Becoming a Student: Identity Work and Academic Literacies in Early Schooling

Abstract

In this article I argue that both sociocultural theories and those that address academic literacies must be invoked to adequately understand language and literacy development in schools. Through exploring the histories, school lives, and viewpoints of two kindergarten students, I show how identity work negotiated in classroom interactions can afford or deny access to the language and practices of school. My argument views language and literacy development as a socialization process and classrooms as complex ecological systems-spaces where multiple discourses and languages come into contact, interacting in complex ways. For children to acquire school-affiliated identities, they must acquire the language as well as the behaviors, attitudes, resources, and ways of engaging needed to recognizably display the identity of a successful student. The findings show that for these children, the ability to engage successfully with academic literacies was distinct from their ability to engage successfully in social interactions. Their language and literacy development was not necessarily determined by economic and cultural capital nor by their social status within the classroom. The study challenges researchers and teachers to re-envision viable classroom ecologies that provide access to school languages and literacies.