Abstract
A wealth of research demonstrates that as young children acquire literacy they also approximate literate roles and relationships. Such literate identifications, or storied selves, are complex, sometimes contradictory and under construction for young people. Less research has focused on how young children’s storied selves are discursively constituted across domains of practice. Given this gap in the literature, we ask: How do young children author themselves as literate in the domains of school and home? What social languages, cultural models, discourses, relationships and situated identities do they enact? To answer these questions, we drew on interviews conducted with first and second grade students who participated in a literacy clinic at an urban school site. The children were asked to report on their literacy lives in different domains of practice. Using the tools of critical discourse analysis, we examined the discursive contours of children’s literate identities in different domains. Through cross-case analyses and ‘telling cases’, our findings suggest that young children call on a hybrid mix of discourse patterns to author themselves as literate beings. The students remain positive and enthusiastic about reading and themselves as readers, despite needing additional literacy support. However, the existence of alignment and conflict between the discourses of the home and school domains creates reasons for attending to students’ literate identities in closer detail.
Keywords
Introduction
Students acquire their cultural models and social languages surrounding literacy from home and school as well as through the community, media and online social spaces. The kinds of literacy experiences they have access to and the types of participation afforded to them in those practices will, to a certain extent, determine the stories they tell about whom they are as literate beings. These stories, though complex, are just beginning.
Research conducted under the umbrella of New Literacies Studies (e.g. Barton and Hamilton, 1998; Barton et al., 2000; Gee, 1996, 2009; Hicks, 2002) emphasizes that literacies are not skills but ways of interacting, ways of representing and ways of being (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999). Ways of being include the identity kits (Gee, 2009) of people valuing–being–acting–representing in the world in ways that create socially situated identities. Gee (2009: 13) explains that a socially situated identity involves the process of conveying, through (social) language(s), a recognizable ‘kind of person’ performing a ‘certain kind of activity’. Related cultural models are the taken-for-granted storylines and narratives that guide people’s actions and interactions in the world. They are historical and social and exist in the world as well as being part of an individual’s experience of the world (Gee, 2004). Because cultural models position people in ways such they can recognize each other as a particular sort of agent, they also provide a means for exploring how people’s identities and agency are shaped (Holland et al., 1998). Cultural models and situated identities often include multiple, fluid and unstable relationships that form a child’s sense of self in relation to literacy. This assumes that contradictions, tensions and growth are embedded in personhood (Davies, 1993; Davies and Harre, 1990; Harre and Gillet, 1998). This is particularly true for young children who are acquiring literacy roles, relationships and concepts about themselves (Comber, 2004; Davis, 2007; Moinian, 2006; Moller, 1999; Rowe, 2010; Rowe et al., 2001).
What it means to be a ‘good reader’ is discursively encoded in the contexts in which children participate. Schools associate particular behaviours, relationships and activities with something called ‘doing literacy’, which has more to do with learning institutionalized frames of being a good student than with being literate (Gee, 2004). For instance, as children interact with books every day, they assign certain meanings to the artefacts, the associated relationships and how they feel about themselves. Over time, these assigned meanings and experiences become constitutive of behaviours, thoughts and emotions.
Sometimes, children’s authoring of themselves is in alignment with the school’s interpretation of whom they are (e.g. a ‘good reader’, a ‘remedial reader’, an ‘enthusiastic reader’). Thus their dialogue, behaviours and relationships strive to reinforce the messages that the school provides for them. In other cases, children (re)act against the scripts provided for them by the school, providing counter-narratives. These counter-narratives are often subtle and invisible and a teacher would need to work hard to see the divergent representations. The construct of ‘figured worlds’ describes how representations of literacy practices that are invoked in relation to certain people, activities and resources frame social positions and identities. Luttrell (1997) proposed that the concept of storied selves marks the processes by which people arrive at their sense of selfhood and social identities. Luttrell (1997: 8) wrote: Storied selves delineate the processes by which the [women] arrived at their senses of selfhood and social identities. Insofar as the women’s stories are about the events and conditions of their lives, their stories are also a part of their self understandings.
The term ‘storied selves’ suggests how a story is told and how people define and defend their selves and subjectivities through narratives. How identities become ‘sedimented’ (Rowsell and Pahl, 2007) or ‘thickened’ (Holland and Leander, 2004) is most apparent in adolescent and adult readers who have deeply enmeshed theories about themselves as literate people (Rogers, 2004). With young children, the process is still very much under construction as they are confronted with many different voices, narratives and discourses around literacy.
