D´Angelo (1982) argues that individuals with low levels of literacy may be highly intelligent, particularly when it comes to performing practical tasks. He attributes the cognitive differences between literate and less literate individuals to their experience with different environments and having had fewer educational opportunities. Fagan (1998) highlights how Newfoundlanders in his research "construct their image within the reality of their culture and how they live this reality" (p. 10). Other recent literacy scholars, such as Gee (1995) and Street (1996, 2003), also challenge restrictive views of literacy and lend support to Graff's (1979) understanding of other determinants of opportunity and success in society.

For a literate culture, Freire (1970) and later Stuckey (1991) insist that knowledge of the word cannot be separated from knowledge of the world. Stuckey (1991) suggests that knowledge of both proceed concurrently. Freire (1970) points out that people must understand their relationship with the world, including their past, since they are constrained by social structures. He suggests the use of a problem posing model in which individuals use dialogue and reflection to continually question how the present came to be and to try to determine the role of the past in constructing the present. It is through this learning that they are liberated.

Street (1984) also advocates for an understanding of one's sociocultural context to be able to function effectively as a literate being in one's own culture. Meanwhile, Jarvis (1992) talks about the learning process, which he sees as wider than education, as giving meaning to experience and transforming that experience into knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and attitudes. He recognizes both an individual component and a social context with pressure from social structures and control by powerful elites. To Jarvis (1992), this is a paradox; learning is individual, but the learner must relate to the social nature of society. Another part of the paradox is that institutions that are needed to help with the functioning of the system of education, in fact, may constrain learning. Yet, without these institutions, opportunities for learning would be reduced.

In Chapter 1, I reject the notion of literacy as a single fixed competence or measurable achievement in favor of a more inclusive evolving definition that accounts for the existence of multiple purposes for literacy and multiple goals and expectations for literacy education as advocated by a number of contemporary literacy researchers (Heath, 1983; Lankshear, 1997; Street, 1984). In my definition of literacy outlined previously, I put forth a set of skills that allows one to work with ever changing structures to help negotiate the world. As Fagan (1998) points out, literacy cannot be understood in isolation from the larger sociocultural context.