Family Literacies

Reading with Young Children

Rachael Levy, Mel Hall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000374117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Family Literacies demonstrates, through reference to empirical research, how shared reading practices operate in a wide range of families, with a view to supporting families in reading with their pre-school children. At the heart of this book, written by two highly experienced experts in the field, is a fascinating project that captured diverse voices, and experiences by parents, children and other family members.

Rachael Levy and Mel Hall deploy a rich and distinctive theoretical framework, drawing on insights from literacy studies, education and sociology. Family Literacies presents an account of shared reading practices in homes, focusing attention on what motivates parents to read with their children as well as revealing what parents may need if they are to begin and sustain shared reading activity. The authors show the many ways in which reading is centrally embedded in many aspects of family life, arguing that this has particular implications for children as they start school. Situated within a socio-cultural discourse, this book explains why it is important to understand how and why shared reading takes place in homes so that all families can be supported in reading with their children.

Family Literacies is essential reading for all those who are studying and researching literacy practices, especially those involving young children. The book will also be of value to students, practitioners and researchers in education and applied linguistics who are working with families and have an interest in the study of family practices. The authors' findings have major implications for how parents can be encouraged to develop positive reading relationships with their children.

1

Reading with young children: an introduction

When we think of children’s reading, as an image, we are faced with a magnitude of possibilities. We may think of small chubby hands clutching a board book, or a teenager engrossed in a tale of wizardry. We might picture shelves of brightly coloured picture books in a library or bookstore, or we might see a child reading from a digital device. Some might see a five-year-old struggling to sound out a word in a reading scheme book, or a thirteen-year-old anxiously waiting to see if they will be asked to read aloud during an English lesson. Or we might see a parent reading a bedtime story to a child. Whatever images come to mind we can be assured that ‘children’s reading’ is not a fixed concept. It can be a hobby, a task, a treat, a skill or a challenge. It can be the reward at the end of a busy day or it can be a chore to be confronted, endured or even avoided. It would be reasonable to suggest that those who are interested enough in children’s reading to pick up this book, probably share a common desire for children to become confident, enthusiastic and independent readers, but it would be a mistake for us, the writers of this book, to assume that we share a universal understanding of what reading actually is and what is needed to help children to engage with reading. The very fact that reading carries a multitude of definitions is a recurring theme in this book and will be addressed in detail.

One important, but surprisingly under-researched activity, which features in the reading lives of some children, is that of reading with young children. Drawing extensively on a research study which was designed to investigate family reading practices, this book examines motivations and barriers to shared reading activity in homes. As authors, our interest in this topic stems from a variety of sources, both professional and personal. It would not surprise anyone to learn that we both enjoy reading as a leisure activity and our informal conversations with one another will often include reference to what we are currently reading, or a recommendation for a particular novel. Mel often speaks of the reading lives of her undergraduate students and is developing this as a research interest. In addition, both Rachael and Mel share an interest in young children’s reading, having worked together on the study reported in this book. This study built on previous research that Rachael has carried out, much of which has focused on the ways in which home and school discourses shape children’s perceptions of reading; however, Rachael’s specific interest in shared reading in the home has also evolved from her own personal history as evident in the following vignette.

Rachael’s Story

I grew up in a small flat, in a quiet town in the south west of Scotland. My parents were not readers; our home had few books and those that we did have tended to be ‘information books’ rather than fictional texts. What is more, these books were rarely read, evident in the fact that they often got used to prop up unstable furniture, or, on one particularly unfortunate occasion, balance a fish tank, which resulted in the book becoming so wet that the pages morphed into one gloopy lump. Yet ‘story’ was a valued feature within my own childhood. Despite limited funds, children’s books were purchased, and these stories were read. My mother read to me regularly; bedtime stories were prioritised; however, shared reading could happen at any time of the day. My father rarely read to me; however, he did tell stories of magical adventures of falling into strange lands (which I now recognise as being shamelessly based on Alice in Wonderland!).

