Restorying Reading: A Narrative Journey of Place, Policy, and Contestation

In this piece, I story and restory various encounters I’ve had with what counts as being a reader and being literate. I use narrative approaches to research rather than expository text to “story” the ways that teaching reading unfolds in three specific apertures, times, and places that are connected through past into present and future possibilities for reading policy and realities. The central professional curiosities addressed in each aperture are: (1) what counts as literate in specific times and places?; (2) what are the sociopolitical and economic interests shaping the moments?; and (3) what is the quality and tenor of relation in determining the “right” way to teach reading? The research approach, informed by decolonial and meaning making as relational, moves differently than the Western traditions of what counts as reading and prioritizes storying as key to many ancestral knowledge practices. I focus partially on the Science of Reading movement as impetus but connect to a longer history of colonial dominance that winnowed definitions of what counts as both reading and science. I close the piece with speculations of the kind of literate subjects and futures that are multiply possible through varied stances on what counts as being literate.