It is here that our research picks up, asking: How do young children author themselves as literate in the domains of school and home? What social languages, cultural models, discourses, relationships and situated identities do they enact?
There is empirical evidence of young children’s literacy development that demonstrates the complexity of subjectivities (Ahn and Filipenko, 2007; Compton-Lilly, 2006; Davies, 1993; Flores-Duenes, 2005; Kendrick, 2005; Kendrick and McKay, 2002; Martínez-Roldan, 2003). While this research demonstrates that young children do have complex (and contradictory) storied selves, there has been less research that pinpoints how storied selves are discursively constituted (for exceptions see Britsch, 2005; Wohlend, 2009). To answer this question, we drew on the tools of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Gee, 2009; Kress, 2004; Rogers, 2011) to examine thediscursive contours of children’s literate identities across multiple domains.
Research design
Our interviews positioned children as narrators of their own experiences (Curtin, 2000; Mishna et al., 2004; Tammivaara and Enright, 1986). Narratives of experience are, as Gee (2009: 134) points out, ‘important sense-making devices [because] people often encode into narratives the problems that concern them and their attempts to make sense or resolve these problems’. We theorized that evoking a context would allow the students the space to rehearse certain social languages, relationships and cultural models, granting insights into the complexity of emerging identities.
Data collection
The data presented here were part of a larger year-long study focusing on how pre-service teachers learn to teach literacy in an urban school-based literacy clinic (Mosley and Rogers, 2011; Rogers and Mosley, 2008). The researchers and teacher-educators were European American, as were the majority of the university students enrolled on the course. The course was designed with an explicit focus on culturally relevant, multicultural and anti-racist pedagogy. The pre-service teachers took walking tours of the neighbourhood surrounding theschool and attended seminars at a nearby public library on the history of the community and the school.
Discourse patterns by participant and domain
The school participated in the Open Court reading programme. Open Court is a programme that was widely adopted under Reading First, the literacy policy of ‘No Child Left Behind’ in the USA. Open Court is a direct instruction reading programme that uses a systematic approach to teaching phonics, focusing on the alphabetic principle and phonological awareness. Instruction is teacher directed and focuses on decoding strategies, blending and spelling. Critics of the programme contend that it limits students’ engagement with real texts, and removes opportunities for children to make choices about their reading and writing.
Interviews. The primary data for this study consisted of in-depth interviews conducted with eight African-American students from first and second grades. The interviews were conducted at the completion of the school year and lasted between 45 and 60 minutes per child. The interview protocol was modelled on a similar study conducted with adults (Rogers, 2004), whereas two domains were built into the interview (home and school). In each domain, each child was asked a series of questions about themselves as readers and writers, such as: Tell me a story about yourself as a reader. What kinds of things do you like to read? Who do you read with? What do you do when you get to a word you do not know? What is your favourite story? After prompting the child in one domain, we moved on to the other domain. In each domain, the child was given the option to respond through words, drawing and role-play. The focus of this analysis is on the verbal record.
Data analysis
Our analysis moved between the videos, transcripts and fieldnotes. We created word-by-word transcripts of the interviews, attending to pauses, overlaps and contiguous speech (Ochs, 1999). We divided the interviews into the domains of ‘home’ and ‘school’, reflecting the sections embedded in the protocol.
We analysed each domain using the tools of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989, 1992). At this level we used a framework that includes ‘ways of interacting’, ‘ways of representing’ and ‘ways of being’. In terms of genre, or ‘ways of interacting’, we noted linguistic features such as repetitions, singing, parallel structures, re-voicing and storytelling. In terms of discourse, or ‘ways of representing’, we noted frequently occurring themes and how they are signified. We asked: What relationships exist? What is foregrounded? What kinds of statements are made? How are pronouns used? What is the formality of vocabulary? We looked across the conversation to take stock of the discourses and how they are chained together through genre and style. ‘Ways of being’, or style, includes the linguistic features that indicate stance, perspective and affinity. Passive stance is communicated through syntactic construction, while affinity is represented through modal verbs that express the degree of commitment. Finally, we asked: How do the children narrate their experiences in a way that draws on particular configurations of genre, discourse and style?
Table 1 illustrates the typical patterning of genre, discourse and style in the home and school domains for all the children included in the study. Also included are the sub-categories that relate to each level of analysis. The sub-categories and examples displayed demonstrate the typical patterns found in each student’s data. We created analytic summaries of each of the students and returned to the year-long data we collected on each tutor–student dyad to include case information about each student. This served to triangulate our data and create well-rounded cases studies for each student.
We chose three ‘telling cases’ to highlight the complexity of young children’s literate identities (Mitchell, 1984).