I became a passionate reader throughout my primary years. Some of my fondest memories are of going shopping with my mother and returning with a new Enid Blyton book (or whole set of books on one particularly joyful occasion) accompanied by a packet of chocolate raisins. I read these books over and over again, never questioning the disparity between the lives of the characters in the books and my own world (tuck-boxes and lacrosse did not feature in my own education) but simply enjoying the stories.

What I didn’t realise at the time was that this passion for reading was not only a hobby, but was also laying a foundation for my eventual career, which has included research into children’s perceptions of reading. Of course it is not possible to say with any certainty that my professional life developed as a direct consequence of being read to as a young child; however, as a researcher of literacy practice, I cannot help but reflect on this relationship. I feel fairly certain that I benefitted hugely from being read to as a child, but as my interest in shared reading practices has developed, I have started to ask questions about parents’ motivations for reading with their children. On a personal level, I do wonder what prompted my own mother to read regularly with me, despite the fact that she did not read for pleasure herself at the time (sadly she is no longer around, so I cannot ask this question to her directly). Given that this was a home where educational achievement was rarely discussed, I don’t believe the activity was situated in a desire for educational endeavour. This raises very interesting questions for me about the reasons why parents, and particularly those living in disadvantaged communities, do or do not read with their children. There really is a need for some research into this….

This book is about reading with young children. However, any discussion about reading practices must first begin with an exploration of the term ‘reading’. In particular it is important to reflect on the ways in which definitions of reading have changed over the years and consider the implications of this for children’s present and future reading. We therefore begin with an exploration of the term ‘reading’, before moving on to the concept of ‘shared reading’. The social and emotional benefits of shared reading are acknowledged before we turn to look at existing research into shared reading practices.

What is reading?

In recent years reading has tended to be conceptualised in terms of ‘skill’ and ‘will’; to put it simply, this means having the practical skills needed to decode print and make sense of text and the motivation (will) to want to read (Logan et al., 2011; Medford & McGeown, 2011). Focusing attention on the concepts of ‘skill’ and ‘will’ does help to establish how many researchers and educationalists define reading. For example, this can be seen in The National Literacy Trust’s report on the Read On. Get On (ROGO) campaign, which begins with an attempt to conceptualise what is meant by the term ‘reading’, with a view to understanding what it means to be a reader at age 11. What is clear from the outset is that the concern here is not to understand what ‘reading’ is as such, but to define the concept of ‘reading well’. This seems to assume that we share a definition of reading that is rooted in achieving mastery in reading skill. Fortunately, others have presented definitions that offer more of a balance between the concepts of skill and will; Clark and Teravainen (2017: 2) argue that reading skills can be categorised as ‘a composite of two main cognitive processes: technical skills and comprehension skills’ (p. 2), however, they stress that these cognitive processes alone do not define what reading is, as reading is a ‘tripartite’ of cognitive processes (decoding print and understanding text), affective processes (such as enjoying reading, confidence in reading, etc.) and behaviours (such as reading widely and frequently).

This definition suggests that teaching reading is a dynamic and complex process; it is argued that there is a need to teach skills so that children can decode print and make sense of what they are reading, but this must be situated in a context that continually encourages the ‘will’ to read. This forces us to consider the ways in which school discourses and curricula present definitions of reading. As authors, we recognise that we are writing this from the vantage point of being twenty-first century British educational researchers, but it is simply not possible to talk about reading skills without facing the murky waters of ‘phonics’. Over the years researchers have produced what McGuinness (2005: viii) has described as a ‘huge and formidable’ volume of studies which in various ways have tried to understand what helps children learn to read. As Lewis and Ellis (2006:2) point out, the fact that phonics is necessary in learning to read ‘is not therefore at the heart of the current debate about the role of phonics’, but rather the debate is now focused on what form of phonics should be taught, how much phonics should be taught, how often it should be taught and so forth. Phonics teaching must feature in the teaching of reading – but this raises serious questions about the extent to which phonics is allowed to play a central role in the how reading is defined. This is an important consideration and one that will be returned to at various points in this book.

