Eve E. Gregory

Sisters and Brothers as Language and Literacy Teachers: Synergy between Siblings Playing and Working Together

Over the past three decades numerous studies from the English-speaking world have pointed to the advantages for young children of family involvement in their literacy development. However, their emphasis has always been firmly and almost exclusively upon parentsworking with children in specific waysand often using school-sanctioned materials. This article investigates the role played by young siblings close in age in each others’ literacy development and argues for a unique reciprocity in learning between older and younger child. Thus it steps outside hitherto recognized paradigms of ‘scaffolding’ and ‘collaborative learning’. This reciprocity of learning I refer to as a synergywhereby siblings act as adjuvants, stimulating and fostering each others’ development. Using examples from Bangladeshi and Anglo children living in East London, the article traces ways in which synergy takes place between dyads through play activities in home and community contexts.

Bilingual Learning for Second and Third Generation Children.

Throughout the English-speaking world, children from bilingual backgrounds are being educated in mainstream classrooms where they have little or no opportunity to use their mother tongue. Second and third generation children, in particular, are assumed to be learning sufficiently through English only. This study investigated how British Bangladeshi children, learning Bengali in after-school classes but mostly more fluent in English than in their mother tongue, responded when able to use their full language repertoire within the mainstream curriculum. Through action research with mainstream and community language class teachers, bilingual literacy and numeracy tasks were devised and carried out with pupils aged seven to eleven in two East London primary schools. The bilingual activities were video-recorded and analysed qualitatively to identify the strategies used. The following cognitive and cultural benefits of bilingual learning discovered by researchers in other contexts were also found to apply in this particular setting: conceptual transfer, enriched understanding through translation, metalinguistic awareness, bicultural knowledge and building bilingual learner identities. The findings suggest that second and third generation children should be enabled to learn bilingually, and appropriate strategies are put forward for use in the mainstream classroom.

Siblings bridging literacies in multilingual contexts

It is a common assumption that economically disadvantaged and ethnic-minority families are unlikely to share similar educational aims, beliefs and values to those of teachers. Such families are assumed to participate in very different home literacy practices from those of the school and children’s early reading difficulties have been attributed to such cultural differences. However, such dissonance is not always found. This paper explores the reciprocity of beliefs and literacy practices between two schools and their respective communities in London’s East End. The literacy practices, both in school and out of school, of Bangladeshi British and Anglo-British primary school children were monitored and play activities between siblings recorded and analysed. The results showed older siblings reflecting the values of both community and school as they blended practices from each domain in their play with their younger brothers and sisters.

Introducing Literacy to Four Year Olds: Creating Classroom Cultures in Three Schools

A principal aim of the National Curriculum in England was to ensure equality of opportunity for all children, regardless of race or social class. This aim was strengthened through the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy 10 years later which set out to standardize not just the literacy curriculum itself but also the materials and methods used to teach it. But are children living in very different economic circumstances really given equal access to literacyduring their first year in school? This article first uses insights from the work of Bourdieu on the economic, social and cultural capital or resources possessed by families and Bernstein on different curricula and pedagogic discourse to explain why some children are likely to have more success than others in making sense of classroom learning. It then goes on to argue that neither theory can fully account for children’s progress and shows how one teacher creates a particular culture with her class that defies existing paradigms of social class, capital and early school success.

Snow White in different guises: Interlingual and intercultural exchanges between grandparents and young children at home in East London

Grandparents play a significant role in childcare and one activity that frequently occurs within this context is story-reading. However, relatively little attention has been given to the potential part that grandparents can play in terms of language and literacy development of young children.This article reports on work investigating the interlingual and intercultural exchanges occurring in a home setting in East London. In particular, it focuses on how the traditional heritage pattern of story and rhyme reading by a grandmother of Bengali origin is fused with practices experienced by her six-year old grandchild.The data reveal not only the multiple worlds inhabited by the grandchild during story-reading but also the syncretism of these worlds on a number of levels.This article contributes to the small but growing body of investigation into the reading styles occurring within families from different cultural backgrounds.

