This chapter reviews some theoretical and empirical contributions from the field of literacy. The chapter’s first part reviews selected classical and contemporary developments in reading comprehension and written composition. It explains how the field has moved from focusing mainly on cognitive and discursive processes to recognising the social nature of literacy practices. The second part presents current contributions from the emergent field of ‘multiliteracies’, conceived as multimodal social practices. This presentation focuses on the ‘Learning by Design Model’ (Cope and Kalantzis, A pedagogy of multiliteracies. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2015), a pedagogical framework which explains how multiliteracies can be enhanced in educational settings. The third part underscores the dialogic nature of literacy practices. It explains how, besides their multimodal nature, we construe multiliteracies as dialogic meaning-making social practices. This presentation is accompanied by a review of selected studies that analyse the relationship between dialogic interactions and literacy social practices, particularly our own line of research. The chapter’s last part reviews contemporary developments in scientific and cultural literacy. It explains how becoming competent in these literacies promotes apprentices’ participation in socioscientific practices at the core of Communities of Dialogic Inquiry. Throughout the chapter, dialogue excerpts illustrate the dialogic, multimodal and literacy processes and practices of interest.