Making Literacy Real

Theories and Practices for Learning and Teaching

Joanne Larson, Jackie Marsh

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781473911413
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Offering an overview of the major fields in literacy studies, this book presents a detailed and accessible discussion of key theories and their relevance in the primary classroom.

Each chapter uses a real life case study to explore the application of theory in practice, followed by a detailed discussion of the case study material by a leading name in the field, including contributions from Barbara Comber, Michele Knobel, Colin Lankshear, Gunther Kress, Brian Street, Kevin Leander and Patricia Enciso.

The text also offers reflections on theoretical foundations for research, exploring literacy as a practice grounded in social, cultural, historical and political contexts and in relationships of power. This second edition includes:

• New chapters covering digital literacy, space and play, and multimodality
• Examples and contributions from a range of international contexts, including US, UK, Canada, Australia and South Africa
• Further reading links.

Essential reading for students at undergraduate and post-graduate level on primary education courses and an invaluable guide for anyone wanting to understand literacy theory and successfully apply this to the classroom.

Chapter 1

Foundational Perspectives

What does it mean when educators talk about the relationship between theory and practice? Can we separate the two? This book offers a foundation in key theoretical frameworks and fields of study in literacy and considers their relevance for classroom practice. We present theoretical frameworks and fields of study for understanding literacy that define it as grounded in social, cultural, historical, and political practices and in relationships of power (Barton and Hamilton, 2012; Gee, 2007; Kress, 2010; Lankshear and Knobel, 2011; Street, 1984, 2005). We argue that the dominant framework traditionally in place in schools originates from the discipline of educational psychology and may translate into reductionist pedagogical frames, which in turn engender teacher-centered, transmission models of curriculum. We present these alternative frameworks in order to consider what might be possible in classrooms and to offer reflections on theoretical foundations for literacy research.

This first chapter discusses the role of theoretical frameworks, or sets of propositions (Barton and Hamilton, 2012), in teaching and learning and asserts the need to draw on multidisciplinary frameworks in order to first understand literacy teaching and learning and then to construct meaningful pedagogy. In the following chapters, we unpack theoretical models and/or fields of study separately, outline them in detail, describe a classroom context that is informed by a particular theoretical model or area of study and interview leading scholars whose work has informed these particular theories and fields. We then consider how teachers may use any or all of these theoretical models as they construct curricula and pedagogy, drawing from multidisciplinary perspectives. Finally, we discuss the implications of this multidisciplinary, social practice framework for teacher education and literacy research. First, however, this introductory chapter outlines the underlying definitions of literacy and learning that will guide the theoretical frameworks and fields of study discussed.

Theory and Practice Questions

As we began thinking about this book, we realized that students in our teacher education courses are sometimes overwhelmed by the readings we assign in our graduate programs and by trying to make sense of literacy theory. In particular, they are trying to make links to ‘practice’. We occasionally face comments like, ‘The theory is great, but what does this look like in a classroom?’ Reading articles that report on detailed ethnographic research undertaken in classrooms may help to make some connections, but students could still feel like there is a separation. Our goal here is to illustrate the inseparability of theory and practice, to disrupt the idea of separation altogether. Scribner adds important insight into this problem:

What a theory ‘means’ for practice cannot be read off from texts of the theory. Notions such as ‘translating theory into practice’ or ‘applying theory to practice’ are based on the contrary assumption. They imply, erroneously in my opinion, that grand theoretical propositions can be directly converted into methods for transforming established practices in the contingent here and now. (1990: 91)

Thus, thinking there is a simple transfer from theory to practice misunderstands the nature of the relationship. We are making the case here that practice is theorized as practice is transformed over time. What teachers and students do is grounded in theories of literacy, learning, culture, and history, and through participating in the practices of teaching and learning, those theories develop and change, in addition to the teachers and students themselves. Teaching and learning literacy is a mutually constituted process that changes over time. There is no direct ‘how to’ transfer, given that the relationship between theory and practice is so much more complex.

It is the processes involved in praxis that are important for educators to consider in terms of the development of a coherent framework for their teaching. Freire suggests that everyday human activity ‘consists of action and reflection: it is praxis; it is transformation of the world. And as praxis it requires theory to illuminate it’ (1972: 96). Therefore, there is not a linear relationship between theory and practice in that both inform and transform the other through a reiterative process of critical reflection and action. In this book, we feature a group of teachers and teacher-researchers whose work demonstrates this process. We explore their classrooms and identify those features which reflect a particular theoretical framework or field of study. Although literacy education is informed by a wide array of theoretical paradigms, we have chosen six areas because we believe that they are important in considering the complexities of literacy education in the twenty-first century. These theoretical traditions/fields of study are as follows:

New Literacy Studies: While considered a field of study rather than a theoretical framework, New Literacy Studies (NLS) does offer theoretical tenets that assume literacy is a critical social practice constructed in everyday interactions across local contexts. New Literacy Studies emphasizes literacy as a more complex social practice than mandated curricula and assessments address. We describe Lynn Gatto, a veteran teacher with more than 35 years of experience in urban schools, and her students in their elementary classroom in Rochester, New York. Brian Street visited Gatto’s classroom while in Rochester and is thus a fitting NLS scholar for the interview that closes this chapter.

