Using Ethnography and 'Real Lteracies' to Develop a Curriculum for English Literacy Teaching for Young Deaf Adults in India

RLOsThis paper reports on an international collaborative project working with deaf learners of English literacy (19–28 years old) in five locations in India: Indore; Vadadora; Comibatore; Pattambi; and Thrissur. Indian Sign Language (ISL) was the language of instruction. The project drew on a social practices view of literacy. Deaf peer tutors were trained in creating lessons using authentic materials: texts collected from students’ everyday lives. Tutors and students shared content via an online teaching resource. In the paper, the authors draw on notes from the training, tutor and student data, to clarify the strengths and challenges of this approach. Real literacies were used fruitfully, but authentic texts could be complex and grammar lessons were often unrelated to these texts. This challenged our assumptions about the applicability of the real literacies concept to pedagogy. Nevertheless, the study confirms the value of an approach that privileges ISL, peer tuition and online materials

Hymns, prayers and Bible stories:the role of religious literacy practices in children's literacy learning

This paper examines the role of religious literacy practices such as hymns, prayers and Bible stories in the context of literacy teaching in primary schools in England. Drawing on data collected through a classroom ethnography of a year 1 class (five and six-year-olds) conducted in a Catholic primary school in 2013 and 2014, I suggest that religious literacy practices contribute to children’s literacy learning in various ways. They focus children’s attention on a text’s meaning, not on decoding, as other literacy lessons do. They do not privilege rational thinking but afford more emotional and bodily experiences of meaning-making. These practices also offer opportunities for collaborative engagements with literacy, supporting learning through participation. My findings suggest that educators, researchers and policy-makers should pay greater attention to the range of literacy practices children engage with and how they contribute to their literacy learning

Using picture books to develop critical visual literacy in primary schools:challenges of a dialogic approach

This paper presents findings from a collaborative project on critical visual literacy in primary schools. In the project, we (a researcher and a teacher) implemented a series of picture book discussions with children in years 5 and 6. Our first aim was to develop the children’s ability to analyse the visual images in picture books and how authors/illustrators use these, together with writing, to communicate specific ideas. The second aim was to promote a dialogic lesson in which the children would lead the talk. In the paper, I discuss the challenges we faced in reaching our aims. My data include observation notes and audio recordings of the sessions and of discussions with the children. In the analysis, I examine the roles we took on, for example, as extenders and clarifiers of the children’s talk. However, unbeknown to us at the start, our two project aims turned out to be in conflict with each other. While the children enjoyed looking closely at the pictures and discussing the books’ possible meanings, without repeated questions and prompts, they focused on the book as story not on how it was constructed by the author and illustrator. This required a more teacher-focused approach than what we had planned

Everyday literacies in education:insights from using ‘real literacies’ and the ‘linguistic landscape’ for teaching English to deaf young adults in India

In this paper I discuss the experience of two action research projects to develop English literacy teaching for deaf young adults in India, Ghana and Uganda. With a focus on India, I reflect on how we drew on two concepts, ‘real literacies’ (ROGERS, 1999) and ‘linguistic landscapes’ (CONOZ; GORTER, 2008) to design a student-centred and communicative language pedagogy. We used these perspectives to co-create with students a curriculum based on their everyday uses of English. The project sought to empower deaf young people by developing their ability to communicate in English, while also valuing their first language - a sign language – thus offering an additive bilingual education. In the paper, I discuss how students and tutors engaged with the approach. They actively challenged some of our plans and asked for adaptations to our planned lesson activities. I conclude my paper with some thoughts on what to take from our experience with regards to the adaptability and relevance of ‘real literacies’ and ‘linguistic landscapes’ for work with deaf students