School-based Literacy Research Articles

Asian adolescents’ out-of-school encounters with English and Korean literacy

The acquisition of second language (L2) academic literacy has attracted increasing interest among L2 literacy researchers as the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) studying in schools in Anglophone countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States continues to grow. However, this emphasis on academic literacy has led L2 researchers to overlook the importance of exploring other types of literacy, especially out-of-school literacy. In particular, few studies have examined the impact of out-of-school literacy activities on overall literacy acquisition, as well as on the development of academic literacy skills. This article describes a study that examined the nature of three Asian adolescent ELLs’ out-of-school literacy practices and their implications for school-based literacy growth. These Asian adolescent ELLs engaged in various types of reading and forms of writing in both their native language (L1), Korean, and their L2, English, within both print and computer-based contexts. The findings suggest some often overlooked connections, direct or indirect, between in and out-of-school literacy. The article discusses the implications of these findings for pedagogy and future research.

Making use of theories about literacy and justice: teachers re-searching practice

This article considers teachers’ work as they grapple with theories in practice in the everyday worlds of their classroom. It argues that Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the concept of habitus may be useful in moving past theory/practice dichotomies. After establishing the historical context for teacher research in South Australia, the work of two school-based literacy educators with an overt social justice standpoint is explored. The complexity of teachers’ intellectual work and identity formation over time is outlined and implications for teacher education are discussed.

At Play in Fields of Ideas

The authors have come to believe, based on several years of collaborative work in an alternative literacy program, that developing the multiple literacies of struggling youth requires a curricular playfulness with students' ideas, biographies, and imaginations across genres and media. Social literacy and multiliteracy theories are powerful and important reminders that literacy practices are varied and situated across different media and that school‐based literacy practices need to be inclusive of a broad range of students, cultures, and text formats. The youth literacy program described in this article leans on this work and recent reconceptualizations of adolescent literacy by integrating verbal and visual imagination, the material contexts and biographies of student lives, traditional print‐based literacies, and opportunities for students to express themselves across multiple literacies. The authors build on language and nonlanguage skills, which may or may not be valued in many schools, and scaffold literacy skills needed to augment student life skills and talents. To bring these arguments to life, the authors provide examples of the ways students rearticulate, transform, and integrate their own narratives into curricular texts through poetry, art, music, and video—activities that can, at times, lessen or mitigate their resistances to schooling.

Morphing Literacy: Boys Reshaping Their School-Based Literacy Practices: Boys resist many school-based practices by transforming the assigned literacy work.

This article is based on a two-year ethnographic study of early adolescent boys in three Canadian schools to understand what boys’ literacy looks like, and how it may be different from the traditional notions of school literacy.

Genre, Medium, and Learning to Write: Negotiating Identities, Enacting School-Based Literacies in Adulthood

Writing instruction in the United States now routinely takes place in networked environments. For adult learners in open admissions institutions, the literacy demands of the academic sphere and the public nature of the acts of writing in networked environments can create alienating experiences. This study examined the possibilities that the genre of student technology autobiographies offers adult learners. Eighteen adult community college students enrolled in a freshman-level reading/writing course participated in the study. Participant ages ranged between 20 and 54. Thematic analyses of their autobiographies revealed their substantial yet unacknowledged experiences with technologies. Building upon their reflections and representations of past experiences fostered their development of technological literacies.

Teaching with technologies: A reflexive auto-ethnographic portrait

This reflective article chronicles the process of my development as a writer, a learner, a teacher, and a researcher who happens to engage the practices of writing, learning, teaching, and researching with emerging technologies. Using a colonial metaphor that captures my initial exposure to school-based literacies, I demonstrate how a colonial pattern permeates current dynamics of technology used both in and out of schools. I use this frame to raise issues and ask questions about teaching with technologies in socially just and responsible ways.