Findings
Table 1 is a summative display of the research findings from all (N = 8) the students included in the research. From left to right, Table 1 includes both domains of practice – home and school – and frequently occurring discourse practices and sub-categories for each participant in each domain. In the next section we summarize the patterns of discourse practices within each domain for all the children.
Domain of home
The home domain for participants included representations of literacy as a collaborative and shared practice. Relationships were an important part of what it means to be a reader at home. The students discussed themselves reading with someone (as opposed to being read to). Family literacy practices were gendered – most of the children read with or were read to by their mothers. Some of the children also talked about reading with siblings and cousins. Marcus and Cheryl represented themselves as more independent at home as readers, both reading to their sisters. Reading was defined as reading books, as opposed to reading other kinds of materials. Queena and Marcus were the only students who discussed a non-book literacy event. Queena independently brought up filling out job application forms to get a job. Marcus mentioned that he sees his parents reading the mail.
Their affective stance toward reading in the home domain was positive. Looking at Table 1 we can see Kaitlin’s enthusiasm as she exclaimed, ‘I love books!’ Winter stated, ‘I want to read my own books.’ Marcus stated, ‘I pick funny books and sometimes scary books.’ Cheryl shared her positive memories of being read to by her mother when she was a baby. Darius, unlike the others, demonstrated more of a neutral affect toward reading at home. However, they all used active grammatical constructions (style) to represent themselves reading and choosing books in the home domain.
It is important to note that there were examples of competing cultural models of literacy in the home domain for some of the students. Kaitlin, for instance, represented a differentiated cultural model of reading and herself as a reader in the home domain. On the one hand she told a lengthy narrative about her favourite book, PJ Funny Bunny. When she talked about stories at home, she positioned herself as a reader, making connections with the text and herself, showing comprehension of the texts and a love for stories. However, she also stated, ‘I need a reading teacher. Because I am really scared about reading sometimes. Because sometimes reading be so hard. Because the words they’re so hard.’ In this excerpt, the cultural model of reading has shifted to reading words instead of funny stories and good books. We learn that she believed she needed to know how to spell the words in order to read them. Because she did not know how to spell the words, this made the words hard for her (discourse of reading words, negative ability). In Kaitlin’s narratives we hear differentiated cultural models around reading and their associated identities, an issue we return to in the conclusion.
Domain of school
Looking across the domain of school (Table 1) for all the participants, patterns begin to emerge. The children discussed reading in terms of genres: ‘decodable books’, ‘Waterford books’, ‘books from the library’, ‘scary books’, ‘Open Court’ and ‘phonics books’. They also describe the kinds of interactions they experience: reading with a group, read-alouds, partner reading, individually or with the teacher. There is a greater variety in both the genres and types of reading events described in the domain of school (as opposed to the domain of home). Like the home domain, the majority of the students defined reading in the domain of school as a collaborative endeavour. Only Marcus discussed reading at school as an individual event.
At home, reading is a situated meaningful activity connected with positive relationships. At school, reading is a de-contextualized activity, connected with grades, work and comprehension questions. In this domain, the discourse of schooled literacy becomes apparent in their representations (Gee, 2004). For all the students, we see how the discourses of decoding, word work, doing decodables, blending, answering comprehension questions and work have also been added to their conceptions about reading. The children made frequent references to Open Court, the district’s reading programme.
For many of the children, the discourse of reading was defined in relation to behaviours, rules, procedures, morals or accuracy. Looking at Table 1, we can see how for Tamika, Haley and Queena the cultural models of reading were linked together with behaviours, rules and procedures. For instance, Haley mentioned rules, grades, teacher notes and staying out of trouble as she talked about reading in her classroom. Queena included a moralistic slant to her representation of reading with modalities that showed obligation (e.g. ‘You supposed to sit down and read a book nice and loud so the teacher she can really hear it.’). Several of the children emphasized accuracy in calling words in the school domain.
There was evidence that the children looked for places where literacy ‘makes sense’, such as during the read-alouds, reading with their best friend and reading outside on the bench. However, their narratives of literacy became increasingly infested with cultural models of schooled literacy, mentioning school-sanctioned literacy events. Surprisingly, the majority of the students used markers of positive ability in relation to reading at school. Kaitlin and Marcus are the only two children who positioned themselves through negative ability statements in this domain.
