Reading the Child: Leveraging Multimodal Narratives in Teacher Professional Learning to Enact Democratic Literacy Education

• In Event: 66.089 - Sheraton Roundtable Session 13 - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 66.089-9 - The Digital Landscape: Multimodal Narratives in the Early Childhood Landscape

Abstract

In this presentation, we explore how collaborative, participatory approaches to professional learning for pre- and in-service teachers can support the creation and enactment of learner-responsive, context-specific literacy pedagogies that move beyond a narrow set of literacy skills. Specifically, we consider two unique studies of professional learning where the use of multimodal strategies alongside collaborative professional learning created opportunities for pre- and in-service teachers to (re)consider the pedagogies they had planned and how they were taken up by young children. Through these case studies, we offer various illustrations of “reading” the child that prompted the development of responsive literacy pedagogies, inviting children to be curricular-informants, and thus forwarding more democratic literacy classrooms.

Authors

• Lori McKee, Saint Francis Xavier University

• Tara-Lynn Scheffel, Nipissing University

• Rachel May Heydon, University of Western Ontario