Learning to Comprehend Written Directions through Participation in a Mixed Activity System

This research reports on the effects of participation in the 5th Dimension, a mixed activity system, on children's learning to comprehend written directions. The design principles of the 5th Dimension were derived from cultural-historical activity theory, an extension of the sociocultural school founded by Vygotsky, Leont'ev, and Luria. The Fifth Dimension organizes the social context in which childrenlearn into a learning community arrayed around computers, multi-media, and telecommunications. Participants in this study were 63 third, fourth, and fifth grade children. Children with extensive participation, minimal participation, and no participation in the 5th Dimension were compared. A pre- and post-cloze test that measured performance on comprehending written directions was used. Analyses of data revealed that children with extensive participation preformed better than either of the other two groups. One implication of this study is that children can master school-based literacy skills through participation in informal learning environments where there is no pre-planned or explicit instruction. Theresearch also suggests that the mastery of literacy skills in this context is subservient to children's attainment of personal goals based on their own interests.

School's Out! Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice

School's Out! Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice Edited by Glynda A. Hull and Katherine Schultz. New York: Teacher's College Press, 2002, 288 pp. Reviewed by Alison Trumbull University of California, Los Angeles School's Out! Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice edited by ing, Glynda A. Hull and Katherine Schultz raises important issues about teach- learning, and defining literacy. The book assumes that traditional American all learners. school-based views of literacy are insufficient to address the needs of As a former public would argue school teacher, I agree with this assumption. Indeed, few people that all schools adequately serve all of their students. Among the literacy pedagogy is which decisions about curriculum, materials, and indeed what constitutes literacy are often made by policy-makers and administrators out of touch with diverse student needs. A more specific problem is inconsistency, not only in the availability of materials, but also in teachers' use of them. While teach- problems with school-based cational system, in the top-down nature of our edu- ing in California, the materials I was given an excellent reading program, but only a little fraction of I and very instruction in how to use them. Furthermore, heard no discussion dents' at either the district or the school level about how to integrate stu- home literacy practices into use of the program. In education, adherence to tradition has degenerated into an ineffective pattern of pedagogy, and we need to reevaluate not only curriculum and learner needs, but also our ways of defining success in literacy. This tion. new book by Hull and Schultz' performs such a reevalua- In each chapter. School's Out! touches on this need to reflect on schools' aim is to introduce the concept of out-of-school literacy, as well as provide examples of how this theory is being implemented and fostered. These examples provide suggestions for concepts and practices that work, routine practices. editors' The as well as some that have failed, provoking thought about and practitioners might use the idea of out-of-school how literacy researchers literacy in their own work. The four programs parts of this book form a conversation about current research and I, in out-of-school literacy. In Part the editors provide a theoretical frame- work for the topic and illustrate it with six vignettes about people who, for various reasons, have struggled with traditional school-based literacy but find empower- ment in their own innovative literacy practices. Parts II, III, and FV incorporate the work of many authors. Part II contains case studies of English language learners' individual literacy practices in Philadelphia and Chicago, while Part III presents adult-youth collaboration in after-school programs in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and the Issues in Applied Linguistics ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. 13 © 2002, Regents of the University of California No.

Critical Issues: Examining Constructions of Race in Literacy Research: Beyond Silence and other Oppressions of White Liberalism

In this article, we explore our complicity as white liberal literacy researchers in the social and political dynamics that support continued inequities in school-based literacy success. We focus on social constructions of difference, particularly addressing differences related to race and racism. We begin by reviewing what several noted scholars have said about race, racism, and white liberalism. We describe four deleterious patterns within the tradition of white liberalism, showing how these unwittingly undermine the goals for equity that this group espouses. Next, we use our critique of white liberalism as a basis for critiquing our own practice as literacy researchers. We do this by examining two pieces of our own research. In conclusion, we offer suggestions for literacy research that reflect our review and analysis, and we invite others to contribute to the conversation.

