Child Cultures Schooling and Literacy

<p>Through analysis of case studies of young children (ages 3 to 8 years) situated in different geographic cultural linguistic political and socioeconomic sites on six continents this book examines the interplay of childhoods schooling and literacies. Written language is situated within particular childhoods as they unfold in school. A key focus is on children’s agency in the construction of their own childhoods. </p><p>The book generates diverse perspectives on what written language may mean for childhoods. Looking at variations in the complex relationships between official (curricular) visions and unofficial (child-initiated) visions of relevant composing practices and appropriate cultural resources it offers first insight into how those relationships may change over time and space as children move through early schooling and second understanding of the dynamics of schools and the experience of childhoods through which the local meaning of school literacy is formulated. Each case—each child in a particular sociocultural site—does not represent an essentialized nation or a people but rather a rich processual depiction of childhood being constructed in particular local contexts and the role if any for composing.</p>