Place, storylines and the social practices of literacy

Abstract

AbstractHow can literacies and literacy pedagogies better connect to the places and communities of children's lives? In this paper, I draw on the feminist poststructural concept of ‘storylines’ to analyse three stories of literacy learning to understand how different literacy practices and pedagogies function to produce different literate subjects. In order to think through a different conceptualisation of language and literacy in its relation to place, I explore the intersection of feminist poststructural and Australian Indigenous concepts of ‘storylines’. ‘Storyline’ within each knowledge framework is understood as the skeleton of a significant cultural narrative structure that informs patterns of thought and action. Australian Indigenous storylines, however, are ontologically and epistemologically connected to the land as walking trails that link the places where significant events in the creation stories of the ancestors took place. Each of these places is a site where stories are performed for the well‐being of country and its people. In taking up this doubled meaning of storylines, I explore the potential of different social practices of literacy to connect children to their local places and communities.