literacydriven

Literacydriven is a term used to describe a design, policy, or approach in education and information design that treats literacy development as the central objective guiding content, structure, and interactions. The term blends “literacy” with “driven” and is often used to describe efforts that embed reading, writing, and textual comprehension across disciplines, rather than isolating literacy instruction in a standalone course. In practice, literacydriven work aims to tailor materials to readers’ abilities and to scaffold comprehension through plain language, visual supports, and structured progression.

In curriculum development, literacydriven approaches emphasize text complexity alignment, assessment tasks that require literacy practices, and explicit instruction in practices such as summarizing, argumentation, and source evaluation. In educational technology and publishing, literacydriven design uses adjustable readability levels, glossaries, and metadata to enable access for diverse readers, including non-native speakers and early readers. In information design and public communication, literacydriven standards push for plain language and accessible formats to improve civic literacy and user understanding.

Advocates argue that literacydriven strategies raise general comprehension, support equity, and enhance the transfer of literacy skills to other domains. Critics note that the lack of a precise, universal definition can make it difficult to measure impact or compare implementations, and that an overemphasis on literacy may risk sidelining content knowledge, numeracy, or culturally relevant practices.

See also literacy, plain language, universal design for learning, digital literacy, health literacy.