Journal of Early Childhood Literacy current issue

Call for Papers

2008-11-27

The early intervention solution: Enabling or constraining literacy learning

Woods, A., Henderson, R. — 2008-11-27

Current policy, media and curriculum initiatives across western nations are drawing literacy and literacy pedagogy toward enticingly simplistic understandings of literacy as commodity. Increasingly they focus on `fixing' perceived literacy problems by assuming the primacy of early years literacy and `top-up' intervention programs. In the wash-up of these narrow policies failing in their primary mission, it is important that literacy researchers and educators consider expanding notions of literacy rather than returning to `old' solutions for new issues. This article revisits a prior critique of Reading Recovery as a solution to failure to learn school-based literacy. Using data collected as part a larger study into constructions of literacy failure, we analyse the shifting `ways to be a reader' required of one student during a Reading Recovery lesson. We argue that the competence required to negotiate various literacy learning contexts across one morning of learning adds to the complexity of school-based literacy learning as much as it might provide support.

Affirming plural belonging: Building on students' family-based cultural and linguistic capital through multiliteracies pedagogy

Taylor, L. K., Bernhard, J. K., Garg, S., Cummins, J. — 2008-11-27

This article reports on a qualitative case study involving pedagogical innovations grounded in culturally and linguistically inclusive approaches to curriculum. In this project, kindergarten children were supported in collaboratively authoring Dual Language Identity Texts. Our findings suggest that as family and teacher conceptions of literacy were extended beyond traditional monolingual print-based literacy, home literacies associated with complex transnational and transgenerational communities of practice were legitimated through their inclusion within the school curriculum. This process invited family members to take up roles as expert partners in children's biliteracy development. Further, conditions were fostered for parents to consider and articulate their beliefs and values vis-à-vis their children's multiliterate practice and participation within these multiple, transnational communities.

Teacher flexibility and judgment: A multidynamic literacy theory

Hassett, D. D. — 2008-11-27

In an age of restrictive standards and accountability measures, teachers often find themselves in a position where they have to struggle to keep play with language and literature as a focus of their early literacy instruction, as `scientifically based' reading programs, phonics, or scripted instruction take center stage. In order to counter this trend, this article offers a `multidynamic' theory for early literacy instruction that combines researched foundations of early reading success with sociocultural theories of language and literacy. Combining these two fields of thought creates a theoretical stance where reading skills and methods cannot stand on their own, but instead must be dynamically reinvented to fit specific sociocultural contexts. The study analyzes the texts of `scientifically based' reading programs as compared to examples of children's literature as a way to explore three basic tenets of a multidynamic literacy theory: (1) that literacy is multifaceted; (2) that literacy is socially constructed; and (3) that literacy skills must be relevant within the lived worlds of children. The analysis overall (re)situates talk, play, and the instructional use of children's literature as essential components of early literacy programming. More importantly, a multidynamic literacy theory offers teachers the pedagogical basis to insist upon a great deal of flexibility and judgment in choosing the best materials and approaches to meet their students' early literacy needs as well as their sociocultural contexts for learning.

Book review

Rowsell, J. — 2008-11-27

Book review: Diane M. Barone and Shelley Hong Xu, Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners Pre-K-2. New York: Guilford Press, 2008. 278 pp. ISBN 13: 978--1--59385--602--1

Juyeon Lee, J. — 2008-11-27

Book review: Melanie R. Kuhn and Paula J. Schwanenflugel (eds), Fluency in the Classroom. New York: Guilford Press, 2008

King, R. — 2008-11-27