Teletubby Tales: Popular Culture in the Early Years Language and Literacy Curriculum

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Literacy Curriculum ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Field Notes

The aim of the study reported in this article was to explore the potential that popular culture has for motivating young children to engage in literacy and oracy practices in the early years. Pre-school settings and schools regularly fail to take account of children's popular cultural interests in their development of curriculum content. Literacy practices in most nurseries and schools are located within dominant cultural discourses and in the case of many industrialised societies, this means that the curriculum usually reflects the cultural norms of white middle-class communities. In an attempt to disrupt these dominant discourses, literacy activities related to the television programme Teletubbies were introduced into two nurseries in England. Data were gathered using field notes, photographs and interviews. The article discusses how the incorporation of popular cultural texts into the curriculum provided motivation and excitement for many children, some of whom were not usually willing members of the ‘literacy club’.

scholarly journals For Loretta: A Black Woman Literacy Scholar’s Journey to Prioritizing Self-Preservation and Black Feminist–Womanist Storytelling

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
April Baker-Bell
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Life Span ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Tenure Track ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Literacy Research

In this article, I used Black feminist–womanist storytelling to weave together stories from my childhood and early years on the tenure track to illuminate how Black female language and literacy practices and the strongblackwoman trope develop across a life span. Through these stories, I illustrate how I existed, resisted, and persisted during my first 3 years on the tenure track as a Black woman and emerging language and literacy scholar with a family. This research is significant as scholarship that centers Black women literacy researchers’ lived experiences is missing from the field. As such, this work contributes to presenting a fuller narrative of Black women literacy researchers’ experiences and working lives within and beyond the academy. This research also expands the field’s knowledge of what counts as literacy research by understanding the complex racial and gendered life span literacies of a literacy researcher of color. It is important for institutions and organizations to consider the knowledge, experiences, and stories I include in this article as recommendations to sustain Black women in academic spaces and shift the culture of academia to better support Black women’s work and journeys.

The Laundromat as the Transnational Local: Young Children's Literacies of Interdependence

2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
MarÍa Paula Ghiso
Keyword(s):  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Multimodal Literacy ◽  
Literacy Curriculum ◽  
Transnational Identities ◽  
Feminist Theories

Background The learning of students from (im)migrant backgrounds has long been a consideration for the field of education. The “transnational” turn in research has brought to the forefront the need to account for students’ language and literacy practices as situated within multiple national affiliations, fluid migration histories, global technological networks, and plural identities. Understanding the global/local dynamics of young children's literacies across contexts can help us consider how the literacy curriculum specifically, and educational institutions more broadly, may be reimagined to be more attuned to their transnational experiences. Focus Informed by Chicana and transnational feminist theories, this study examines how first grade Latina/o emergent bilinguals interacted with a literacy curriculum that sought to value their transnational experiences and multilingual repertoires, specifically by integrating photography and writing as a platform for children to inquire into community experiences they identified as salient. The curricular invitations were designed as a Third Space hat unsettled the often-reified boundaries between what counts as academic literacy learning in school and the practices and experiences of Latina/o children in out-of-school contexts. Research Design A total of 103 six- and seven-year-olds over the two years participated in this ethnographic and practitioner research study. One hundred and one identified as Latina/o, and all qualified for free and reduced lunch. Data sources (children's writings and photographs; audio recordings; interviews with the teachers and children; researcher reflective memos; and fieldnotes of participant observation in the school and community) were coded using thematic and visual analysis, with attention to how specific textual or discursive features functioned socioculturally. Findings/Conclusions I focus on one of the prominent themes in the data—the community space of the Laundromat—to discuss how the children participated in literacies of interdependence that linked individual flourishing with community wellbeing through their care work in supporting their families. I use the term literacies of interdependence to refer to young children's multilingual and multimodal literacy practices that both reflected and enacted their cultural practices of mutuality. Through transactions with neighborhood spaces as texts, the children surfaced multiple and contrasting narratives of immigration and inquired into their transnational identities. Findings from this study point to how researchers and educators may be more attentive to Latina/o children's values and practices of interdependence and understand the “transnational local” as embodied in concrete spaces within their lived experiences.

“Stealing Stuff Is about the Stuff, not the Stealing”: Rick and Morty and Narrative Instability

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-94
Author(s):  
Łukasz Muniowski
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Video Games ◽  
The Third ◽  
Narrative Device ◽  
Cultural Texts

Rick and Morty, one of the most popular presently-airing American TV series, is deeply rooted in popular culture. Each episode is full of allusions and references to other cultural texts, accentuating the show’s own status as a pop cultural text. This article analyzes the third episode of the fourth season of Rick and Morty, “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty,” using Stefan Schubert’s concept of narrative instability. The episode mocks twist films by introducing a ridiculous number of twists, eventually making the viewer immune to the element of surprise usually brought on by what Schubert understands as unstable moments. In doing so, the episode also emphasizes the overuse of that narrative device in recent decades in films, TV series and video games. “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty” deconstructs twist films while sticking to the rules of the sub-genre and remaining entertaining in its own right. Instability can pose quite a problem for the showrunners, who usually have to adjust to the norms of serialized storytelling. By using Schubert’s theory of narrative instability to discuss a singular episode of a series, I hope to demonstrate the extent to which this quality has permeated modern storytelling. The episode highlights the effects of over-reliance on narrative instability as a tool, as even the most elaborate form is not enough to make up for the lack of essence. This is exactly what Rick criticizes in the episode, when he states: “stealing stuff is about the stuff, not the stealing.”