There is no doubt that the schooling system is responsible for how many of us come to define what reading is, and how we perceive ourselves as readers; however, it is useful to look back at the ways in which reading practices have been perceived, and influenced, by socio-cultural and socio-historical factors over the years. Crucially, it is important to remember that reading is a human-made construct, which developed from the creation of the Phoenician alphabet during the twelfth century bc. While there are examples of people reading and writing throughout the decades to follow (see Styles, 1997 for example), concerns about one’s ability to read did not originate much before the nineteenth century, because up to this point, being unable to read was regarded as a ‘cultural norm’ while being able to read was an ‘exception to this norm’ (Ramsey-Kurtz, 2007: 19).

Eric Havelock (1976) argues forcibly that as human beings have used oral speech for far longer than the comparatively late invention of alphabetic literacy, then this should take precedence within a definition. He states:

The biological-historical fact is that Homo sapiens is a species which uses oral speech manufactured by the mouth, to communicate. This is his definition. He is not, by definition, a reader or a writer … The habit of using written symbols to represent such speech is just a useful trick which has existed over too short a time to have been built into our genes.

(Havelock, 1976, p. 12)

This view is supported by Galbraith (1997) who states that while some scholars make a sharp distinction between ‘literacy’ and ‘orality’, others take the view that the two cannot be easily separated. She herself argues that history teaches us to be cautious about making such distinctions because as recently as in late nineteenth-century Britain ‘there was no clean break between orality and literacy, but instead a mix of the two within individual life cycles and in families and communities’ (Galbraith, 1997, p. 3). Having closely examined the historical development of literacy, Harvey Graff takes this point further when he asserts his growing belief that literacy is ‘profoundly misunderstood’ (italics in original) (1987, p. 17). He argues that many discussions about literacy flounder because ‘they slight any effort to formulate consistent and realistic definitions of literacy, have little appreciation of the conceptual complications that the subject of literacy presents, and ignore – often grossly – the vital role of sociohistorical context’ (1987, p. 17).

Even the briefest glance back into the socio-historical context is valuable in the introduction to this book, because it first reminds us that learning to read print is not part of ‘natural’ development but is something that humans have learned to do to communicate. Even if, just for the moment, we suspend concerns for promoting the ‘will’ to read, and just focus on skill, we see that reading is quite simply an ability to decode a human-made symbol and attach established sound and meaning to that symbol, or collection of symbols. What is more we know that young children start doing this from a very early age; way before they start school they may recognise icons, pictures, car badges, labels, shop signs, food packaging and so on. The point we are making here is that established definitions of reading, which focus on the decoding of print, are somewhat naïve, not just because they ignore the complexity of reading practices, but because they also fail to recognise that decoding print is just one of the ways in which humans have been bringing meaning to symbol for hundreds of years.

Yet there is no doubt that the ability to decode print remains central to many definitions of reading in society today, evident in the fact that there is serious international concern about children who fail to master this skill (Wheater et al., 2014; Mullis et al., 2011). This is not to say that this concern is unfounded. The 1970 British Cohort Study, for example, revealed ‘a strong link between poor basic skills and disadvantaged life courses when participants were aged 34 (Bynner & Parsons 2006), with a disturbing picture of limited life chances, quality of life and social inclusion’ (Levy et al., 2014). This same study, which followed 16,567 babies born in Great Britain in the period 5–11 April 1970, surveying them again in 1975, 1980, 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2000, found that improvement in reading skills for men was linked to increased home ownership and better employment prospects, while women were found to have experienced similar socio-economic benefits as their reading improved. What is more, these stronger prospects were also associated with reports of better mental health, physical health and general well-being (Bynner & Parsons, 2006).