There was evidence of two distinctly competing cultural models of reading in the domain of school. The cultural model of reading that Cheryl discussed first included dictation, phonics and sounded-out words. The teacher defined reading through specified activities, time limits and specific spaces where reading was accomplished. However, later in her narrative she discussed five books: The Three Little Pigs, Night Shift Daddy, Charlotte’s Web, James and the Giant Peach and Flat Stanley. Here, a secondary cultural model in the classroom depicted an understanding of literacy as one connected to stories, characters and a love of reading, closer to her representations at home. The existence of several cultural models within or across domains suggests the complexity of literate identifications.
‘Telling cases’ of socially situated identities
Looking closely at the children’s discourse patterns in each domain, we saw the emergence of distinct identities in the group of students. The identifications were most apparent in the domain of school and, in particular, when they were held up against the home domain. The identities ranged from ‘the remedial reading student’, ‘the model reader’ and ‘I act like I know’ to ‘reading to get a good education’. In the previous section we explored the discursive patterns of all of the students. In the following section we look closely at three representative ‘telling cases’ (Cheryl, Tamika and Darius) to demonstrate more specifically the complexity of young children’s identifications toward reading. According to Mitchell (1984: 239), a telling case is one in which the ‘particular circumstances surrounding a case serve to make previously obscure relationships suddenly apparent’.
Because we will be discussing only relatively short sections of their interviews in a discontinuous manner that cannot present the material chronologically, we first summarize parts of the students’ case studies. We have included analytic notes along the way to illustrate the patterning of discourse, style and genre.
Going on adventures or reading words off the board: Cheryl
Cheryl was an energetic first-grade student who enjoyed spending time with her large extended family. She loved read-alouds and readily named five titles of good books. Her favourite book to read independently was Jazz Baby. Cheryl positioned herself as an active and enthusiastic reader at home. She stated that she has 24 books in her house and readily makes connections between books and television. She told narratives about two of her favourite books – Barney and Care Bear – pointing out that these books are also television shows.
Figured World 1 – Home: ‘Care Bear have a lot of adventures in it.’
Int: And what kind of books do you read upstairs in your room? Cheryl: Barney books. Int: Barney Books. What’s your favorite? Cheryl: Uh///Care Bear. Int: Tell me about that book. Cheryl: Care Bear it have a lot of adventures in it. Int: A lot of adventures. Like what? Cheryl: Like one Care Bear, the first Care Bear he goes to his granny house and he don’t know how to get there and the rest of the Care Bears help him. Int: What happens? Cheryl: And then their mom said “watch out!” Int: Who is Barney? Cheryl: Barney he got friends in, in his book… He magic. Int: What do these books look like, the Barney books? I don’t think I’ve read’ em. Cheryl: The books,//the books is just like the Care Bear books. It’s on TV on channel nine in the morning. Int: Where’d you get these books from? Cheryl: From, the book fair… You have to have a dollar to buy one, a book. Int: How do you pick them out? Cheryl: You just go over there and see what book you like and then you get it. Int: How did you choose that book? Cheryl: It was for my little sister. I read it to her.
Cheryl positioned herself as a reader in relation to the materials, activities and relationships associated with reading. She defined reading as a purposeful activity. That is, she read to experience adventures and characters through books, upstairs in her room. She liked Care Bears, in particular, because ‘it have a lot of adventures in it’ and one of the characters is ‘magical’. We see a cultural model of reading books connected to her stance of wonder, enthusiasm and excitement. She stepped into the story world of the books, re-voicing the characters (line 10) and making intertextual links between the books and television shows (line 14). Later, she role-played a humorous interaction with her mother in the kitchen saying, ‘I’d go on an adventure and start readin.’ In her imagined dialogue, her mom said to her, ‘You can go on your own journey upstairs now so I can finish cooking dinner.’ Not only does she read to experience stories and characters but to share them with her sister. Her home relationships were an important part of her developing identity as a reader.
The purpose and goal of reading at school stood in stark contrast to the home domain. In the school domain, she initially defined the cultural model of reading by words and sub-skill processes (phonics, sounding out words and dictation) (discourse). She stated at school, ‘I don’t really read that much.’ She maintained a positive stance toward herself as a reader but the excitement, relationships and intertextual connections apparent in the home domain are not present in the domain of school (style).
Figured World 2 – School: ‘I don’t really read that much in her class.’
Int: Could you draw yourself as a reader in your classroom? Cheryl: I don’t really read that much in her class. Int: You don’t really read too much in her class? Why don’t you draw what comes to your mind when you think about yourself as a reader in Ms. M.’s class.////((CB stares at INT)) Well let’s talk about it first and see if a picture comes to your mind. Tell me about the kind of reading you do in Ms. M.’s class? Cheryl: Sometimes we read The Three Little Pigs and then/the uh sometimes we go on the carpet and then we do the words. Int: Tell me about that. Cheryl: We read the words off the board. Int: What are some examples? Cheryl: Is, I, am, a, are, could, did Int: And then what do you do? Cheryl: It, was, could, like Int: Then what happens? Cheryl: And then we go back to our seat and do phonics. Int: What are phonics? Cheryl: When you have book, we have little bitty books we do. We do our work pages and then we write the word that belongs there… Phonics is I’ll call it it’s the book that’s called. It’s the name of it.
