In this paper I review ethnography of literacy as a well established, indeed central research methodology in the 'New Literacy Studies'. Starting from Szwed's programmatic 1981 paper, I identify a move away from questions of instruction that had hitherto characterised literacy research towards a focus on literacy use in contexts beyond the classroom. I argue that, despite this apparent shift of gaze away from questions of teaching and learning to questions of use in context, there has been a continued, if at times implicit, orientation to pedagogical questions in a number of these studies. I then go on to review the papers in this theme issue, asking what are their stances, implicit or explicit, to questions of literacy pedagogy? I conclude by arguing that it is time for ethnographies of literacy to re-engage with the question of instruction, understood as situated teaching and learning.
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