Recent studies in the literacy field have focused less on school-defined reading skills, educational attainment, and the ability to read great literature, and more on the everyday practices and use of literacy in the home, community and workplace. The term 'new literacy' has been coined to describe it. Studies in the 'new literacy' are based on observation and description (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Heath 1983; Horsman, 1990, 1994; Street, 1993, 1994) and on social practices or action research leading to improved teaching strategies. In the case of the male mentor program, our research set out to examine ways to bring community practices, interests and literacies into school in a proactive and transactive way. Other parts of our research plan examined reading practices and worked with teachers on improving existing reading strategies (Daniels, 2001; Fountas & Pinnell, 2001). Thus our overall research project incorporated theory and put it into practice as we developed the male mentor's reading program. We were concerned with the school world of the child rather than the political world of adult literacy (Carmen, 1998).

We would argue that the lack of explicitness in new literacy studies underlies and enhances its framework (Barton, 1994; Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Street, 1993, 1994). The knowledge being sought in new literacy studies is implicit in nature rather than explicit. The practices and events observed in families and communities can offer the mentor, teacher, and researcher new perspectives on what it means to incorporate everyday literacies into the school world in authentic and meaningful ways (Heath 1983; Horsman, 1990; Taylor 1983). Studies of implicit or tacit knowledge rely on modes of knowing based on symbolic forms other than words and use an emergent and exploratory inquiry process. The new literacy intends to be expansionist, to create new ideas, and to raise new questions (Bruner 1986; Eisner 1985; Guba & Lincoln 1982). New literacy studies in education (Willinsky, 1990) examine whole language learning and the construction of meaning in child literacy research (Goodman, 1991; Harste, Woodward & Burke, 1991). New literacy studies are part of the framework for the boys' and girls' literacy research project.

The third piece of the research frame is found in beliefs about reading interventions. In this project, the male reading mentors went into the same elementary school once a week. The conceptual framework here draws on hypotheses of modeling and self identification. If the boys in our study were to see and hear and interact with university age men doing literacy activities, would this make any difference to the boys' levels of literacy? Or the girls' levels?