Literacy definitions must continue to be reexamined to include and expand many of the practices seen in the CASP learners. This 'new' literacy crosses the gap between the cultures of family and community. Rather than holding the family and community to some arbitrary amount of knowledge to be learned before membership in the greater society is earned. The new literacy proposes to recognize and celebrate the literacies of home.

The definition of literacy from the learners' perspective must be seen as multi-faceted. The literacies of the majority of female learners were family and community-bound; the male learners, as well as a few females, spoke of school literacy in the context of the CASP. The learners describe literacy as encompassing thinking, listening and speaking, reading and writing, and using numbers in home, community and workplace contexts, as well as in the CASP.

Most of the learners understood themselves to be literate, but their literacy skills were not always recognized in the school-bound or economic definitions of literacy. The learners were able to carry on literate discourses even though they may not have earned formal credentials. Perhaps when the learners enter CASP, the literacy that they do have is suppressed in order that they might access another literacy of the type needed to achieve an educational credential. If the learners want this credential, and by all accounts the CASP learners do, then they have to go through the school and government prescribed steps to literacy.