Every practice makes demands. A test rewards speed and precision under pressure. A government form assumes you already know what it's asking for. A field of study or occupation expects you to read the way the field reads. Before you can support the development of a particular practice, you have to clearly see what it asks of a learner — and that's what this tool is for.
The tool is a set of analysis prompts. The prompts draw on some social practice concepts — the idea that literacy is best understood not as an unchanging single skill but as something people actively do with texts, in specific settings, for specific purposes and with real consequences. The prompts turn that insight into something you can use. Applied to a practice type, they help you see past a generic instructional response to what a learner actually needs to do with a text — its purposes, its forms, the thinking it demands and the stakes it carries.
It helps to separate two things that are easy to conflate: what a text looks like, and what a text is for. Its format, whether a graph, a paragraph or a poem, is very different from what it's for: the use the reading or writing is put to. An income graph on a benefits form is interpreted and used in very different ways, with very different consequences, than the same graph on a test exercise. That difference is what an understanding of literacy as social practices helps you see.
That distinction is important to remember because format and practice don't always line up neatly. While some practices have their own distinct texts such as narrative and creative practices with stories, poems and personal writing, most others are indistinct. Among the more functional practices, the same text format turns up again and again in different places. A graph or a table can appear inside a field-specific practice, a test, a set of procedures or an institutional form. Which practice it belongs to depends entirely on what the learner is doing with it, not on how it looks. So the question that places a text in a practice isn't, what does this look like, it's what is the learner trying to do with it?
The observational prompts follow a sequence from the text itself through the stakes and the literacy work to the learner's identity. Select any prompt to read the analysis questions.
What kinds of texts does this practice actually use? Where do they come from — daily life, the workplace, a specific field, or are they constructed for instruction? Are they in print, on screen, or a combination of both? What does the layout ask of the reader before they read a single word? Is the structure continuous or fragmented, dense or spare, visual or text-heavy? Generic instruction typically uses uniform formats — a passage followed by questions. How does the format of this practice's texts differ from that?
What is this text for — and what is the learner trying to do with it? Are those two purposes aligned or in tension? Generic instruction tends to collapse purposes into one: demonstrate comprehension to the teacher. What are the real purposes and motivations in this practice?
What's at stake for the learner in this practice? Whose interests are served? What happens if they can engage with it competently, and what happens if they can't? Generic instruction tends to flatten consequences into a single outcome: a right or wrong answer. What are the real consequences in this practice?
What cognitive moves does this practice require? Is the learner scanning, sequencing, inferring, recalling, evaluating or expressing? Generic instruction defaults to the same cognitive moves regardless of text or context — typically locating and recalling information. What kind of thinking would that approach fail to develop for this practice?
What does a successful response to this text actually look like? Is the learner acting on it, interpreting it, evaluating it, creating from it or navigating it? Generic instruction asks for the same response to every text — answer the questions, fill-in-the blanks. What does this practice actually require the learner to do with the text and how is that different?
How does this practice position the learner? Does it invite their voice and experience, or ask them to perform someone else's? Does it build or diminish their sense of themselves as a capable reader and writer?
Generic instruction often positions the learner as someone retrieving answers that already exist. Or it positions them as someone deficient, in need of remediation or intervention. Sometimes learners are positioned as someone deviant, in need of moralizing warnings and paternalistic rules and requirements.
Identity isn't fixed — it's shaped by the literacy practices a learner takes part in. Every practice type either expands or narrows who a learner believes they can be as a reader and writer.
The practice analysis prompts are the organizational approach running through the entire teaching section of this site. Every practice type — creative and expressive, field-specific, institutional and civic, narrative, procedural, reporting and test-focused — is described, planned and assessed through these seven prompts.
When you open any practice type in the instructional approaches section, you will find the analysis prompts applied to that practice — what its texts look like, what purposes they serve, what consequences are at stake, what thinking they require, what responses they demand, and how they shape learner identity. That analysis becomes the foundation for the teaching routines, educator roles and assessment approaches that follow.
Working through these prompts takes more time and effort at first, especially if you are immersed in generic instruction. Part of the effort requires a bit more time than generic instruction, which is quick to implement because it's ready-made. The larger part of the effort is making a shift in thinking. If you've worked with generic approaches for awhile, the familiar activities are automatic. Stopping to analyze a practice might feel disruptive. But the analysis gets faster as the prompts become familiar. Soon, the questions they ask become the way you look at any literacy activity. Give it a a bit of your time before you judge whether it's worth it.
Before teaching, use the analysis prompts to examine the practice type you are working with. Your answers will tell you what texts to use, what cognitive demands to prepare learners for and what a successful response actually looks like in this context.
During teaching, use the prompts to notice what is actually happening. Are learners being asked to think and respond in ways that match the practice? Or is a generic approach being applied where a specific one is needed?
After teaching, use the prompts to evaluate whether your instruction matched the demands of the practice. Where did it align? Where did generic instruction creep in?
Think of a practice type you already use in your teaching. Apply a shorthand question to it: What texts for what purpose with what consequences, demanding what thinking, producing what response and shaping identity in what way?
What do you notice? Where does your current instruction match the practice, and where does a more generic approach creep in?
