With the revolution that has taken place in the functionality and uptake of portable networked "smart" technologies, educators are looking to see what potential applications such technologies might have for school education. This article reports on a study on the use of portable personal computing devices in the early years of schooling.…

What do young children do with the literacies they have learned at school? This article reexamines traditional notions of literacy by documenting a second grade child's literacy practices in school and out-of-school contexts. Data collected included field notes, interviews, observations of school and out-of-school literacy practices, and…

This paper draws data from a 5-year ethnographic study of young multilingual (Mixteco/Spanish/English) children in their early childhood classrooms. In this paper, we focus on two of the children and their distinctive paths as they develop language and literacy. Using a sociocultural and multimodal theoretical framework we examine how these two…

This two and a half year study examines how non-native English-speaking Burmese refugee students from first to third grades made meaning of scientific informational texts. The study is framed by sociocultural theory and transactional theory. Primary data were drawn from 160 student retellings of scientific informational texts. Secondary data…

This article reports on a study of literacy practices in a Norwegian preschool where deaf and hearing children are enrolled in the same group and where communication is based on both sign language and spoken language. The aim of the study was to explore pathways to literacy for young deaf children within this setting. Our implicit assumption is…

Maternal emergent literacy practices during shared-reading interactions with 18-36-month-old toddlers were examined. The investigation of emergent literacy behaviours of both mothers and toddlers investigated included the examination of phonological awareness and written language awareness. Participants included 15 mother-toddler dyads from middle…

Children from minority-language backgrounds have multiple sites of learning: home, community, mainstream school, and in some cases complementary school where they study their mother tongue after school or at weekends. However, due to the institutional constraints of an education system based on monolingual principles, mainstream teachers are often…

Drawing on case illustrations of a six-year-old child as he "assembles" a digital world using Webkinz[TM], this paper proposes an approach that researchers and educators might use to understand, analyse and critique multimodality. This multidisciplinary theoretical framework integrates new literacies, social semiotics and critical…

Social capital--the social relations between people--is an important component of the family environment and is crucial for the creation of human capital for the next generation. Drawing on James S. Coleman's theory of family capital, this study focuses on parents' utilization of social capital to support children's literacy acquisition in four…

A wealth of research demonstrates that as young children acquire literacy they also approximate literate roles and relationships. Such literate identifications, or storied selves, are complex, sometimes contradictory and under construction for young people. Less research has focused on "how" young children's storied selves are discursively…

An ecological approach, emphasizing the importance of understanding multiple contexts for learning, underpins this study of libraries as activity spaces for young children's literacy participation. Five libraries serving a diversity of communities were the subject of ethnographic investigation incorporating participant observation, visual…

This research focuses on young children's experiences of the visual mode embedded in new multimodal literacy practices. An enquiry was undertaken into the role of visual and digital images in a group of 11 four-year-olds' out-of-school lives. The children photographed their use of a range of primarily visual-based media at home, to produce a book…

This article reports a multi-method evaluation of a one-year small-scale preschool family literacy programme with bilingual Pakistani-origin families in the UK. The programme was implemented mostly through home visits and included provision of literacy resources, some postal communication and group meetings. The study was conducted in…

This article reports on aspects of a small-scale study conducted in the south of England that explored the learning experiences of three four-year-old children with identified special educational needs, who attended a combination of early education settings--one "more special" and one "more inclusive" (Nind et al., 2007). The article reflects on…

This article investigates the intersection between the in-school information literacy practices and out-of-school (i.e. home and community) information literacy practices of a third grade student and examines how this intersection may be contributing to his overall literacy learning. Data collected from field notes; observations of in-school and…