What counts as successful school subject literacy: differing views from students,teachers, and parents

Research into literacy and school subject performance focuses overwhelmingly on identifying and addressing risk factors associated with underachievement. Strenuous efforts are devoted to diagnosing the causes of literacy failure that are patterned by ethnicity, social class, and gender. This study explores the possibility that equal, or even greater insights, may be achieved by investigating instances of successful school literacy practices. The purpose is to develop contextualized theories to explain the phenomena of success in children from working-class families to identify social and pedagogical factors associated with success. Six case studies of successful students in English, general science, physics, catering, mathematics, and economics are presented. Each case is composed of a triad including the student, teacher, and parent. Data includes interviews with all triad members, classroom observations, and student journals. This paper reports the findings of the present study and comments on how they compare with those international studies of scholastic success in contexts of school and home factors.