In school settings, literacy is both the target of instruction and a tool for learning content. The broader definition of literacy as a cognitive activity and sociocultural practice provides the essential link between language, culture, and human development. This reconceptualization should move us beyond unproductive debates in which successful literacy practice is believed to be achieved by a single method to one informed by an understanding of literacy and language. In this article I present a cultural-historical perspective of learning and development as an alternative for conceptualizing instructional practices. From a cultural-historical perspective, children develop and are socialized as they actively participate in culturally defined practices.
Interaction brings together what novices and experts know.
In other words, joint activity in everyday activities enables individuals to achieve the developmental social and linguistic goals of the larger community. Thus learning can be understood as changing participation in a variety of essential roles in the learning events. In the context of literacy learning, students acquire literacy knowledge as they assume successively complex roles in literacy activity. This theoretical framework helps us focus attention on the relationship between the social practices of the classroom and literacy development. This theory also helps us understand that becoming literate is related to student access to and participation in varying forms of literacy events.