What is 'literacy'?

Literacy is commonly understood to be the ability to ‘read and write’. Underneath that seemingly-innocuous and straightforward statement, however, lies much depth. Some questions immediately spring to mind, for example:

• Reading and writing for what purpose?
• Reading with what level of understanding?
• Writing with what degree of clarity?
• Being able to read and write in what kind of circumstances? (with what kind of support?)

Given the ambiguity inherent in the concept — something we will explore in more depth in the next chapter — it is fair to consider ‘literacy’ as a kind of conceptual shorthand. Although we can (and do) create tests to measure literacy we have to add to the original understanding of ‘being able to read and write’ to get to any sort of precision.