The role of planning time in inducting preschool children into aspects of schooled literacy.
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Date
1996
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Abstract
This dissertation describes a microethnographic study of the induction of preschool children
into the practices of schooled literacy at an ex-Natal Education Department,
Anglican-affiliated preschool. The sources of data are participant observation and
audio-recordings of planning time interaction; interviews with key informants; and site
documentation.
The principal finding of the study is that planning time, a seemingly inconsequential
preschool event, differentially inducts children into literacy practices that anticipate
expository reporting. Such literacy practices carry high prestige in Western capitalist
society, being the recognised convention for presenting and contesting information.
Planning time was originally designed as an intervention program to facilitate
nonmainstream literacy acquisition by making the conventions explicit, thus minimising
cultural and linguistic discontinuities between home and school-based literacy practices.
However at Church Preschool, an essentially closed environment with access controlled by
mechanisms such as waiting lists, this event has been co-opted to further maximise
mainstream advantage. The data reveals that, despite a rhetoric of openness in making the
norms explicit, planning time only inducts nonrnainstream children into elementary literacy
practices. Beyond that point, the conventions become increasingly implicit and depend on
shared knowledge of mainstream norms.
Planning time functions as a covert gatekeeping event that effectively maintains the status
quo by guarding access to powerful literacy practices. The tension between the rhetoric of
openness and the reality of who gains mastery of the literacy practices suggests that planning
time restricts access not on the level of entry, but at the point of acquisition.
Description
Thesis (M.A.-Linguistics) - UnIversity of Natal, 1996.
Keywords
Literacy--Study and teaching., Education, Preschool--Evaluation., Education, Preschool--KwaZulu-Natal., Language Arts (Primary), Theses--Linguistics.