At home she had an expanded concept of reading – going on adventures and reading with her family. In school, her concept of literacy was limited to words, work pages, phonics and reading ‘little bitty books’. Whereas she read a lot at home, at school she stated, ‘I don’t really read that much.’ Her talk about reading was laboured with long pauses between the interviewer’s repeated prompts and her responses. She defined reading in terms of work and also a genre (fairy tales) – a broad literary classification – versus the specificity of titles, stories and characters as we saw as she talked about the Care Bears. It was also defined as reading words, not in books, but ‘off the board’ (line 6). Cheryl described the activity of reading in her classroom through a description of the different locations – on the board (line 6) and seatwork (line 12). Implicitly, she communicated the roles and procedures that govern reading time in her classroom (e.g. ‘we go back to our seats and do phonics’). Reading is associated with ‘work pages’ and writing ‘words that belong’. She did not mention any relationships with characters or people. Looking across the two figured worlds, we see the work she had to do to negotiate two very different cultural models of reading.
The ‘good student’: Tamika
Tamika was a second grader in Ms Murphy’s classroom. She enjoyed spending time with her family and friends and her favourite activities were dancing and drawing. Some of the books she enjoyed reading were I Make Clay Pots (Guided Reading Level (GRL) D), Dancing (GRL C) and Jazz Baby (GRL G). She was very excited about Jazz Baby because her aunt had recently introduced her to jazz music. As a reader, she recognized the rhythm of the book and danced in her seat as she read the book. Tamika learned to see herself as a writer who had a message to communicate. She wrote a story entitled Snowballs and Hot Cocoa with a beginning, middle and end, as well as several conflicts, multiple characters and dialogue.
She discussed many genres of reading and writing as well as different literacy events. She specified the locations for reading – the library, the table in her classroom, the classroom. She was very aware of the rules and procedures surrounding literacy events at school. She discussed the rules for borrowing books from the library and how you must pay for them if you ‘tear ‘em up’. She also mentioned grades, tests, going to the office and teacher notes. There were several instances where behaviours were mentioned in relation to reading. For instance, she stated, ‘I sound out my words when I get in trouble.’ Here, trouble refers to getting stuck on a word when reading but it takes on a double meaning in the context of a domain defined through rules and behaviours. Tamika’s case is a clear reminder that she was learning not only about literacy but about the roles available to her in the figured world of the classroom.
Figured World 1: ‘You take ‘em to your table and read them.’
Tamika: Open Court reading is fun! Int: It’s fun. Can you tell me about it? Tamika: It’s when you do Open Court reading and then we get free time book reading you and you go get two like three little books and then after you take’ em to your table and you read them. Int: What does your teacher do when it’s Open Court reading time? Tamika: She helps she helps us with the words we need help with. Int: Uh huh. Tamika: Then after we get done doin’ that then she she give us good notes and she calls our mom if we be bad. Int: Uh huh. Tamika: If you don’t be really good she gonna she’s gonna send you to the office.
Tamika’s affinity toward school-defined reading was high. She exclaimed of the scripted reading programme, ‘Open Court is fun!’ She stated that hard books are books where there is no real connection (style). She demonstrated an affinity with reading and writing and saw herself as a reader and writer, telling stories that she has read, heard and written (discourse/style). She stated, ‘I be reading good in the classroom…. Cause I sound out my words when I get in trouble.’ Interesting that here we heard the mixing of discipline and classroom order with reading behaviors. She stepped into the role of the teacher several times during this domain (genre, affinity toward teacher). In one excerpt she explained what she does when she gets to an unknown word, shifting into giving a lesson to other children. She stated, ‘this is a lesson for all the kids that don’t know how to spell a lot.’ Her relationships in the school domain were adult oriented and positive. The collective pronoun ‘we’ was used frequently to refer to her classmates and her teacher, indicating that she viewed herself as a full participant in the classroom.
