Session Information
31 SES 06 C, Inclusion Through Literacy: From the community to the screen
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper presents the results of an ethnographic study carried out with a group of thirteen primary school children at risk of social exclusion in one of Spain’s most deprived urban areas (Llano, 2017). Its main aim is to analyse the interrelations between the literacy practices (Barton, Hamilton & Ivanič, 2000; Pahl & Rowsell, 2005; Street, 1993) and spaces (Burnett, 2014; Gillen & Kucirkova, 2018; Massey, 2005) in the school setting over a period of two school years in order to better understand literacy processes in this specific social context. Working within the critical framework of the New Literacy Studies (Gee, 2015) and drawing on the theoretical distinction between literacy practices and events (Barton, Hamilton & Ivanič, 2000; Pahl & Rowsell, 2005; Street, 1993), this study seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) What social value do learners ascribe to literacy? (2) Do learners engage in the literacy events that take place in the classroom? (3) Which role does space as an interactional construct play in learners’ literacy practices?
In order to answer these questions, this research engages with recent conceptualisations of literacy as a situated social practice (Barton, Hamilton & Ivanič, 2000) and literacy as a translingual practice (Canagarajah, 2013). At the same time, vernacular literacies (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Camitta, 1993) are brought to the fore since the dominant concept of culture as primarily mediated by the written word is problematised. In all of these, the communicative value of literacy is underscored. Finally, the concept of space is relevant for an understanding of learners’ literacy practices in this context. The New Literacy Studies put forth a post-material concept of space as a relational and interactional construct (Burnett, 2014; Gillen & Kucirkova, 2018; Massey, 2005). Furthermore, Burnett (2014) and Gillen & Kucirkova (2018) point to the interdependent relationship between space as an interactional construct and literacy practices.
In all these conceptualisations, the importance placed on the communication element in literacy implies that literacy processes, as well as a person’s literacy reservoir, is non-language-specific. In order to understand literacy practices and processes in a school setting, it does not suffice to analyse and understand what happens when children are learning to read and write in their own language (L1), but also to explore the ways in which other less obvious literacy events emerge in a variety of settings: in other school locations (the music class, the radio, the library, etc.); during recess and breaks; in out-of-school activities; in the English language classroom; etc. The English language classroom is paradigmatic in this sense as its main aim is to develop learners’ communicative competence (Council of Europe, 2001). This means that the English language classroom helps activate learners’ communicative resources, cultural assets, critical attitudes and paralinguistic strategies, all of which are part of their cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986), always brought into the classroom but often neglected in non-communicative language classes. At the same time, the English language classroom allows them to explore, and puts into play, their own mediating strategies, which are central to literacy processes as mediation between languages and cultures also becomes mediation between the oral and the written language, between dominant and subaltern discourses (Spivak, 1988) and between informal and formal types of literacy (Canagarajah, 2013).
Method
In order to carry out this ethnographic research, a multiple-case study was employed to examine the interrelations between the literacy practices and spaces of a group of thirteen primary school children at risk of social exclusion. These children attend a state school in Polígono Sur (Seville), one of Spain’s most deprived urban areas. Their parents, who have little or no formal education, cannot read and write and there are no books or any other school materials at home. In this study, a case is defined as a literacy space; several spaces have been identified over a period of two school years from Pre-school (5-6 years old) to Primary Education (6-7 years old), drawing on data collected from 46 participant observations, 782 pictures, 55 audio/video recordings, 322 worksheets, 20 artifacts created by learners and 35 ethnographic interviews. A comparative qualitative analysis was completed to identify and interpret the social value that learners ascribe to literacy. From this analysis, convergent as well as divergent interpretations were obtained regarding the meaning and the social value that learners attribute to literacy and the extent to which they engage in the literacy events that take place in the classroom. In addition, a causal qualitative analysis was carried out to test the causal inferences between literacy spaces and learners’ literacy practices. In order to do so, two different kinds of analysis were combined: first, a cross-case analysis of the literacy spaces considered; and secondly, a within-case analysis focused on learners’ literacy practices in each space (Harding & Seefeldt, 2013; Howe, 2012; Johnson, Russo & Schoonenboom, 2017; Mahoney, 1999, 2000).
Expected Outcomes
The social value that learners ascribe to literacy is determined by the extent to which they identify with and accept the dominant discourses of literacy. For most of them, literacy has no social value (in their culture, background, families, etc.), or they see it as an alien social value that is imposed on them by the institution. Only two of them fully identify with and accept the dominant value of literacy; these are also the learners that achieve the learning outcomes set for this stage. Regarding learners’ engagement in the literacy events carried out in the classroom, results indicate that those who have fully accepted the dominant discourse of literacy show a high level of engagement in events that reproduce such discourse. However, results are reversed when literacy events focus on the activation of learners’ wider literacy reservoir (their communicative resources, cultural assets, critical attitudes and paralinguistic and mediating strategies) and their vernacular literacies. When this happens, learners who have accepted the dominant discourse of literacy find it difficult to engage in such literacy events, whereas those who have not accepted the dominant discourse of literacy show a higher level of engagement. Finally, this study concludes that space, understood as a relational and interactional construct, plays a central role in learners’ literacy practices, evincing an interdependent relationship between both. Just as literacy practices and the interactions that happen in them help shape particular literacy spaces in the classroom, so changes in space configurations have an effect on the literacy practices that take place in those spaces. In this way, as new spaces are created through various forms of interaction, learners’ literacy practices are reconfigured, and novel meanings, values, beliefs, feelings, attitudes, behaviours, rapports and social connections associated with literacy spring. Literacy acquires thus a more social and communicative sense for learners in these new spaces.
References
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