Literacy Practices Research Articles

Multiple lenses to understand and shape multilingual literacy practices in Early Childhood Education

ABSTRACT Programs of multilingual education in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) are promising because they contribute to the development of young children’s language and literacy as well as their multilingual identities. In practice, many educators are unsure of how to engage children in multilingual literacy activities and policy often falls short of providing adequate guidance. The present paper investigates the case of Luxembourg where a multilingual program has been implemented over the last years. We draw on the continua of biliteracy to examine the range of language and literacy practices of 12 educators who worked with two to four-year-olds in three private, commercial centers differing in regional location, urban or suburban setting, and dominant language spoken. Using the lenses of the biliteracy continua of context, media, content, and development, we analyze examples, explain differing practices, and explore the educators’ varied understandings of languaging, literacy, and learning. We thereby demonstrate that the continua are a heuristic for research, teaching, and policymaking in multilingual environments. We conclude with implications for professional development, policymakers, and researchers.

Information Literacy Empowerment in Islamic Education: Examining the Potential in the Indonesian Context

Information literacy plays a critical role in empowering individuals within the realm of Islamic education. This study explores the empowerment potential of information literacy in the Indonesian context of Islamic education. As the world’s largest Muslimmajority country, Indonesia provides a unique setting to investigate the intersection of information literacy and Islamic education. The study aims to examine the impact of information literacy on knowledge acquisition, critical thinking, and ethical engagement within Islamic education in Indonesia. It also identifies challenges, opportunities, and best practices for integrating information literacy in Indonesian Islamic educational institutions. Through a literature review and qualitative analysis, the study sheds light on the role of information literacy in strengthening Islamic education and highlights the specific cultural, social, and technological factors influencing information literacy practices in Indonesia. The findings contribute to a better understanding of information literacy’s significance in the Indonesian context of Islamic education and provide practical insights for educators and policymakers to enhance information literacy programs. This research underscores the importance of information literacy in empowering individuals within Islamic education and emphasizes the need for context-specific approaches to maximize its potential in the Indonesian educational landscape.
 Keywords: empowerment, information literacy, Islamic education

Mr. Ambivalent: Jonathan Franzen and the Masculinization of the Middlebrow

ABSTRACT No contemporary author has spent as much time and energy theorizing the literary field than Jonathan Franzen, and no author has generated as much controversy over that theorizing. That controversy erupted most fully when Franzen responded so ambivalently to the selection of The Corrections for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club. In this essay, I argue that Franzen is engaged in a reconstruction of the middlebrow, a masculinization of this historically feminized cultural formation. Situating Franzen’s essays in relation both to modernist debates about the middlebrow and more recent conversations about the rapidly changing shape of popular literary culture, I argue that both gender and genre are at the center of Franzen’s contradictory claims for his literary practice and his efforts to reimagine the middlebrow as a more congenial space for white male authors. In his novels, this ambivalence gets deflected onto interpersonal conflicts between men and women and onto fantasies of men’s disempowerment at the hands of women. We can see this in The Corrections, which reveals a desire to reclaim the middlebrow for an emotionally saturated, but still masculine, literary practice.

Critical Inquiry in (and About) Media Environments: Examining an Asset-Based Digital Literacy Curriculum

Scholars have long recognized that reading in digital spaces requires unique skills, strategies, and competencies in comparison to those needed for reading printed text. In recent years, the ubiquity of social media and algorithmically targeted content has radically changed the nature of online reading and meaning making. Technological changes have occurred simultaneously with radically altered sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts. To account for an altered technological and sociocultural landscape, new approaches to teaching digital reading and critical media literacy are needed. Addressing these concerns, this case study detailed a digital reading curriculum designed to be responsive to both the contemporary digital media environment and to students’ out-of-school digital literacy practices and contexts. The curriculum was collaboratively designed by five middle-school language arts teachers who participated in a semester-long professional learning group focused on digital reading. Drawing upon sociocultural, asset-based, and culturally relevant philosophies of education, these five teachers designed a unique digital reading curriculum. This study examined the nature of this curriculum. The findings detailed four aspects of the teachers’ unit: (1) digital reading instruction situated within students’ literate lives; (2) critical instruction regarding systemic features of the internet such as algorithms and clickbait; (3) lessons in which students interrogate socially situated meaning making; and (4) lessons focused on the role of emotions while reading online. The findings have implications for future digital reading and media literacy curricula intended to be responsive to students’ funds of knowledge, ever-changing literacy technologies, and new, emergent ways of reading and practicing literacy on the internet.

