Event Details

This Lancaster Literacy Research Centre event will be a talk from Fernando Guzmán-Simón, Alejandra Pacheco and Eduardo Garcia, titled IMprovement Of multimoDAl LITeracY in childhood (3-8 years old): development of an inclusive model in Areas with Social Transformation Needs (MODALITY).

Abstract:

The failure in the literacy development provided by the school system to children from Areas with Social Transformation Needs requires a profound understanding of the processes concurring and interfering in it. Previous research in international contexts has highlighted the complexity of multimodal literacy, described as dynamic, heterogeneous and vernacular. Children aged 0-8 grow up surrounded by this multimodal literacy, and cohabit with it when they begin their schooling, where their own literacies may get in conflict with the school literacy.

The New Literacy Studies propose a sociocultural approach to the literacy practices. This approach propounds an ideological model comprising new and heterogeneous ways of reading and writing in the 21st century society. The current social changes have led to a concept of literacy in early childhood understood as a spatial and collective practice, where literacy should be analysed as a reality “materialised” in artefacts, screens, embodiments and spaces.

Our research focuses on the ways children articulate space as a social practice, and on how they build new social spaces through the materialisation of literacy, created through the children’s interaction with artefacts, embodiments and screens. Our main objective is the proposition of an inclusive literacy model, where schools become social spaces, culturally negotiated, embodied and materialised by the pupils.

This research analyses the communicative and cultural practices of a group of children from low-income families in different urban contexts in Sevilla (Andalucía, Spain). This goal, combined with the age of the participants (4 to 7 years old), has led us to the adoption of a multimethodological and participative design, derived from the collaborative ethnography.

The participants in this research are children from three schools, aged 4-7, their teachers and their families. The data gathering adopts a multimethodological and collaborative approach, carried out by the researchers and the participants themselves. The data analysis is performed through co-analysis, thus enabling us to focus on the social values of literacy practices.

This research project aims to improve the families’ involvement in the educational processes, in general, and in the literacy in Childhood Education, in particular. This improvement relies on the strengthening of the sense of belonging to diverse communities (school, neighbourhood, etc.) of children and families, developed thanks to a collaborative research on the spaces of social interaction and the materialisation of literacy within children and their families.