Literacy Research: A Middle Years Project

This chapter introduces the project on which this book is based. The project's university researchers establish the case for 'why literacy again?' and outline the key themes and emphases of the book. These include new literacy demands and the need for a continuing focus on literacy, middle years literacy requirements, collaborative research to address literacy demands, Design-Based Research methodology, and the pedagogical approaches used by teacher researchers in the project: place-conscious pedagogies, curriculum-specific pedagogies, and digital literacies and youth cultures pedagogies. Teacher researcher projects are outlined within the overarching frame and goals of the project, and we also foreground the relationship of these projects to literacy in the Australian Curriculum, in both curriculum-specific ways and as a General capability.