Poetic Discourse, Rhetoric, and Augustus in Horace's Regulus Ode (Hor. Carm. 3.5)

Horace's fifth Roman Ode has often been taken as a push for war with Parthia and thus interpreted as an uncomfortable insertion of Horace's voice into politics. This article argues for a profoundly different take on the ode's rhetoric and thus on its political relevance. The analysis brings to bear a theoretical perspective recoverable from ancient rhetorical handbooks, which saw analogy, exemplarity, and some form of visual comparison as three aspects of a single argumentative or stylistic figure: comparison. The ode—structured as a movement through these forms of comparison—aims at nothing less than the articulation of a vision of Rome's, and Augustus’, place in the establishment of a new cosmic order along with a return to the old Roman virtues. Within the ode, oratorical figures of style and thought work together with a poetic strategy—Horace's deployment of an intricate and previously undetected ring composition—to produce meaning on many levels, embracing aesthetic and literary practices, rhetorical and ancient theoretical approaches, and political, religious and cosmological, and philosophical concerns.

PROMOTING FAMILY LITERACY THROUGH THE FIVE PILLARS OF FAMILY AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT (FACE) ON EARLY CHILDHOOD AT KLAMBIR V KEBUN VILLAGE

Children in Indonesia are still not very interested in reading. Supporting variables that can affect reading interest are necessary for low reading interest. This research aimed to investigate the ways in which early childhood knowledge, interest, and practices in family literacy are influenced by the five pillars of family and community engagement (FACE). There is no research on how the five FACE pillars affect early childhood understanding of and practices in Klambir V Kebun village families, despite the fact that each of the five pillars is essential to the demands of family literacy development and is well-described in the literature. Thus, grounded theory methodology (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was incorporated in the present study to investigate the actualities in the family After completing 5 sessions of in-meeting activities and 10 hours of fieldwork, the results indicate that the use of the five pillars of FACE not only increased the participants’ knowledge of the multiple dimensions of family literacy but also positively influenced their interest and love in reading. The contribution of this study also gives parents a broad overview and point of view on creating a successful family literacy culture.

DIGITAL LITERACIES AS SOCIAL PRACTICES IN COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Digital literacies (DLs) encompass sets of literacy practices that are continuously supported, interwoven and adapted through the use of digital devices for specific purposes. It occurs in sociocultural contexts with geographical and temporal limitations, as well as in those shaped by electronically mediated interactions. In view of this, this article aims, from a critical perspective, to discuss the influences of Digital Literacy and the use of Audiovisual Resources on the mediation and practice of Teletandem. Therefore, this study is a qualitative research with bibliographic procedures. To support our arguments, we base ourselves on: Almeida Filho (1993), Benedetti (2010), Souza (2015), Rammé (2014), Rojo (2010), Cope, Kalantzis e Pinheiro (2020), Silva (2022), Arroio and Giordan (2006), Lemke (2010), Buzato (2006, 2009), Kenski (2007), among others. As a result, it was found that audiovisual resources enable the full development of the interactants' LDs and the construction of meanings.

Parents on the Concept of Physical Literacy: What Do They Know, What Do They Do, and What Do They Want?

Physical literacy development in early childhood, viewed by many as the foundation for lifelong physical activity engagement, is significantly influenced by parents. Our aim was to explore parents' understanding of physical literacy and gain insight into their perspectives on physical literacy promotion. We recruited 18 parents of children between 5 and 8years old in Australia. Using semistructured interviews and thematic analysis, we identified several key issues regarding parents' understanding and implementation of physical literacy. Parents expressed interest in improving their implementation of physical literacy practices and had (often unintentionally) provided support for physical literacy subcomponents in the past. However, they described difficulties prioritizing physical literacy above other parental demands and expressed conflicting perceptions regarding where the responsibility should lie for developing their child's physical literacy (e.g.,at home or at school). To ensure that the physical literacy "message" reaches parents, we encourage physical literacy promoters to consider the target (e.g.,responsibility, priorities, and awareness) of their promotional strategies. Further investigation into the influence of sociocultural and economic factors on parents' understanding and application of physical literacy is warranted.