Critical literacy: Critical literacy involves interrogating texts in terms of the power relations embedded within and reflected by them, in addition to positioning readers and authors as active agents in text creation and analysis. Although there has been a proliferation of writing on critical literacy, there are, as yet, few studies which illuminate this theoretical framework in action in primary classrooms. Vivian Vasquez and Barbara Comber are two scholars whose work has been important in pushing forward the boundaries of this field. It is appropriate, therefore, that the case study outlines Vasquez’s practice when she was an elementary teacher and that we interview Barbara Comber about her reflections on this classroom practice.

Digital literacies: This chapter draws on the work of Lankshear and Knobel (2011) in developing our theoretical understanding of how technologies are transforming the epistemological and ontological foundations of literacy. In the chapter outlining this theoretical ground, Guy Merchant describes the classroom practice of Kate Cosgrove in England and we interview Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear in order to reflect on the issues raised by this case study. Knobel and Lankshear use the term ‘new literacies’ to refer to the practices that arise from the relationship between literacy and technologies. However, we acknowledge that the term ‘digital literacies’ is now used widely to refer to literacy practices mediated by technologies; we therefore use these terms interchangeably throughout the chapter.

Space, play, and literacy: This is a new chapter for the second edition that examines recent research and scholarship drawing on spatial theories. Space and time impact on literacy practices in a range of ways, especially considering the complex relationship between a offline and online domains, and this chapter reviews the key tenets in this field of study. In addition, it draws on newer understandings of play in an exploration of the relationship between space and play. Karen Wohlwend introduces the classroom case study of Pam Hubbard in the USA and Kevin Leander responds in the end-of-chapter interview.

Multimodal and artifactual literacies: This is also a new chapter for the second edition that captures work in multimodal and artifactual literacies. Over the last decade, a range of work of has been undertaken that examines the way in which communicative practices involve a wide range of modes and media. In addition, the way in which material objects are inscribed into literacy practices has been the subject of recent study. Jennifer Rowsell and Kate Pahl developed the case studies of two classrooms, one in the UK and one in Canada. We invited Gunter Kress to respond in the interview section of this chapter.

Sociocultural theory and children’s literature: This theoretical framework challenges traditional definitions of learning as the transmission of knowledge. From this perspective, learning is defined as changing participation in culturally valued activity with more expert others. In order to illustrate this, we use a classroom case study that focuses on using children’s literature, written by Karin Murris in South Africa. An interview with Pat Enciso concludes the chapter.

These chapters offer insights into how teachers can plan and organize classrooms so that complex theoretical models of literacy inform their practice, rather than regurgitate mandated (or, in some countries, commercial) curricula that usually embed more traditional approaches to the teaching and learning of language and literacy.

Traditional Approaches to Literacy Education

For many years, literacy education has been grounded in a cognitive psychological approach in which attention is paid to individual development along a carefully traced trajectory. This model can be seen in many contemporary curriculum frameworks, such as the National Curriculum (DfE, 2014) in England and the Race to the Top (RTTT) (USDOE, 2014) in the United States. In the National Curriculum (DfE, 2014), for example, skills, knowledge, and understanding for reading and writing are set out in a linear model in which children are introduced to particular concepts at specific ages. Such a model assumes that children progress in similar ways and acquire specific skills in sequence. This model of literacy education draws heavily from the work of cognitive psychologists who proposed stage models of reading acquisition, researchers such as Ehri (1987, 1995). In the National Curriculum’s approach to the teaching of phonics, the influence of these cognitive-psychological models can be seen by examining the way in which it is suggested children are taught phoneme–grapheme relationships. Teachers are advised to teach phonics in sequential steps, drawing on a synthetic phonics model. This is one example of the way in which traditional approaches to the teaching of reading and writing conceptualize literacy as if it consists of a set of discrete skills that can be taught in isolation. Individual, repeated practice of these skills is at the heart of much of the pedagogy associated with these approaches.

Once a progression in skills, knowledge and understanding is established, it is a small step to begin to normalize development through this progression. In this way, children who do not acquire these skills, knowledge, and understanding at the same rate as peers are soon identified as inadequate in some way. When this happens with groups of children who share racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, then the creation of a deficit model is quickly established. In the latter half of the twentieth century, a range of terms were utilized to identify groups of children who were underachieving, and who may be living with poverty. One popular phrase to emerge was ‘at risk’: children who originated from homes in which poverty was a feature of life were seen to be at risk of failure. However, this phrase only serves to pathologize particular groups of children, and means that educators focus on the perceived negative aspects of their experiences rather than looking at what the children bring to classrooms and how classrooms can adapt to reflect and build on these experiences (Carrington and Luke, 2003; Dyson, 2013). In addition, traditional models of literacy come to be associated with the ‘normally developing’ child (typically a white, middle-class child) who, it is assumed, lives in a family which should support the child’s development through the provision of particular resources and literacy practices. Thus white, middle-class norms become established as the desirable literacy experiences which all children should enjoy, and intervention programs are then needed to ensure that parents of children living in so-called ‘at risk’ families are taught how to support their child’s literacy development toward this one predetermined end. This, unfortunately, is a model of literacy education which pervades the developed world and creates misunderstandings about the needs of specific groups of learners (Gee, 2004).

