Chapter 37: Meaning-Based Approaches to Literacy Education:

This chapter focuses on meaning-based approaches to literacy education that derive from the sociolinguistic theory of language systemic functional linguistics (SFL), also referred to as functional grammar or functional linguistics. SFL was originally developed by Michael Halliday (1975, 1993) and has been elaborated over several decades by a growing number of scholars (including Christie & Derewianka, 2008; Coffin, 2006; Halliday & Matthiessen, 1994; Hammond & Gibbons, 2005; Hasan & Williams, 1996; Martin & Rose, 2005; and Schleppegrell, 2004) to form a robust theory of language and, in particular, language in education. In this chapter, the theory of SFL is explained, and the application of the theory to educational research is examined with a particular focus on four studies of meaning-based approaches to literacy in elementary, middle, and high school in South Africa, Australia, and the United States.