Journal of Early Childhood Literacy current issue

Editorial

Lancaster, L., Rowe, D. — 2009-07-30

Early adopters: Playing new literacies and pretending new technologies in print-centric classrooms

Wohlwend, K. E. — 2009-07-30

In this article, semiotic analysis of children's practices and designs with video game conventions considers how children use play and drawing as spatializing literacies that make room to import imagined technologies and user identities. Microanalysis of video data of classroom interactions collected during a three year ethnographic study of children's literacy play in kindergarten and primary classrooms reveals how the leading edge of technology use in print-centric classrooms is pretended into being by five-, six-, and seven-year-old `early adopters' — a marketing term for first wave consumers who avidly buy and explore newly-released technology products.`Early adopters' signals two simultaneous identities for young technology users: (1) as developing learners of new literacies and technologies; and, (2) as curious explorers who willingly play with new media. Children transformed paper and pencil resources into artifacts for enacting cell phone conversations and animating video games, using new technologies and the collaborative nature of new literacies to perform literate identities and to strengthen the cohesiveness of play groups.

Student text-making as semiotic work

Mavers, D. — 2009-07-30

Semiotic work is principled engagement in the making of meaning. The semiotic work of school-based learning entails interpretation and expression framed by the curriculum and the social practices of the classroom, and realized multimodally in diverse pedagogic interactions and activities. Micro-examination of the relationship between a teacher's multimodally constituted framing of a task and students' responses in drawing and writing on individual dry-wipe whiteboards investigates the resources they selected in order to demonstrate their engagement, to make their texts suited to how they would be used, and to represent in ways apt to the subject area. These fleeting texts were just one realization of meaning among others in the semiotic flow of the lesson. Notwithstanding the speed of production and erasing soon after, the students' investment of semiotic work was principled. Taking their efforts seriously provides the ground for supporting them as they learn to make texts apt to different discourses and genres.

Multimodality, literacy and texts: Developing a discourse

Bearne, E. — 2009-07-30

This article argues for the development of a framework through which to describe children's multimodal texts. Such a shared discourse should be capable of including different modes and media and the ways in which children integrate and combine them for their own meaning-making purposes. It should also acknowledge that multimodal texts are not always or only screen-based. In addition, it is argued that current definitions of literacy do not readily answer to the variety of semiotic resources deployed in the design of multimodal texts. In revisiting the author's previous tentative thoughts about `the rhetoric of design' the article develops this theme further through offering a possible framework and using this to analyse three different types of multimodal texts created by seven-year-old children. The framework is, however, a `work in progress', which it is hoped, will open up debate.

Interactions, intersections and improvisations: Studying the multimodal texts and classroom talk of six- to seven-year-olds

Pahl, K. — 2009-07-30

This article examines the relationship between children's talk in the classroom and their multimodal texts. The article uses an analytic framework derived from Bourdieu's concept of habitus to examine how 6—7-year-old children's regular ways of being and doing can be found in their multimodal texts together with their talk (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990). The concept of pedagogic habitus is used to make sense of the teacher's regular ways of being and doing within the classroom (Grenfell, 1996). Improvisations upon these ways of being and doing were considered with reference to data collected over two years. In this article, the term `multimodal text' refers to panorama boxes created from shoe boxes to represent an environment such as the ocean or a jungle. The article concludes that it is important to pay attention to the interrelationship between the talk and the boxes to make sense of children's multimodal texts. The concept of improvisations upon the habitus provides an important context for this understanding.

`If she's left with books she'll just eat them': Considering inclusive multimodal literacy practices

Flewitt, R., Nind, M., Payler, J. — 2009-07-30

This article reports on aspects of a small-scale study conducted in the south of England that explored the learning experiences of three four-year-old children with identified special educational needs, who attended a combination of early education settings — one `more special' and one `more inclusive' (Nind et al., 2007). The article reflects on the concept of inclusive literacy, and proposes that a model of literacy as social practice can provide an enabling framework for understanding how young children with learning difficulties interpret and use a range of shared sign systems. Drawing on an ethnographic, video case study of one girl, Mandy,¹ the article gives an overview of her observed literacy experiences at home and in the two educational settings she attended, and then focuses on the collaborative, multimodal nature of the literacy events and practices she encountered. Detailed multimodal analysis of a selected literacy event highlights the salience of embodied action and the shapes of inclusive learning spaces, and points to the importance of valuing individuals' idiosyncratic and multimodal meaning-making. The article concludes with discussion of how opportunities for literacy learning can be generated effectively in an inclusive learning environment for young children with learning difficulties. The study was funded by Rix Thompson Rothenberg Foundation (RTR).

Features of gender: An analysis of the visual texts of third grade children

Albers, P., Frederick, T., Cowan, K. — 2009-07-30

How do primary students construct understandings of the opposite sex? In what ways do these constructions manifest in the visual texts created in literacy and language arts classrooms? Using visual discourse analysis (Albers, 2007) and scheme analysis (Sonesson, 1988) as interpretive methods, we analyzed the visual texts created by 23 third grade students created at the end of a unit of study in which students explored gender stereotypes. Findings suggest the need for close readings of the graphic, structural, and semantic information conveyed by visual texts that children create in literacy and language arts classes.

Book Review: E. Gregory, Learning to Read in a New Language. London: SAGE, 2008. 240 pp. ISBN 978--1--4129--2857--1

Drury, R. — 2009-07-30

Book Review: R. Drury, Young Bilingual Learners at Home and School-researching Multilingual Voices. Stoke on Trent: Trentham, 2007. ISBN10: 1--85856--355--0, ISBN13: 978--1--85856--355--8, {pound}15.99 (pbk)

Pagett, L. — 2009-07-30