Session Information
27 SES 05 A, Teaching Literacy: Relationships with Contextual Literacy Practices
Paper Session
Contribution
This work is part of a research process that analyses teachers’ practices in Early Childhood Education. One of the curricular aspects studied in this work is the process of teaching initial literacy; in other words, an analysis is conducted of the classroom practices involving pupils aged 3, 4 and 5. Specifically, this paper explores the link between the indications made by curricular resources and the actual classroom practices involved in teaching literacy.
Conducting research into resources and the use teachers make of them is not a new topic, although scant attention has often been paid to the role they play in classroom practices. In spite of this, there are two salient trends in the research into resources and teaching: 1) acknowledging that resources (mainly textbooks) have a direct impact on classroom practices and, above all, as regards content, 2) questioning such a vital impact, and highlighting the relative and complementary role of both content and classroom practices.
Furthermore, research tends to analyse and assess resources separately, without addressing their use within the context of classroom practices. When this use is considered, the findings obtained show how teachers are fairly self-sufficient when making decisions on which resources to use and how, even with personal differences for each individual teacher as regards the range of curricular content (Sosniak & Stodolsky, 1993; Spillane, 1999).
Concerning the resources for teaching literacy, the bulk of the research has focused on the initial stage. The results map out a diverse snapshot of classroom responses in relation to the use of those resources, over and above the fact that their selection may indicate that the teachers agree with the proposed approaches in each case. Accordingly, some teachers faithfully follow the indications made by the resources themselves, others adapt them by slightly modifying some of these indications, and finally, others apply their own criteria by either making relative use of these indications or ignoring them altogether (Smagorinsky, Lakly, & Johnson, 2002). In addition, both the range of resources available for teaching initial literacy and the changing nature of administrative guidelines on this teaching add complexity to the subject of the interrelations between initial practices in teaching literacy and ad hoc curricular resources (Valencia, Place, Martin, & Grossman, 2006).
The approach adopted here is based on the observation and analysis of actual classroom practices, studying the tasks that teachers perform in the classroom in regard to initial literacy, and analysing and assessing the content of the resources they use. It is understood that tasks are well-defined actions that are meaningful in their own right, which complete the sequence of the development of teaching, and of its practices in particular. In our case, the tasks become the thread that links practice with the indications provided with the resources and, moreover, tell us about the approaches to initial literacy that are developed in both formats.
Based on these premises, the following research goals have been formulated:
- Describe the tasks teachers perform and those indicated by the resources involved in the literacy process.
- Analyse and assess the content of the classroom tasks and of the resources in relation to our theoretical understanding of the matter.
- Study the coherence between the sum of classroom practices and the indications provided in curricular resources.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Clemente, M. & Ramírez, E. (2008). How teachers express their knowledge through narrative. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24 (5), 1244-1258.
Clemente, M., Ramírez, E. & Sánchez, M.C. (2010). Enfoques teóricos y prácticas docentes en la enseñanza inicial de la lengua escrita. Cultura y Educación, 22 (3), 313-328.
Pang, E.S. Muaka, A., Bernhardt, E.B. y Kamil, M. (2003). Teaching Reading. Recuperado de:
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