Teachers’ discourses of literacy as social practice in advantaged and disadvantaged early childhood contexts

Colwyn D Martin,Hasina B Ebrahim

doi:10.4102/sajce.v6i2.454

Abstract

This article examines two teachers’ discourses of literacy as social practice in advantaged and disadvantaged early childhood centres for three- to four-year-olds. The intention is to make sense of the dominant discourse of literacy, its constitutive nature and its effects on children, teaching and learning. Foucault’s theory of discourse is used to make salient the influence of interpretive frames of references on the understanding and practice of literacy. The data for the study was produced through a qualitative approach using in-depth semi-structured interviews. The findings show that teachers in both the advantaged and disadvantaged contexts are located in the dominant discourse of early literacy as a technical, autonomous skill. This discourse foregrounds children as adults-in-the-making (the becoming child) and a maturationist-environmentalist view of readiness for early literacy development. This narrow view of literacy discounts young children’s positioning as social actors, issues of diversity and contextually situated practice.

Highlights

Like elsewhere in the world, early literacy in South Africa is considered a fundamental human right: a tool of personal empowerment and a means to educational, social, cultural and human development (Trudell et al 2012)
The dominant discourse of literacy as skill converged to produce the image of the literate child with specific skills, competencies and knowledge, which was situated within the wider discourse of child development and school readiness
In constructing the literate child in this way, the discourses of child development and readiness converged to form the subjectivity of the becoming child

Summary

Introduction

Like elsewhere in the world, early literacy in South Africa is considered a fundamental human right: a tool of personal empowerment and a means to educational, social, cultural and human development (Trudell et al 2012). Some of the reasons for this include the overwhelming hegemony of English, the unequal educational opportunities afforded to different children in different contexts, inadequate training of the workforce and the underpreparedness of teachers to teach in diverse contexts (Mashiya 2011; Sherry & Draper 2013; Spaul 2013) This complicates the implementation of early literacy as a basic human right. 72% of the ‘three best learners in Grade 2 were reading below the average benchmark for Grade 2 and 22% were performing on or below the poor benchmark’ (2012:10) This is evident in the report on learner retention where the Department of Education notes that Grade 1 repetitions are the highest due to serious deficiencies in school entrants’ learning and unsuitable learning programmes beyond the reach of many children’s capacity (Department of Education 2012)

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Conclusion