This book examines some of the complexities and debates about language, literacy and learning, challenging current assumptions about shared understanding of pedagogical principles. It foregrounds social and cultural issues and the nature of interaction between children and teachers; children and children; children and texts of all kinds; and the significance of wider interactions within the teaching profession.
The contributors revitalise debate about the nature of professional knowledge, provide insights into the detail of classroom discourse and teacher interventions and examine the transformative possibilities of literacy. They argue for a more open and expansive agenda informed by an analytically constructive view of pedagogy and challenge the profession to move from restrictive certainties to the potent possibilities of development through uncertainty and risk.
Henrietta Dombey started to learn about literacy teaching and learning during her years as a primary school teacher in schools in Inner London, where she pioneered teaching reading without a reading scheme. She developed her interest in the interactions between the children, the texts and the teacher while carrying out the fieldwork in a nursery class for her PhD on young children's experience of hearing stories aloud. She is currently investigating the patterns of interaction during whole class parts of the Literacy Hour, in classrooms of highly successful teachers of literacy. During the introduction of the National Curriculum she chaired the National Association for the Teaching of English. She was also President of the UKRA form 2002 to 2003.
Eve Bearne divides her time at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education between research and teaching. Her current research interests are children's production of multimodal texts and gender, language and literacy. She has edited and written a number of books about language and literacy and about children's literature. She is currently President of the United Kingdom Literacy Association.
Teresa Grainger is a Reader in Education at Canterbury Christ Church University College where she co-ordinates the MA in Language and Literacy, the PGCE English programme, facilitates a Pedagogy Study Group for staff and undertakes research and consultancy. She was President of the United Kingdom Reading Association in 2001-2 and is the editor of the UKRA journal 'Reading Literacy and Language.' Teresa has published widely on literacy and the language arts, on drama, storytelling, literature and poetry and most recently has edited a Routledge/Falmer Reader on Language and Literacy. Her current research projects include: investigating children's voice, verve and creativity in writing; exploring the relationship between drama and writing; and examining the nature of creative teaching and learning, the links between the development of spirituality and literacy and the teacher as a creative artist in the language classroom.