Living Dialogues in One Neighborhood: Moving toward Understanding across Discourses and Practices of Literacy and Schooling

Drawing on a critical discourse perspective, we examine the “living dialogues,” or the complex interplay between discourses, in one neighborhood to recontextualize the often polarized debates about literacy instruction within education. Focusing on three children, their families, teachers, and classrooms, we argue that the creation of more inclusive school literacy practices requires a consideration of how discourses function within and across homes, communities, and schools. Thus we focus less on the merits or limits of one instructional method than on how living dialogues reflect particular and situated beliefs about language and literacy practices. Within this theoretical frame, classrooms arise as contextualized spaces where the living dialogues of unique discourse communities intersect, and where the relational discourses that shape and reflect classroom practices have the potential to open up or close down instructional spaces for children. A critical discourse perspective re-situates debates around literacy instruction and allows us to engage in complex ways with the dilemmas and possibilities of school-based literacy practices. Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word. For if the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison, and destroy. - Ralph Ellison

Reconceptualising Early Literacy Achievement: Moving beyond Critique-Paralysis

This paper takes early school-based literacy achievement as a particular example of the need to reconceptualise early childhood practices. By drawing on literacy results for identifiable groups of students, the paper argues the importance of moving beyond developmental continua and individual performance indicators in explaining and reviewing school-based literacy achievement. The particular example illustrates how early childhood educators can avoid ‘critique-paralysis’ by examining research data that yield substantial insights related to sociocultural and gender dimensions of literacy learning.

Relationships, individual differences, and children's use of literate language

Research in children's oral language and early literacy learning currently stresses the facilitative role of social context. Social context in this literature is typically treated on a macro-level, e.g., mother-child interaction or peer interaction. We present a more differentiated model of peer influences on children's learning one oral language register, 'literate language'. Literate language, which predicts school-based literacy, is defined as talk about language and literacy. We suggest that children's temperament and their close relationships, in the form of friendships, play important roles in literate language learning. We present separate models for friends and nonfriends and posit that literate language is learned more effectively between friends because of the emotional tenor of this relationship. When they are with friends children, even those that might be considered 'difficult', disagree, resolve disagreements, then express emotions indicative of social understanding. Reflection upon emotion states, in turn, leads to literate language. The sample comprised 33 males and 23 females attending American kindergarten classes, with a mean age of 65 months. Dyads of same gender and race were observed 12 times across the school year during which time samples of oral language were taken. Measures of children reading and writing were also collected. The data support our model, and the friendship model accounting for more of the variance in literate language (R2 = .69) than did the nonfriend model (R2 = .43). Children with friends engage in the sort of conceptual conflict and resolutions which maximise use of literate language. This context seems particularly important for 'difficult' children. Future research should continue to examine the interface between individual and group levels variables.

The Participation Framework as a Mediating Tool in Kindergarten Journal Writing Activity

Drawing on data collected in an ethnographic study of kindergarten journal writing activity, this article demonstrates how students who are not directly participating in instruction are nevertheless key contributors to the social construction of literacy knowledge. More specifically, this study examines how the participation framework of writing activity constitutes and is constituted by the context for learning to write. Five interconnected roles in the participation framework are identified in the data and presented as a shared indexical context within which children's texts are interactionally negotiated. The author argues for a reconceptualization of classroom language and literacy practices from current dyadicbased participation frameworks to more expanded multi-party participation frameworks that allow for flexible access to the social construction of literacy knowledge. By changing the ways in which students participate in school-based literacy practices, students will be socialized to more democratic access to participation in classrooms and in the larger society. This reconceptualization of classroom language and literacy practices attempts to disrupt monolithic definitions of literacy as a reified set of neutral skills by challenging the sanctity of dyadic interaction in literacy activity.