Playful talk: the interspace between home and school discourse

The paper reminds readers of the importance of ‘playful talk’ in bridging home and school discourses. Through a number of excerpts of bilingual and monolingual children drawn from homes and classrooms over the past decade, it illustrates how school discourse may be taken home and transformed into ‘home talk’ through play. During this transformation, children take ownership of both the language and cultural practice of the classroom. Similarly, it shows the importance of providing the interspace for children to bring home talk into classrooms during socio‐dramatic play. The paper also illustrates the role of family members, particularly siblings and grandparents, in enabling young children to construct bridges between home and school during play activities. Finally, the paper stresses the importance of teachers in recognizing childrens different linguistic and cultural resources in their classroom practices and provision.

Intergenerational Learning Events Around the Computer: A Site for Linguistic and Cultural Exchange

The computer is widely recognised as a cultural tool with the potential to enhance learning, and children are considered to develop ICT skills with particular facility. However, young children still require assistance in order to gain the maximum educational benefit. This study investigates how such assistance was given to 3–6 year olds by their grandparents in Sylheti/Bengali-speaking families and monolingual English-speaking families living in East London. A multimodal analysis of video-recorded computer activities reveals the reciprocity of teaching and learning taking place between the generations. In each case, grandparents and grandchildren combined their resources in order to negotiate the activity, with adults usually providing knowledge of literacy and numeracy whilst children helped with computer skills. The intergenerational exchange was especially evident in Sylheti/Bengali-speaking families, where grandparents were less familiar with English or with the computer and operated bilingually with their grandchildren to co-construct learning. However, the support offered by grandparents was found to have common elements in all families, as they helped children to structure the learning event, maintain concentration and accomplish tasks relying on linguistic and cultural knowledge.

Cultural assumptions and early years’ pedagogy: The effect of the home culture on minority children's interpretation of reading in school

Abstract This paper examines the contrasting interpretations of reading brought by young children of Bangladeshi origin and their teachers into school and the implications of these differences for teaching and learning. The author begins by questioning the universal relevance of western school‐oriented paradigms on how reading is learned and the role of the caregiver as mediator and opposes these with a model of literacy drawn from non‐western and non‐school‐oriented families. In the project described an analysis is made of the reading practices participated in by young children of Bangladeshi origin outside school in terms of purpose, materials and participation structures. It shows how these reading practices contrast at every level with those upheld by the teacher in school. Finally, the possible results of these contrasting practices and interpretations for childrens early school reading success are discussed. If learning is acknowledged as developing within shared conceptual frameworks, programmes w...

Home to School and School to Home: Syncretised Literacies in Linguistic Minority Communities.

This paper argues for the need to move beyond the paradigm of parental involvement in childrens early literacy through story-reading practice, which presently informs home/school reading programmes, to consider a wider framework for family and community involvement. The first part of the paper examines the literature informing the current model showing the marked absence of studies on the different literacy practices in which children from new immigrant/minority ethnic families engage and which may be different from those of their teachers. This prevailing mainstream paradigm is illustrated through the experiences of two young children reading with their mother and sister. The second part of the paper draws upon findings from research projects investigating the home, school and community reading practices of new immigrant families in east London and compares them with families that do conform to the prevailing paradigm for successful involvement. Finally, it suggests principles for inclusive education for minority families.

The ‘insider/outsider’ dilemma of ethnography: Working with young children and their families in cross-cultural contexts

In this article we unravel the difficulty of being researchers in the homes and classrooms of children and their families whose origins are, for one of us, very different and, for the other, very similar to our own. We first situate our work within theories of early socialization and literacy teaching which underpin our understanding of how young children in cross-cultural contexts learn. We then turn to the question of working with the families and teachers of these children which poses dilemmas not explained by the theories presented. We illustrate these through a series of vignettes typifying both the ‘Outsider’ and the ‘Insider’ role. The stories highlight paradigmatic moments of complexity, clashes or collusion which we unpick in terms of their generalizability for others working in the field. Finally, we extend theories of dialogue in our search for a methodology for collaborative work in future cross-cultural ethnographic studies.