“Make Sure You See This”: Counternarratives of Multilingual Black Girls’ Language and Literacy Practices

2021 ◽  
pp. 238133772110382
Author(s):  
Vivian E. Presiado ◽  
Brittany L. Frieson
Keyword(s):  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Bilingual Programs ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Dominant Narratives

Critical scholarship in bilingualism and bilingual education has documented multiple ways that the rich language and literacy practices of Black children participating in bilingual education programs are often erased in favor of dominant narratives about the literacy practices of their White Mainstream English–speaking peers. Utilizing Black girl literacies, raciolinguistics, and translanguaging as theoretical orientations, and counternarratives as an analytical tool, this article presents a cross-case analysis of two ethnographic case studies that explored how multilingual Black American girls enrolled in an elementary dual-language bilingual education program employed their literacies to navigate their social worlds, by challenging raciolinguistic ideologies and hegemonic systems of oppression in their daily lives. It also presents the nuanced nature of multilingual Black girls’ literacies and the various roles that they serve, which are often ignored in multilingual spaces. The need to learn from multilingual Black girls’ counternarratives is emphasized by engaging in a deeper sociopolitical understanding of the complex issues that Black girls face on a regular basis, which are often extended in bilingual spaces. Specifically, we call for educators to create critical translanguaging spaces that honor multidimensional counternarratives and intimately connect with the unique epistemologies and literacies that Black girls in bilingual programs bring to the table.

scholarly journals What was Research for the Peasants of Córdoba? Participation in the Early Years of Participatory Action Research

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Rappaport
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Participatory Action Research ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
National Association ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
The Caribbean

Abstract Reflections on participatory and collaborative research commonly neglect to pay attention to the fact that for community researchers, investigation into their own realities frequently takes forms very different from those of academic scholars. They may use methods that are more explicitly intuitive and may depart from approaches that involve the rigorous collection and systematization of data. This paper explores what research might have meant to the Caribbean peasants of the early 1970s with whom Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda developed his approach to what is today called participatory action research. In particular, it focuses on the field notes of Alfonso Salgado Martínez, a leader of the National Association of Peasant Users-Sincelejo Line (ANUC, Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos-Línea Sincelejo), juxtaposing them to his published work, both read in comparison to Fals Borda's own notes and writings.

scholarly journals Práticas de letramento e whatsapp: estudo de caso no contexto de português como língua de acolhimento, à luz da perspectiva ecológica

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 218-237
Author(s):  
Rosyanne Louise Autran Lourenço ◽  
Eliana Barbosa dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
Learning Process ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Qualitative Case Study ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ecological Perspective ◽  
Data Generation ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Refugee Immigrants

Este artigo visa a apresentar, sob uma perspectiva ecológica de letramento, resultados da análise de práticas sociodiscursivas do processo de ensino-aprendizagem de Português Língua de Acolhimento, de imigrantes refugiados no Brasil, realizadas por meio do WhatsApp. Teoricamente, o estudo circunscreve-se às dimensões analíticas de letramento (MOREAU et al., 2013), sob a perspectiva ecológica dos estudos linguísticos (VAN LIER, 2004, 2010), fundamentando-se em pressupostos referentes aos recursos multimodais das tecnologias digitais (LEFFA, 2006; MORAN, 2013) e à função mediadora da linguagem (VIGOTSKI, 1971), em especial, do Português Língua de Acolhimento (BARBOSA; SÃO BERNARDO, 2017) e de suas implicações referentes à noção de afetividade (LEITE, 2012). Metodologicamente, trata-se de estudo qualitativo de caso (STAKE, 1994), de base etnográfica virtual (SANTOS; GOMES, 2013) cuja geração dos dados ocorreu por meio de observação participante (BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1998) e notas de campo (FETTERMAN, 1998). Sua relevância reside na urgência no processo de imersão de imigrantes refugiados em práticas sociodiscursivas que viabilizem a obtenção de condições mínimas de vida digna e a garantia de autonomia em sua agência no país de destino (COSTA; TAÑO, 2018). Os resultados da pesquisa sugerem que a abordagem ecológica de práticas de letramento em ambiente virtual amplia a compreensão das articulações inerentes ao processo de ensino-aprendizagem de línguas, propiciando ao docente melhores condições de promover a autonomia dos estudantes, em contexto de imigração, na condução de soluções que atendam às suas necessidades mais prementes, voltadas para as práticas sociais de imersão no país de chegada.   This article aims to present, in the light of an ecological perspective of literacy, the results of the analysis of sociodiscursive practices of the teaching-learning process of Portuguese as a Host Language, through WhatsApp by refugee immigrants in Brazil. Theoretically, the study is limited to the ecological perspective of linguistic studies (VAN LIER, 2004, 2010) and analytical literacy dimensions (MOREAU ET AL., 2013) based on assumptions regarding the multimodal resources of digital technologies (LEFFA, 2006; MORAN, 2013) and the mediating function of language (VIGOTSKI, 2009) in particular the Portuguese Host Language (BARBOSA; SÃO BERNARDO, 2017) and its implications regarding the notion of affectivity (LEITE, 2012). Methodologically, it is a qualitative case study (STAKE, 1994) with a virtual ethnographic basis (SANTOS; GOMES, 2013) whose data generation occurred through participant observation (BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1998) and field notes (FETTERMAN, 1998). Its relevance resides in the urgency in the process of refugee immigrants sociodiscursive practices that make it possible to obtain minimum conditions of dignified life and guarantee autonomy at their agency in the destination country (COSTA; TAÑO, 2018). The research results suggest that the ecological approach to literacy practices in a virtual environment broadens the understanding of the articulations inherent to the language teaching-learning process, providing the teacher better conditions to promote the autonomy of the students in the context of immigration, in driving solutions that meet their pressing sociodiscursive needs, focused on social immersion practices in the country of arrival.

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