| Summary: | The collected papers represent a coherent body of research which enquired into a particular moment of educational reform in the Adult Literacies field in Scotland. The research is conceptualised as bricolage - an emergent process employing a variety of research methods and analytic frameworks to enquire into the reification of ‘the social practice approach', which, following the Adult Literacy and Numeracy in Scotland (ALNIS) report of 2001, became a central tenet of adult literacies education in Scotland. Seemingly derived from the New Literacy Studies (NLS), the concept of ‘the social practice approach' implies a critical pedagogy. Its prominence in the discourses of adult education in Scotland might indicate critical practice. This research indicates otherwise. Appropriated by policy and practitioners within a web of power relations, the discourse of ‘the social practice approach' may have come to act on practice in ways which are antithetical to its theoretical origins. The research illuminates a complex process of transformation in an apparently radical educational discourse.
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