This volume examines the relationship between language and literacy from a systemic functional perspective. The book starts with a retrospective view on the development of language education practices, written by eminent linguistics Michael Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, and then shows how this approach is implemented today. The second section presents a detailed analysis of how considerations of literacy education are approached in educational systems around the world. The contributors examine issues such as metadiscourse, genre, cultural politics, and how systemic functional grammar can help to raise literacy standards. The final section looks at literacy in more specific disciplines, including history, literature, science and student writing.
The essays collected here present a comprehensive analysis of language and literacy from a systemic functional perspective, written by academics at the forefront of the field. It will be of interest to researchers in systemic functional linguistics, or language and education.

Introduction
Part I: Development of the SFL Literacy Approach
1. Retrospective on literacy, Michael Halliday (University of Sydney, Australia) and Ruqaiya Hasan
2. Literacy and current debates over reading, Frances Christie (University of Sydney, Australia) 
3. The 'Write it Right' project, Robert Veel (University of Sydney, Australia)
Part II: Approaches to literacy in educational systems around the world
4. Metadiscourse: meaning, consciousness and literacy learning, J.R. Martin (University of Sydney, Australia) 
5. Towards a pedagogical grammar, John Polias (Lexis Education, Australia) and Brian Dare (Lexis Education, Australia)
6. Whole school genre maps, Bronwyn Custance 
7. The impact of genre theory and pedagogy and systemic functional linguistics on National Literacy Strategies in the UK, Paddy Walsh
8. Language, literacy and cultural politics: the debate on the new language curriculum in Portugal, Carlos A. M. Gouveia (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
9. Implementing the genre approach in a South African school, Carol Thomson (University of KwaZulu-Natal, Australia) and Mike Hart (University of KwaZulu-Natal, Australia)
III: Literacy across specific disciplines
10. Reconstruing 'personal time' as 'collective time': learning the discourse of history, Caroline Coffin (The Open University, UK) 
11. Exploring a novel through engagement with its grammatical form, Lorraine McDonald (Australian Catholic University, Australia) 
12. Guiding senior secondary schools towards writing academically-valued responses to poetry, Susan Marshall 
13. Emergent disciplinary: a comparative study of Theme in undergraduate essays in geography and history of science, Ann Hewings (The Open University, UK) and Sarah North (The Open University, UK)