How might educational leaders and teachers improve literacy achievement in schools serving communities experiencing high levels of poverty? This question is the focus of this book. Drawing on long-term case studies of four primary schools located in these communities, this book describes the difference between what is commonly practiced and those practices that have a greater chance of supporting young people’s literacy learning.

In this multi-layered analysis of the effects of policy on practice, the authors: discuss global concerns with literacy policy and testing in view of the growing gaps between rich and poor; examine the effects of the intensification of inequality and entrenched poverty, and the implications for schools; illustrate how deficit discourses pertaining to communities living in poverty are contested in schools; and describe the complexities of sustaining pedagogical and curriculum change to address the problem of unequal educational outcomes in literacy.

This book grapples with some of the most debated questions regarding educational disadvantage, school change, leadership and literacy pedagogy that face educational researchers, policy-makers and practitioners internationally. As well as providing a critique of the risks of current policy rationales, it conveys some hopeful accounts of practice that provide leads for further development.