The 5th Baltic Sea Conference “Motivation for Literacy” (2023 – Riga, Latvia) will highlight supportive and inspiring environments that help to shape children who enjoy literacy and reading as the learning environment plays an important role in the development of both learning skills and learning motivation. These environments contain interesting reading materials, comfortable places to read, and material for reading-based activities individually or with peers.
The Baltic Sea conferences have become a tradition. These conferences are an excellent opportunity to reiterate the importance of addressing literacy in a systematic and comprehensive way in the region and to share the best practices. The issues of looking at literacy in its broadest sense (functional / critical / information literacy), which is a key skill for the 21st century, and promoting the joy of reading have been the focal points starting with the first conference “The Dialogue of Cultures and Development of Literacy“ (2008 – Riga, Latvia), continuing in the second Baltic Sea Reading Conference “Literacy Skills – for Learning” (2010 − Turku/Åbo, Finland) and the third Baltic Sea Literacy Conference “Making meaning – literacy in action” (2016 – Turku/Åbo, Finland). The fourth Baltic Sea Literacy Conference “Searching for a Common Language” (2020 – Tallinn, Estonia) gave a possibility to share ideas and learn from others how to respond properly and adequately to the needs of diverse learner populations, because the concept of what it means to be literate is changing. Traditional definitions of literacy focused on the ability to read words, but now literacy is considered to be a tool, a means to participate more fully in the 21st century’s digital society.
The conference is part of the project funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers NordPlus Horizontal mechanism.