Afterword: What’s next in reading research in schools?

This is not a book about decolonisation and how to make up for the injustices of the past. Nor is it about emancipation from the past. Instead, it is about the stage before this, or let us say the two stages before this. By this I mean it is about how to understand the literacy practices, often technical, and the accompanying assessment practices of reading, equally technical, in the Australian school sector that creates such injustices; by what mechanisms and in whose interests. The second stage is revealing the cultures of understanding that have become established and taken for granted as normal amongst the teachers, the pupils and the communities to which they belong. A closer specification of cultures is required, and here we are considering the cultures of teaching, learning and assessment through mapping tests in a general sense with a sustained focus upon reading. Put in the conceptual framework of a sociology of education, the focus is the kinds of cultural capital established and shared amongst those involved or alternatively made invisible and not accumulated or shared in an equitable manner. This involves teaching professionals, parents, students and communities and, indeed, it is Yang-Heim’s point that the allocation of cultural capital does differ. This book aims to increase understanding of these two foundational stages, the technical practices and the cultures. They are the essential building blocks of any future attempts to deliver on what has not been delivered to date and future attempts to transform teaching and schooling in a more emancipatory and empowering direction.