Key Concepts

In contrast to traditional transmission models that focus on individualized learning, the classrooms featured in this book reflect theoretical models of literacy which place less emphasis on the individual. Instead, they focus on literacy as a social practice and work on the premise that knowledge about literacy is socially constructed. In this model, discourse communities within classrooms become an important feature of pedagogical approaches as the social nature of learning is emphasized and learning is recognized as changing participation. In the following section, the key concepts of ‘learning as changing participation’, ‘literacy as a social practice’, and ‘discourse’ are discussed, given their recurrence throughout the book. First, however, the concept of literacy itself is considered.

Literacy

Definitions of literacy are numerous and it is often difficult to determine how particular authors understand the term. It is certainly the case that in this book each of the contributors has her/his own definitions that inform their work, and it is not our intention to close down the discourse by insisting on a uniform approach. Nevertheless, we feel that it is helpful to begin with a consideration of how literacy might be understood in a contemporary context. In one sense, we hold to what might be considered to be a very tightly constructed notion of literacy – that it is the ability to decode, encode, and make meanings using written text and symbols. As Kress (2010) suggests, any other understanding of literacy diffuses its meaning and paves the way for the word to be linked to random concepts in an attempt to signal the acquisition of a set of competences, such as information literacy and computer literacy. However, there is a need to account for the multiple ways in which we make meaning in the digital world and, given the increasing importance of modes other than words to contemporary communicative practices, and the move from page to screen as the primary means of dissemination (Kress, 2010), we understand the way in which the plural form ‘literacies’ has become prevalent in educational policy, practice, and research, as it signals engagement with the rich range of multimodal texts and artifacts that are at the center of contemporary life. Therefore, you will find literacy in both its singular and plural forms throughout the book – we have no desire to rein the discourse in and feel that readers will undoubtedly come to the book with their own understandings of literacy, which might be different again from the concepts discussed here. Kress returns to this issue in his interview in Chapter Five.

Learning as Changing Participation

Throughout the book we focus on learning, drawing on Rogoff’s (2003) definition of learning as changing participation. However, using Rogoff’s ideas often presents educators with a real challenge as the kind of learning-centered context that Rogoff (1994, 2003) describes can be difficult to conceptualize. Larson finds that telling the story of her daughter Anna’s coffee adventure often helps others begin to think about how people learn. Here’s the story:

When my oldest two children were five and two, I was a single parent, working three jobs and getting my PhD at UCLA. I pretty much focused on routine to get things done. Every morning was the same. I got up before my kids, or at least they were getting dressed, playing or watching TV, so I could get their breakfast ready, pack their lunches, and make my coffee and toast. It was always the same. I would put cereal in their bowls and put milk in a child-sized jug on the table. I would make their lunches, sometimes while they ate breakfast, and always included a sandwich, a piece of fruit, a bag of chips, and a juice box and maybe a treat. I put the lunch box in front of each child’s place at the table. I would grind my coffee beans and brew the coffee. I usually make it pretty strong, in fact so strong that it’s a family joke. Anyway, I put in my toast. I waited a minute before putting on butter and jam, because I don’t like the butter to melt all the way. I prepared my coffee with one sweetener packet and some non-fat milk. I would drink the coffee and eat the toast while they finished their breakfast. One Saturday morning early, I was awakened by the smell of coffee. My first thought was, ‘Oh, oh, this could be good thing or this could be a very bad thing.’ Who the heck was making coffee? It had to be one of the kids. I went into the kitchen and my jaw dropped. Anna, then 5, had prepared breakfast, made coffee, and packed lunches. Not just any way though. She had done it exactly like me. The cereal bowls were full and on the table at place settings. The milk was poured into the child-sized jug. The lunch boxes contained sandwiches, a piece of fruit, a bag of chips, and a juice box (never mind that it was Saturday). My coffee was ground, brewed, and in a cup with sweetener and milk. My toast was toasted, buttered, and jellied just how I like it. I was speechless. The only thing she did ‘wrong’ if you could call it that was to turn off the coffee machine so the coffee was cold. I didn’t say a word. It seemed remarkably unimportant.

How does this relate to learning as changing participation? Anna did not learn this by me teaching her in a lesson. I did not instruct her. Frankly, I didn’t even scaffold her participation in this activity by gradua...