Informal Learning Opportunities and Emergent Literacy: An Investigation of Two Low-income American Communities

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

The importance of early language contexts to eventual success with language and literacy in the school years is well documented (e.g., Grover et al., 2019). One language context which has received considerable interest is book reading between caregivers and their young children (e.g., Dickinson & Tabors, 2001). However, book reading is not as straight-forward as it might appear to be at first glance. Several reports have documented different styles incorporated by parents in their reading efforts varying by age of child, gender of parent, social class of family, and parental interaction style (e.g. Justice & Ezell, 2004). While dialogic reading (DR) is the most discussed style of interaction with print between caregivers and children, print referencing (PR; practices that tap into metalinguistic awareness of print features) may confer more sophisticated understandings of print knowledge (Justice & Ezell, 2004). To date, however, there is little discussion of PR outside of clinical contexts and apart from traditional book reading episodes. Moreover, since PR has typically been operationalized within contexts of traditional book reading practices, we know little about whether young children might learn from PR in environmental print contexts. Neumann (2014) among others has demonstrated that literacy learning from environmental print is especially important for children from lower SES backgrounds, those most at risk for low school achievement. To that end, this study seeks to ask the degree to which PR occurs in everyday interactions between lower-income families and their children as they encounter environmental print as well as books.
We compared the styles of caregivers from two American groups: families from a rural, African American impoverished community in Alabama (AL), and families from a rural, European American working-class community in Indiana (IN). Data included verbatim transcripts of videotaped natural interaction between children and their families at home (n = 12, AL; n = 15, IN). Multiple 30-minute observations exist for each child between the ages of 24 and 42 months (n = 70, AL; n = 135, IN). Initial data collection was ethnographic in nature; transcripts allowed us to identify all instances of familial interaction with print. We coded these instances qualitatively as potential resources for informal learning (Rogoff et al., 2016), questioning how they (a) are organized within the child’s community, and (b) might motivate the child to learn about print.
Results suggest that the IN families employed more referential talk in their storytelling while AL families employed more evaluative talk. IN families relied on the nature of the environmental print itself in their talk about it (e.g., a cereal box tells one about the cereal). By contrast, AL families are more likely to construct stories around the environmental print (e.g., fantasies about items in mail circulars). In addition, the AL families engaged in more metanarrative talk (Malin, Cabrera, & Rowe, 2014), asking about the events and characters in the story more than did the IN mothers. These findings reaffirm the importance of examining emerging literacy behaviors within multiple communities and contexts.

Authors

• Douglas E. Sperry, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College
  Presenting Author

• Mariah C. Stout, Indiana State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Linda L Sperry, Indiana State University
  Non-Presenting Author