Literacy as Shared Consciousness: A Neurocultural Analysis

This chapter critically links socio-cultural and neuroscientific perspectives on literacy and learning in a way that confirms the significance of culture, experience, and opportunity to participate in the practices of literacy. It highlights the varied ways in which these practices are pertinent in different social contexts. This integration of socio-cultural and neuroscientific research also points to the importance of individual agency and how the uniqueness of each brain, as a result of biology, experience, and culture, implies and confirms the intentional, meaning-making, and negotiating potential of humans. The neurocultural analysis of learning and language suggests that mind and body are inextricably linked through neural, cultural, and social networks that become apparent in a study of brain development, everyday experiences, and social interaction.