“On Reading Recipes and Racing Forms”—The Literacy Practices and Perceptions of Vocational Educators

The author studied the literacy practices and perceptions of vocational educators, interviewing and observing them extensively for seven years. The vocational teachers used just as many texts as academic teachers, but used them differently—and although they used complex technical manuals, trade publications, schematics, diagrams, graphic representations, special interest magazines, newspapers, legal documents, safety codes, and Internet resources for specific purposes, the majority of vocational teachers claimed that they were not good readers. The findings of this study show that vocational educators employ literacy practices in their classrooms that mirror the best documented strategies of teaching reading in the content areas.