Literacies In Childhood

Understand how children become literate and mold a confident reader with this easy to read resource

Provides a comprehensive, reader-friendly introduction to literacy teaching and learning, exploring both theoretical underpinnings and practical strategies.

Now in its second edition, this popular text explores classrooms where technology and critical literacies are woven into childhood curricula and teaching. Using real-world stories, it addresses what ICTs afford critical literacy with young children, and how new technologies can be positioned to engage in meaningful and authentic learning. Concise but comprehensive, the text provides strategies, theoretical frameworks, demonstrations of practice, and resources for teachers. Updated with discussions of media literacy and new pedagogical tools, the second edition features new classroom examples and experiences that highlight the ways in which critical literacy, technology and media literacy come together in everyday life in the early childhood classroom. The inviting examples model how to use the interests and inquiry questions of young learners as a springboard for creating a critical curriculum. Each chapter includes Reflection Points, pedagogical invitations, and Resource Boxes to imagine new possibilities of working with students in engaging and supportive ways. The inspiring stories, guidance, and tools this book make it a great resource for pre-service teachers and students in Early Childhood Education and Literacy Education, and primary teachers and educators.

As fast-evolving technologies transform everyday communication and literacy practices, many young children find themselves immersed in multiple digital media from birth. Such rapid technological change has consequences for the development of early literacy, and the ways in which parents and educators are able to equip today’s young citizens for a digital future. This seminal Handbook fulfils an urgent need to consider how digital technologies are impacting the lives and learning of young children; and how childhood experiences of using digital resources can serve as the foundation for present and future development. Considering children aged 0–8 years, chapters explore the diversity of young children’s literacy skills, practices and expertise across digital tools, technologies and media, in varied contexts, settings and countries. The Handbook explores six significant areas: Part I presents an overview of research into young children’s digital literacy practices, touching on a range of theoretical, methodological and ethical approaches. Part II considers young children’s reading, writing and meaning-making when using digital media at home and in the wider community. Part III offers an overview of key challenges for early childhood education presented by digital literacy, and discusses political positioning and curricula. Part IV focuses on the multimodal and multi-sensory textual landscape of contemporary literary practices, and how children learn to read and write with and across media. Part V considers how digital technologies both influence and are influenced by children’s online and offline social relationships. Part VI draws together themes from across the Handbook, to propose an agenda for future research into digital literacies in early childhood. A timely resource identifying and exploring pedagogies designed to bolster young children’s digital and multimodal literacy practices, this key text will be of interest to early childhood educators, researchers and policy-makers.

Family Literacies demonstrates, through reference to empirical research, how shared reading practices operate in a wide range of families, with a view to supporting families in reading with their pre-school children. At the heart of this book, written by two highly experienced experts in the field, is a fascinating project that captured diverse voices, and experiences by parents, children and other family members. Rachael Levy and Mel Hall deploy a rich and distinctive theoretical framework, drawing on insights from literacy studies, education and sociology. Family Literacies presents an account of shared reading practices in homes, focusing attention on what motivates parents to read with their children as well as revealing what parents may need if they are to begin and sustain shared reading activity. The authors show the many ways in which reading is centrally embedded in many aspects of family life, arguing that this has particular implications for children as they start school. Situated within a socio-cultural discourse, this book explains why it is important to understand how and why shared reading takes place in homes so that all families can be supported in reading with their children. Family Literacies is essential reading for all those who are studying and researching literacy practices, especially those involving young children. The book will also be of value to students, practitioners and researchers in education and applied linguistics who are working with families and have an interest in the study of family practices. The authors’ findings have major implications for how parents can be encouraged to develop positive reading relationships with their children.

Rethinking Early Literacies honors the identities of young children as they read, write, speak, and play across various spaces, in and out of pre/school. Despite narrow curricular mandates and policies, the book highlights the language resources and tools that children cultivate from families, communities, and peers. The chapters feature children’s linguistic flexibility with multiple languages, creative appropriation of popular culture, participation in community literacy practices, and social negotiation in the context of play. Throughout the book, the authors critically reframe what it means to be literate in contemporary society, specifically discussing the role of educators in theorizing and rethinking language ideologies for practice. Issues influencing early childhood education in trans/national contexts are forefronted (e.g. racism, immigration rights, readiness) throughout the book, with a call to support and sustain communities of color.