Writing For Their Lives: The Non-School Literacy of California's Urban African American Youth

This article reports on an investigation into the literacy practices of urban African American youth, many of whom were found to be unmotivated to engage in school-based literacy events because they do not see the relevance of the school curriculum to their lives or, based on prior experiences, they actually fear having to write in school. The voluntary out-of-school literacy practices of two African American high school students are analyzed and their writings critiqued. Conclusions are drawn about the complex and provocative these youth use literate behaviors and strategies to gain voice in and make sense of their social worlds. Recommendations are offered for using African American and youth culture as bridge to writing development. NON-SCHOOL LITERACY PRACTICES An emerging line of research has attempted to explore and explain the nature of youth and adult and literacy experiences that take place in an array of social settings outside of schools. Pioneers in this field include researchers such as Heath (1980, 1982, 1983), Scribner and Cole (1981, 1988), and Street (1984, 1993), whose work has contributed to framework for viewing literacy in conjunction with specific practices and functions of use inside particular social contexts. A number of subsequent studies have also operated within and contributed to this framework (Camitta, 1993; Dyson, 1993; Farr, 1994; Goodman & Wilde, 1992; Guerra, 1992; Heath & McLaughlin, 1991, 1993; Lee, 1991, 1993; Mahiri, 1991, 1994a, 1994b; Moss, 1994; Shuman, 1986; Taylor & Dorsey-Gaines, 1988). Based on the findings of cross-cultural research, Street (1984) argued that literacy is ultimately political and that it has different implications within different sociocultural contexts. As he claimed, what the particular practices and concepts of reading and writing are for given society depends upon the context (p. 1); moreover, these concepts are already embedded in an ideology and cannot be isolated or treated as 'neutral' or merely 'technical' (p. 1). These contentions are echoed by Scribner and Cole's (1988) research, conducted among the Vai people of Liberia, which illuminates and critiques the frailty of the evidence for generalizations about dependency of certain cognitive skills on writing, and.. .the restricted model of the writing process from which hypotheses about cognitive consequences tend to be generated (p. 58). Their findings challenged the restricted models of writing that are reflected in the formulations of theorists who narrowly define literacy and value school-based literacy as the only authentic type. As they note: The assumption that logicality is in the text and the text is in the school can lead to serious underestimation of the cognitive skills involved in non-school, non-essay writing, and reciprocally, to an overestimation of the intellectual skills that the essayist text necessarily entails....It tends to promote the notion that writing outside of the school is of little importance and has no significant consequences for the individual. (p. 61) Heath's (1983) research focused on literacy practices in different sociocultural settings in the United States. Heath found that the residents of two different working-class communities-one White and one Black, located only few miles apart-had a variety of literate traditions that were interwoven in different with oral uses of language (p. 234). She noted, however, that neither community's with the written word [prepared] it for the school's ways (p. 235). Shuman's (1986) analysis of the everyday oral and written narratives of workingclass adolescent girls as part of the unofficial school curriculum provides additional understandings of the that school and youth cultures both intersect and disconnect. As she argues: ...oral fight stories, written diary accounts, written petitions, letters, and playful forms-are part of single community's repertoire. …

The Relations Between Symbolic Play and Literate Behavior: A Review and Critique of the Empirical Literature

Recent theoretical and empirical evidence for relations between children’s symbolic play and literate behavior are reviewed. Symbolic play and literate behaviors are said to involve similar mental processes: the production and comprehension of decontextualized language and narrative competence. Studies are classified and discussed according to these similarities. Results of the studies are reviewed and critiqued in terms of methodological and theoretical issues. Observational results suggest that decontextualized language and narrative skills are involved in both symbolic play and school-based literacy events. Experimental results, however, raise a number of problems with the theory that symbolic play is related causally to literate behavior. Suggestions for future research are made

The Relations between Symbolic Play and Literate Behavior: A Review and Critique of the Empirical Literature

Recent theoretical and empirical evidence for relations between children’s symbolic play and literate behavior are reviewed. Symbolic play and literate behaviors are said to involve similar mental processes: the production and comprehension of decontextualized language and narrative competence. Studies are classified and discussed according to these similarities. Results of the studies are reviewed and critiqued in terms of methodological and theoretical issues. Observational results suggest that decontextualized language and narrative skills are involved in both symbolic play and school-based literacy events. Experimental results, however, raise a number of problems with the theory that symbolic play is related causally to literate behavior. Suggestions for future research are made