Figured World 2: Rules, procedures and James and the Giant Peach
Int: Ok. So here is Ms. M. and you’re going to pretend that you’re Ms. M. telling the class that it’s time for reading. And then you’re going to pretend what Tamika might say back to Ms. M. Tamika:((as teacher)) It’s time for reading. ((as Tamika)) Ok Ms. M. Int: And then what would happen? Tamika: And then I go ((as teacher)), “Pick two little books.” ((walks doll as if to pick out books)) Int: And what are you doin’ now? Tamika: ((as teacher)) “Go to your table reading really quiet.” ((sits doll down and puts hands together as if she is reading)) ((as teacher)) “Book time is over. Put your books back in order.” ((as Tamika)) “Ms. M. I still have to finish my book.” ((as teacher)) “Oh well you got to go put it back.” ((walks doll away to put book away)) ((as teacher)) “Put your head down at your table.” ((puts doll’s head down)) “Do some maths.” ((uses crayon in doll’s hand and writes a maths problem)) “Now ((as teacher, pretending to read aloud)) And then now listen to the story. When it was a giant peach and this is this boy named James so he his mom and them got ate by a monster that came out of the zoo. It was a lion. So they died and they go the people and they died and then and then and then he had to live with his aunties aunt spiker and aunt sponge they was always mean to him. They made him clean up the backyard when at night and then they made him to sleep on the cardboard in the closet and then that we gonna stop here. Go back to your table and do dictation.”
As she reconstructed the teacher’s routine for preparing the students for a read-aloud, we gained insight into how Tamika saw the figured world of her classroom. The imagined scenario between her and the teacher (Tamika playing both parts) was a running narration of the directions that the teacher gave to the students before, during and after the read-aloud of James and the Giant Peach. She re-voiced nine commands that her teacher gave to the class. The commands were structured through order, discipline and time. Her commands functioned to create structure and order in her classroom by disciplining bodies through monitoring and regulating bodily movements and regulating time. The following commands were examples of disciplining bodies: ‘go to your table reading really quiet’, ‘put your head down at your table’, ‘go back to your table and do dictation’, ‘you got to go put it back’. The following directives are examples of control through regulating time: ‘it’s time for reading’, ‘book time is over. Put your books back in order’, ‘and now listen to the story’. On the inscription of the literate body through pedagogic discourse, Luke (1992: 112) says: ‘Discourse operates on the subject not as an abstract set of ideas… but as a material set of processes, power actively marks or brands bodies as social, inscribing them with the attributes of subjectivity.’
At one point in the imagined dialogue, Tamika protested against the teacher’s statement and directive ‘Book time is over. Put your books back in order.’ Tamika stated, ‘I still have to finish my book’ (line 6). Her teacher disregarded her protest and told her, ‘Oh well you got to go put it back.’ This imagined dialogue suggested that her reading in the classroom was interrupted by the procedures and timescales of schooled literacy. Thus, Tamika rehearsed the collective identity offered through literacy activities in the classroom. As Luke (1992: 123) states, ‘Possession of this identity is marked on and by the body – moving and still, seeing and hearing, speaking and silent.’ This further demonstrates Rowe et al.’s (2001) notion that the structures and spaces in the classroom contribute significantly to a child’s construction of literacy knowledge.
‘I be in another class for reading’: Darius
Darius was a second grade student in Ms Adam’s classroom. He was a creative student who enjoyed drawing. Both at home and school he enjoyed partner reading because, as he explained, ‘you can get it done faster’. At home he read Spiderman books with his brother and cousin and defined reading as a collaborative event. His sense of ability was relatively high when he spoke of himself as a reader at home, even though he was not overly enthusiastic about reading in either domain. At school, he talked about himself as a reader who negotiated two spaces – the classroom and remedial reading class.
Figured World 1: Remedial Reading Class
Darius: We do, we do stuff in our books. We read and then she, we answer the questions in the book. Int: What types of questions? Darius: They answer the questions then you supposed, they put the first beginning and then you answer the last word, they give you two words, and one of them is the right answer. Int: What types of books do you read? Darius: In our phonics books. And this other book that I do not know the name of. Int: Who chooses the books? Darius: At the end, when I came back to my before I come home to my class, we, she let us, she let us choose two books. She calls our name, she calls our name to pick two books to be sittin’ on the carpet reading with.
Darius positioned himself as part of the community of practice of his remedial reading class with the use of the collective pronoun ‘we’ (line 1). They read ‘phonics books’ and another book that he could not recall. The students were given two choices for each comprehension question and ‘one of them is the right answer’ (line 3). He described some amount of free choice reading when ‘she [the teacher] let us choose two books’ (line 7). Darius positioned himself as passive in this sentence, with the teacher as the agent. He described the procedures of the teacher calling their name and directing them where to sit with their books (line 7).
