So Many Ways to Share a Book: Researching Diverse Home Book Sharing Practices Among Diverse Families

• In Event: Troubling Our Assumptions About Family Literacy: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?

Abstract

Introduction: Educators often share an assumed model of book sharing that generally reflects ‘schooled literacy practices’ (Street & Street, 1991). While many intervention studies have recommended storybook reading as part of a wider modernist agenda to ‘improve’ literacy standards in schools, other studies have treated diversity among home reading interactions as a space for further enquiry (e.g., Rodriguez, Hines & Montiel, 2009). Studies that involve practitioners treating home book sharing practices as sites of knowledge exchange and as conduits for listening to families’ ‘funds of knowledge’ (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti 2005) have been less visible. To date, there has been little research on naturalistic episodes of book-sharing - particularly research constructed and framed by families. In the two studies presented here, families made home videos of book sharing practices, and then, alongside practitioners and researchers, analyzed and discussed these videos.

Methods: The presentation draws on two parallel ethnographic projects conducted with sixteen families across Rotherham and Sheffield, UK, over a six-month period. The researchers and/or practitioners provided FLIP cameras that families used to record their home book sharing practices. The families came from a diverse range of backgrounds and social classes including multilingual/multicultural families. Fathers, grandparents and siblings participated. The researchers drew on sensory ethnography (Pink 2009) and systematically noted the impact of performance and affect (Mackey 2010). Critical discourse analysis (Rogers, 2003) was used to analyze the home video discussions.

Data Sources: In the first study, funded by Booktrust, UK, 196 videos were filmed by eight families in Sheffield. Researchers worked with the families to analyze the videos. In the second study, funded by Yorkshire Forward, based in Rotherham, the families produced 110 videos. Practitioners worked with the families to analyze the videos. In each case, baseline information and interviews were collected documenting families’ home literacy practices. In addition, the families, practitioners and researchers selected key videos for future use with practitioners. In the Sheffield Study, family members photographed their home literacy practices.

Results: This study documents a complex and compelling range of home book sharing practices. Families used multimodal strategies to perform books (Mackey, 2010; Norris, 2004) including gesture, pointing, sound, tactile responses and visual methods. They were able to construct stories using diverse linguistic resources, in different spaces and times within home cultural routines, and in diverse ways, among siblings, grandparents and parents (Gregory et al., 2004). The videos revealed a range of home book sharing practices that unsettled modernist assumptions of book sharing as a particular kind of practice located within a particular frame - the ‘bedtime story’.

Significance: Book sharing rests on a series of cultural models associated with particular norms, practices, and ‘ways with words’ (Heath, 1983; Gee, 1999; Rogoff, 2003). The findings of this study challenge these models while constructing a listening model that de-centers existing relationships among families and schools (Back 2005). Unsettling assumptions about the bedtime story is essential if literacy practitioners are to work effectively with families and move beyond current practices.

Author

• Kate Heron Pahl, The University of Sheffield