1) How are our literacy practices shaped by communities of which we are part and in which we are raised?
2) What insights can be provided by conducting ethnographic research of literacy practices in communities?
3) How are literacy standards and tests created, and how do are they assessed for cultural bias?
4) How has class, race, and region affected a community’s ability to have say over literacy tests?
5) How have parents/guardians and communities exerted their influence over literacy curricula, and what effect have competing experiences had on literacy curricula (e.g., New York City and the Rainbow Curriculum)?
6) How have literacy standards, tests, and curricula affected how diverse groups are represented or valued?
7) How has literacy been used to keep diverse communities from participating in civic society?
8) To what degree is literacy connected to incarceration, and how does low literacy keep individuals from participating in American society post incarceration? What projects exist to address this?
9) How have diverse communities fought for the rights to literacy?
10) Why have communities created activist projects to promote literacy among multiple generations or multiple populations?
11) What are parental/guardian expectations of school, and how are these expectations developed by social beliefs about education, literacy, power, and civic participation? For instance, you might think about the relationship between literacy and the myth of the American dream.
12) How have minority communities been deprived of fair and equal access to literacy? Why? And what affect did this have?
13) How have minority communities worked outside of school and governmental systems to acquire literacy and socialize children into literacy practices?
14) Have minority community truly been afforded equal access to literacy necessary to be successful in a contemporary America?
15) How have governmental agencies utilized literacy and schooling as a means of depowering indigenous populations?
16) What tools did slaves utilize to acquire literacy, and why was this important?
17) How has literacy been aligned to civil rights, and why was literacy a civil rights project among African Americans post Civil War?
18) How have religious communities assisted in the project to provide literacy to African-Americans, and why?
19) What affect did segregation have on individual’s access to literacy, and how did African-American communities mobilize to combat this?
20) What are language and literacy practices that African-American families use to acculturate their children into communities currently?
21) How is white privilege often embedded in notions of literacy practices, and how does this negatively affect African-American children?
22) Do all children have quality access to literacy these days?
23) What does it mean, culturally, to be literate in two or more languages?
24) What are the potential benefits and/or drawbacks of bilingualism?
25) Why does it take “grass roots organizations” (those built and led by members of a community) to create equitable learning environments for all students?
26) How has literacy been positioned as a means of upward mobility?
27) How have rural communities designed literacy projects?
28) How have notions of class been used to disenfranchise individuals from accessing their rights to literacy?
29) How was literacy used as a means of limiting immigration into the US?
30) Why are immigrants’ literacy skills in their native languages often discounted in educational settings?
31) How is literacy a means of acculturation, and how are immigrants socialized into literacy practices in the United States?
32) How do diverse religious communities support or deliberately ignore the literacy needs of members of the congregation?
33) In what ways does access to literacy affect an individual’s ability to read through religious text? Why is this important to an individual’s agency?
34) How is literacy utilized to build community around religious identity?
35) In what ways can communities build literacy programs that address practices with which children and adolescents participate as a means of supporting their acquisition of literacy skills expected of adults?
36) How have notions of literacy adjusted based on the literacy skills of generations of children and adolescents?
37) Consider what scholars mean by “youth culture” – how are notions of diversity and identity embedded in this concept, and how does that affect our understandings of literacy?
38) In what ways do scholars expect social media and digital globalization will affect literacy and its relationship to diversity, identity, and cultural hegemony?
39) How does literacy connect to sustainability?
40) How are demands of technology changing what it means to be literate?