A telling statement was made when Darius talked about returning to his regular classroom. He stated, ‘before I come home to my class…’ (line 7). He used the analogy of his home to refer to his regular classroom. This indicated that he viewed being in his remedial reading class as being ‘away from home.’ This sense of being a foreigner, even in the home classroom, was emphasized as he positioned himself as a passive observer during reading time in the classroom.
In the context of his remedial reading class, he displayed very little confidence in himself as a reader (style). When he was asked what he chooses to read, he referenced the ease of the books as opposed to their content.
Int: What types of books do you like to choose? Darius: All books that I can read. Int: What is a book that you can read? Darius: One with all easy words. Int: Can you tell me about those? Darius: Small, small words. And words that are easy to pronounce. Int: What makes a word easy to pronounce? Darius: Their spelling. You can sound’ em out.
He represented a low sense of ability as a reader because he chose books with easy words that were easy to pronounce. Here, we learn that Darius thought that figuring out words means pronouncing them correctly instead of using strategic problem solving. He stated, ‘When I get to it [an unknown word] I guess the ending. When I get the beginning I guess the ending. Then I go back to my seat and keep on reading.’ His independent figuring out of words included guessing.
Darius explained that after his remedial reading class, he returned to his home classroom. At ‘the end of the day’, the whole class gets together for a group reading exercise. He stated the following about his reading in his classroom.
Figured World 2: Reading in his ‘home classroom’
Darius: At the, almost at the end of the day we read books. Int: Uh hum. Darius: We read that book [Open Court] and we keep on readin’ till we get to the end of the book ((rocking in his chair)). When it’s almost the end of the day, we read some pages because we go slow so we can understand the words cause she asks us questions, what happens in the story.
Darius’s focus on ‘the end of the day’ (repeated twice) indicated the marginalization of reading and himself as a reader in the space-time of the school day. He defined reading during this whole group activity in terms of completion (e.g. ‘keep readin’ till we get to the end of the book’), pages, rate of reading (e.g. ‘we go slow’), understanding the words and comprehension questions. While his description included understanding, nowhere did he discuss the content of the books he reads. We can hear traces of schooled literacy bleeding into his narratives about reading. Darius used the collective pronoun ‘we’ repeatedly in this excerpt, signalling the internalization of the discipline of collective readership, which entails the disciplining of the body, eyes and mouth. The group monitored the speed of the reading (‘we go slow’) because the teacher will monitor their comprehension (‘cause she asks us questions’) at the end of their reading. However, in the next excerpt, when the focus shifted to a discussion of reading, he positioned himself as an outsider to the group.
Darius: I listen while they talk. Int: What do they talk about? Darius: They talk, they answer her questions. Int: Who is they? Darius: Everybody in my class. She asks them questions. I mean they ask her questions. Int: What do they ask her? Darius: They ask – answer her questions. They answer her questions. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong. Int: During reading time, do you ask questions? Darius: No, I just listen to theirs.
Darius located himself as an observer of his class, rather than a participant (lines 1, 9). He did not include himself in his description ‘everybody in my class’ (line 5). Further, his repeated use of the third person pronoun (lines 1, 3, 7 and 9) positioned him on the periphery of the reading event. People position themselves – and are positioned – through words, bodily reactions, glances and relationships. These often imperceptible yet defining marks can become significant in shaping one’s self-perception at different moments, with each mark growing into layers that ‘thicken’ through experience (Holland and Leander, 2004). Darius is learning his place as a literate person in the figured world of his classrooms.
Discussion and conclusion
Children rehearse certain voices and identities, ignore others and create a personally negotiated hybrid of the literate identities that are available to them. Our purposes in highlighting young children’s literacy stories in this research are threefold: (a) to complicate understandings of young children’s literate identities; (b) to demonstrate the configuration of ways of representing and being across and within domains of literate practice; and (c) to make a case for how critical discourse analysis can highlight the discursive encoding of literate identifications so that productive interventions might be established.
First and second graders are in the process of developing their literate identities. These children, as we have shown, are developing identifications towards literacy practices and processes that could sediment into productive or counterproductive literate identities. Multiple narratives – or storied selves – hang in the balance for these children.
Because young children’s cultural models are still under development, it is important to look carefully at the kinds of discourse configurations that exist within their narratives. In reviewing the three telling cases provided above, we see that, in some cases, their cultural models of reading are in alignment at both home and school. In other cases, different cultural models of reading exist within a domain. Similarly, some students’ agency and sense of self in relation to reading remained high at both home and school, regardless of how reading was defined. For other students there was a noticeable difference in their sense of self and relationship to reading in different domains.
