Broadening the conceptualization of literacy in the lives of adults with intellectual disability

Current pedagogical approaches recognize literacy as a social practice and yet school-based conceptualizations continue to dominate understandings of literacy learning of individuals with intellectual disability. Such understandings lead to local or everyday literacy practices being devalued and overlooked. Thus, for adults with intellectual disability who might not possess a high level of proficiency in school-based literacy, it is important to develop understandings about their everyday literacy uses for such practices to be recognized as being socially and culturally significant. Approaches to research are needed, which enable collection of rich, detailed information about literacy use by adults with intellectual disability that go beyond standardized scores and rankings and outside of the classroom. This paper presents a view of methodologies that can be used to conduct future research in this area that will broaden the conceptualization of literacy for adults with intellectual disability.