“This Weird Thing I'm Discovering”

Abstract This article addresses a pervasive but undertheorized literacy practice: ghostwriting. Drawing on a five-year interview study with undergraduate students, I describe the many ghostwriting tasks that participants were asked to perform for their co-op jobs and how they perceived those tasks. Overall, students were bewildered by ghostwriting and found it very different from, and in some ways at odds with, their academic writing. Given the ubiquity of ghostwriting and the likelihood that much of it will be offloaded to artificial intelligence in coming years, I call for and begin to outline a critical pedagogical approach to ghostwriting grounded in critical language awareness.

Power Structure and Socio-Political Milieu in Ellis’s The Forgotten Cottage: A New Historical Study

This article analyses and evaluates the novel The Forgotten Cottage by Courtney Ellis, which focuses on the exploration of historical and socio-political issues. The research examines the impact of historical events, particularly World War I, on people's human psyches. Using the framework of New Historicism, the study demonstrates the power structure, socio-political problems and suppression of women during a specific time period. The purpose of this research is to investigate historical notions related to New Historicism and to highlight the cultural, political, and societal issues portrayed in the text. Additionally, the study explores the development of historical narratives and their influence on the characters throughout the novel. By employing a methodology of textual analysis based on the frameworks developed by Michael Foucault and Stephen Greenblatt, this article contributes to the field of New Historicism and extends to wider literary practices in general. The study is analytical, qualitative, and descriptive in nature.

The Practice of Local Wisdom-Based Literary Literacy in Language and Literature Learning at Junior High School of Ternate City

The Practice of Local Wisdom-Based Literary Literacy in Language and Literature Learning at Junior High School of Ternate City

“Are you Gonna Help us with Writing?” Empowering Writers though Dialogue Journaling

AbstractBefore ever entering a formal educational setting, children use writing to make themselves known. Yet by the time students reach the fourth grade, only a small minority of students demonstrate writing skills considered competent by national standards. By this time in their school career, many have begun to internalize that they are poor writers and have become apprehensive toward writing tasks and tests. Using an approach that applies the well‐established literacy practice of dialogue journaling, Leah, a teacher, facilitated an after‐school book club for fourth‐grade students who experienced writing apprehension. The outcomes of the book club were that students began to build confidence and develop more positive attitudes toward writing.

<i>What’s language(s) got to do with it?</i>

We explore the relationship between newcomer refugee families’ linguistic competencies in the language of the host country and their collaboration in and with the school. Following a case study design and through the qualitative analysis of interviews with refugee family members and school staff from a German primary school, we analyse these actors’ perspectives on factors hindering and/or supporting the involvement of the families and the responsiveness of the school. In the literature, family language policies and host country linguistic and educational policies are framed as some of those factors, but our results point towards a more fine-grained consideration of the role played by language(s) in the cooperation between newcomer refugee families and the school. Our study reveals the importance of considering linguistic skills in the majority language alongside literacy practices and parents’ (schooling) paths in the home country, and claims that differentiated opportunities for collaboration should be offered depending on refugee families’ trajectories in the home and host countries.

Selection of a Topic of a Research Proposal of Emerging Academic Writers in a Blended Linked EAP Course: An Interactional Ethnographic Perspective

AbstractRecent years have witnessed the ethnographic turn in academic writing research and the multimodal turn in classroom discourse studies. Most research proposal genre studies have only provided generic guidelines, and most EAP intervention studies have only provided pre‐ and post‐intervention learning outcomes but have not examined actual in‐depth classroom teaching and after‐class consultative processes of proposal development. This paper fills these gaps by following the view of genre as contextualized social practices and adopting interactional ethnography (IE) logic‐of‐inquiry to analyze video‐recorded linked EAP classroom interactions and WeChat‐mediated individual consultations focusing on postgraduate students' topic selection. IE‐guided reasoning and analysis may make the invisible research topic developmental processes transparent by utilizing IE analytic tools to visualize these dynamic and complex processes, identify cultural patterns of academic literacy practices, and (re)theorize educational phenomena. The IE approach may complement the well‐established three approaches to student writing (i.e., study skills, academic socialization, academic literacies) as the fourth approach for its deep theorizing, micro‐ethnographic discourse‐based analysis, and video‐enabled IE‐guided analytic tools. This study may make a methodological contribution to the EAP field through the IE as an epistemology with analytical tools and propose a tri‐level four‐step IE analytic model for teacher‐researchers' self‐reflexive professional development.