In Cheryl’s case, the discourse of reading at home was characterized by storytelling, adventures and a love of storytelling. At school, she described reading as sounding out words and completing phonics activities. For Cheryl, two very different cultural models of reading exist. Her sense of her ability in relation to reading remained high in both domains, regardless of how she defined reading. However, her enthusiasm toward reading decreased markedly in the domain of school. Thus, for Cheryl, there is movement or flux in both the ‘ways of representing’ (discourses) and ‘ways of being’ (style). The movement in discourse patterns suggests her literate identity is still very much under formation.
By way of contrast, Tamika seems to have a more stable sense of self (or ‘ways of being’) in relation to literacy, regardless of how it is defined. In her case, we saw two very different cultural models of reading articulated within the domain of school (decoding, phonics activities and literature). Her sense of self – her ability orientation, her enthusiasm and affect toward reading, and her agency – remained high, regardless of the cultural model of reading they were connected to.
Whether in the remedial reading class or the regular classroom, Darius defined reading as an individual endeavour defined by reading phonics books, answering the teacher’s questions and completing reading passages. In contrast to Tamika, his sense of self in relation to reading is low in both spaces. That is, the discourse of reading as a sub-skill set of processes is linked to a low sense of ability, a passive stance towards reading and a lack of enthusiasm. This stood in contrast to his cultural model of reading at home, which he defined as a collaborative practice where he experienced success. Like Tamika, his identity with schooled literacy seems more thickened and his cultural model of reading seems more completely tangled up with the school’s definition of reading. Some conflict still exists, however between how he views reading and himself as a reader at home and at school.
Which cultural model and associated sense of self will become dominant for Darius, Tamika and Cheryl? The answer to this question depends very much on the kinds of social practices they will have access to in and out of school and the kinds of participation afforded to them within those practices. The findings speak volumes about the importance of early intervention conceptualized not just as intervention into the literacy process but into the process of identification. That is, as literacy practitioners, we want to create space for the literate identifications that these children bring with them from their home and community as well as from their popular culture and media-saturated lives (Marsh, 2003; Pahl and Kelly, 2005). These are the places where children’s identifications with literacy are strong and where they view themselves as agents, using literacies for real purposes. Literacy interventions should not seek to reconcile their ‘storied selves’ into one neat identity. Indeed, people enact different roles in different contexts. This kind of intervention – one that focuses on the identities associated with literacy practices – might lead to more fluidity between children’s storied domains.
This suggests the importance of contexts and conditions where reading and writing are meaning-based experiences and connected to subjects children find relevant. Further, making ample time for approximating literate identifications and roles is crucial. We know that children try on or approximate roles during literacy experiences, and more so at school. They quickly come to understand that there are reading ‘behaviours’ their teachers look for. We often accept these approximations in writing. However, in reading, it is harder to detect, or define, and therefore harder to honour. Children’s literacy identities are as much a part of their reading knowledge base as the skills and strategies they possess. Their complex and rich perceptions of themselves as readers guide educators in their efforts to help children become confident, independent and lasting readers.
Finally, as researchers, we must consider our own contributions to the construction of meanings made throughout this research process. We came to this experience with deep-rooted beliefs about the importance of identity in the construction of literate beings. While we have attempted to articulate the children’s complex and multifaceted stories, we can only report what is revealed and that can only ever be partial. These narratives are how the children represented themselves at one moment to an adult – an adult they perceived to be a literacy teacher and researcher and, thus, an outsider. We recognize that we are layering our (adult) interpretations onto theirs. For example, the children often referenced characters and stories that were a part of their lived culture, such as Care Bears and Barney. We had to actively deconstruct the possible meanings of these references, given that we are not as familiar with their popular culture. Another example of this can be understood when we look at the children’s reading programme, Open Court. As professors and researchers of literacy, we came to this experience with assumptions and critiques about scripted programmes. Again, we had to work to ensure our interpretations more accurately reflected the children’s genuine meaning when speaking of their school experiences, as opposed to ours.
We have deconstructed what the children have said so that we might gain additional insight, into our identities, but there are risks to this approach. We questioned ourselves throughout the process: Have we consolidated identities where they are not yet sedimented? Have we unnecessarily captured domains of practice as separate entities when perhaps the children view them as more fluid? We view our analyses as glimpses into the kinds of identity work that is possible as well as likely for young children. However, future research should continue to look at the multimodal representations of young children’s literate identifications and should go on to study the long-term trajectories of their literate narrations.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Liesl Buechler and Melinda Heaton for their assistance with data collection and analysis.