Clearly, children who struggle to read print in text are at a disadvantage, but the question here is not so much about whether children should be taught to read in school (of course they should), but how definitions of reading that are embedded in schooling systems can impact on children’s confidence and motivation for reading. Rachael’s (author) previous research showed that the twelve young children in her study entered formal schooling with broad and sophisticated definitions of reading, and largely positive perceptions of themselves as readers; however, these constructions were threatened by the school discourse (Levy, 2011). In particular, it was evident that the ways in which reading scheme texts were perceived can have a profound effect on children’s self-perceptions of reading and their wider relationships with text. This study revealed that many of these children came to believe that reading was, in fact, the decoding of print in reading scheme books, and being ‘a reader’ meant that a child had completed all of the stages in the scheme, and had thus been awarded the status of being ‘on chapter books’ (sometimes also referred to as being a ‘free reader’). This has serious implications, as the stringent use of reading schemes in Reception was seen to actively discourage some children from reading and enforced negative self-perceptions of being a non-reader. Moreover, this study showed that by defining reading in this way, reading schemes did little to promote meaningful engagement with texts.

This is not to say that reading schemes do not have a place in teaching reading. However, bearing in mind the fact that reading print is a relatively ‘new’ human phenomenon, and the call to recognise the role of socio-historical context in defining what reading is, it is important to give serious consideration to the ways in which we have come to define what reading is. This is especially salient given the fact that constructions of reading are again changing in line with the development of digital technology. This raises all sorts of interesting questions about reading, starting with – what is ‘text’? Traditionally, the word ‘text’ has been used to mean ‘print’. For example, when we hear the phrase ‘reading the text’, it is often assumed that what is being read is the printed text, rather than another mode such as a visual image. But this raises further questions about text, namely what is ‘a text’? Given that the word ‘text’ is commonly used to describe printed text, does a text have to contain print in order to be defined as ‘a text’? And what does this mean for definitions of reading?

There is general acceptance that materials such as books, comics, magazines and newspapers are texts, even if there is little or even no printed text within (take children’s wordless picture books as an example). However, advancements in technology mean that texts are becoming increasingly multimodal, meaning that they often use a combination of modes such as sound, image, moving image and so on. In 2003, Bearne argued forcibly that schools need to recognise these new forms of text in the curriculum, given that they are so evident in children’s everyday lives – another point that we will return to later. The point we are making here is that the construction of ‘text’ is growing and now includes digital and screen texts, but this is not just about the physical media – it is about how these texts are accessed and understood. As Marsh and Singleton (2008, p. 1) point out, ‘technology has always been part of literacy’, be it a pencil, book, tablet, etc. However, as the literacy experience will inevitably have been influenced by the nature of the technology, literacy practices that have been mediated by digital technologies have been termed ‘digital literacies’ (Carrington & Robinson, 2009).

The extent to which definitions of the term ‘digital literacy’ should include the encoding and decoding of alphabetic print has been well debated by others. For example, Kress (2003) argues that ‘literacy’ refers to ‘lettered representation’, and as a result we need to find other ways to describe how digital texts are read, understood and used in terms of their broader symbolic representations. Merchant (2007, p. 121) agrees that the term ‘digital literacy’ relates to more than a general confidence in handling screen texts and should be orientated towards the ‘study of written or symbolic representation that is mediated by new technology’. In other words, he appears to be arguing that the term ‘digital literacy’ can help to redefine conceptualisations of literacy as an ability to understand the many sign and symbol systems in existence within all manner of texts today, including the ways in which children make sense of texts within their home environments. Marsh (2005) also acknowledges that while the term ‘points towards the ways in which lettered representation is being transformed and shaped by digitised technologies’ (p. 4), she also recognises that ‘there are distinct aspects of text analysis and production using new media’ (p. 5) that cannot be described in the same way as the more traditional literacy practices.

This has implications for young children entering the school system today; as Albers, Frederick and Cowan (2009) point out, these children are not only regular users of a variety of digital and paper texts, but are developing the skills ‘to help them make sense of complex multimodal features’ (Levy & Marsh, 2011). What is more, given that many young children develop skills in reading digital texts before starting school (Marsh et al., 200...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Reading with young children: an introduction
• 2 Sociological perspectives on reading
• 3 Shared reading practices
• 4 Researching family lives
• 5 Shared reading as an everyday family practice
• 6 Doing and sustaining shared reading; parents’ aims and motivations
• 7 Barriers to shared reading
• 8 Parents’ relationships with reading and links with shared reading practices
• 9 Working with families to promote shared reading
• 10 Shared reading and starting school – a conclusion
• References
• Index