In order to make proposals, or to be able to respond to them, the literacy community must articulate positions and secure consensus on them. How can this be done? One essential element in articulating positions is to document and systematize the discoveries of practice in a variety of forms: evaluation reports, data-gathering surveys, research studies, resources for teaching or program organizing, outlines for practitioner training programs, and so on. Such documentation is increasingly being done, and it is influencing many programming and funding decisions. But for the literacy community to take a leading role in developing policy, for the community to speak to government with one voice and with the assurance of knowledgeability, more is required — consensus on leading positions.

Internal organization of the community is not easy. There are many differences, even divisions, within the literacy field. In different regions, there are differences between school boards and colleges, between institutions and non-profit organizations, or between between any of these and programs in workplaces. Programs that rely on volunteer tutoring may be set against those that employ career literacy teachers. Those who approach literacy with economic motivations, and those who approach it with justice motivations, often do not sit easily together. There are differences between rural and urban, minority language and dominant language, and so on. Sometimes these differences are merely differences of focus; sometimes they involve ideological disagreements; sometimes they are fueled by competition for resources; often they reflect the splintering of responsibility at administrative and ministerial levels. Sometimes the literacy community seems divided and conquered, when contentions obscure the common objective and experience of working to create a more literate society.

All this of course makes it difficult for the literacy community to create strong coalitions, and indeed there has not been, at least nationally, a definitive policy statement from the literacy community since 1987. Neither has there has been any national inquiry into the state and prospects of literacy work, that might set, outside of government, a policy agenda.

What matters might be addressed in a policy statement or policy agenda that aims to take a leading role?

The increasing emphasis on standards and accountability in literacy work must be juxtaposed with an emphasis from practice on learner-centred and community-specific curriculum and assessment and program staffing, and the programming autonomy that they require. Achieving a productive balance between them requires that the literacy community assert the lessons of its experience in any designing of grant applications, curriculum definitions, assessment procedures, reporting requirements, and the like.