I Know What Literacy Means: Student Teacher Accounts

This paper explores beginning pre-service teaching students' common perceptions of the meaning of the term literacy. The methodology used is described in terms of phenomenographic analyses and the outcome, an array presentation of concepts in diagrammatic form. It establishes that students' conceptions of literacy are embedded predominantly in the reading and writing of written texts which is at variance with contemporary teaching practices of critical literacy. This paper proposes that this process and presentation is useful to pre-service teaching institutes in engaging in the debate highlighted in recent public reports, of the need to demonstrate competency in literacy as a condition of Queensland teacher registration.