Papeles, Sueños, y Futuros: The Altermundos Literacies of Parents of the Latine/x Diaspora

ABSTRACT In this article we theorize the concept of altermundos literacies as they are enacted by parents in transborder families. We demonstrate how these parents, participants in an ethnographic study with mixed-status families in rural Puebla, México, write speculative narratives for their children’s futures in ways that reject mononational norms. Altermundos literacies involve the activation of subaltern knowledges across mononational systems and complex literacy practices across papeles to dream-into-action a future designed by and for their lives. We draw on scholars of Black, Indigenous, Chicana, and Latinx futurity to demonstrate how families’ altermundos challenge educational practices across borders and dream new possibilities into being. Our findings show how families’ dreams navigate constraints imposed by systems of oppression within both the United States and México to varying degrees of success. Regardless, these families’ altermundos literacies are invitations for all of us to co-dream futures beyond borders. Implications for researchers, school-based practitioners, and policymakers are discussed.

Using Music Media to Facilitate Family Critical Media Literacy Practices: A Multiple Case Study with Preschool Bilingual Children

Using Music Media to Facilitate Family Critical Media Literacy Practices: A Multiple Case Study with Preschool Bilingual Children

Literacy practices among Kapsabet residents

This study sought to examine literacy practices among Kapsabet residents. This is because different literacy practices among communities in multilingual contexts remain under investigation. This is the case obtained in Kapsabet Sub-county, Nandi County, Kenya. The residents in this sub-county are largely multilingual, with a majority being speakers of English, Kiswahili and Kalenjin. The aim of the proposed study was to examine literacy practices in the everyday life of these residents. The study adopted a largely qualitative research design underpinned by Street’s theory of literacy as a social practice. A social perspective on literacy focuses on the ways in which people employ literacy in their daily lives. The study used a purposive stratified sample of 20 respondents obtained in specific areas of the sub-county. Data was collected using the following research instruments: face-to-face interviews, observations, literacy diaries, documentation and inbuilt audio recorders. The results indicate significant ways in which Kalenjin residents of Kapsabet use literacy in their everyday lives. The study is expected to benefit scholars in applied linguistics, policymakers, and the general public by allowing them to use the study's results in their operations.

Refugees and Representation: Introduction—The Mimesis of Diaspora

In keeping with the title we have chosen for this follow-up volume to the Special Issue “Ethics and Literary Practice I”, we frame our introduction and summary of the essays collected here with a brief archaeology of modern literary realism at its conjoined genesis in classical Greece and the ancient Near East; such contextualization serves as a prescient backdrop for the varied focus, across a compilation of thirteen articles, on refugees and their representation [...]

Rising from the Margins: Critical Research on the Language and Literacy Practices of Transnational and/or Indigenous Latine/x Families

Rising from the Margins: Critical Research on the Language and Literacy Practices of Transnational and/or Indigenous Latine/x Families

A Systematic Review of Which Families Are Represented in ECSE Literature

In this systematic literature review, we examined which caregivers were represented within caregiver-focused studies in three, top-tier early childhood special education journals, Infants & Young Children, Journal of Early Intervention, and Topics in Early Childhood Special Education. The purpose of this review was to highlight where the field can shift toward a more representative and inclusive body of research-based literature and guidance for practitioners. We reviewed 115 articles. The results indicate that most studies (1) were conducted with White mothers with high-school diplomas or GEDs, (2) included an English-only or English-dominant approach with caregiver participants, and (3) had limited income data and context of the included incomes, thus informing the field that there is a need to interpret studies from a lens of who was included as well as conduct research with a more inclusive, intentional lens when seeking participants. We share specific directions for future research.