One of the most common types of interaction between parents and their very young children is picture-book reading, with alphabet books being one of the most popular types of book used in these interactions. Here we report two studies examining alphabet letter learning by 30- to 36-month-old children in book-reading interactions with an adult. Each…

In this paper, we illustrate how young children from four faith communities (Tamil Hindu/Saiva, Bangladeshi Muslim, Polish Catholic and Ghanaian Pentecostal) new to London bring together and juxtapose an array of different languages, literacies, learning and discourse styles, communicative resources and experience to create unique personal…

This article reports on an ethnographic study involving the literacy practices of two multilingual Chinese children from two similar yet different cultural and linguistic contexts: Montreal and Singapore. Using syncretism as a theoretical tool, this inquiry examines how family environment and support facilitate children's process of becoming…

Historically, US schools have failed multicultural and multilingual children of colour and marginalized expansive conceptualizations of home and community literacy practices. Given the importance of fully inclusive education, this article seeks to understand the ways in which young multilingual and multicultural children take up issues of…

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…

This article takes a new look at issues of marginalization and equity in literacy practice by focusing on the concept of syncretism and teachers' creation of opportunities for young children to draw on knowledge from multiple worlds as, together, they construct new texts, contexts and practices. Recognizing that the strengths and needs of too…

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of personalized books on parents' and children's engagement during shared book reading. Seven native English parents and their children aged between 12 and 33 months were observed at home when sharing a book made specifically for the child (i.e. a personalized book), a comparable book…

This paper reports research that investigated parental support for children's reading of English in an inner-city school in the developing country context of an Indian city, Ahmedabad. Children had oral proficiency in the regional language but were beginning to acquire conventional forms of literacy in English. Sociocultural mediation theory…

The effectiveness of dual-language book reading in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms is largely uncontested. Yet there are repeated calls for more research to determine how this resource can be used more broadly and effectively by teachers, especially in emergent-literacy learning contexts. In the present study we analysed…

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…

Dialogic Reading (DR) is a form of interactive shared book reading which promotes children's active participation in reading. Previous studies have demonstrated that DR positively affects young children's literacy development. This small-scale study extends existing DR research to all-male dyads to examine whether DR has a greater impact…

Mauritius is a multilingual island, where there is a linguistic and literacy paradox. While Mauritian Creole dominates as the spoken language of the population, English and French are the main print languages, as well as the main languages of literacy and education. In such a complex situation, preschool is an interesting terrain in which to…

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…

This article examines the relationship between literacy and play in six- and seven-year-olds' engagement with non-fiction writing. I draw from a year-long ethnographic study (Erickson, 1986) of a US classroom's "writing time", intentionally structured on children's own interests and enquiries. Rather than strict adherence to monolithic models…

This article positions a view of student responses with relation to current literacy expectations. Student responses to a single book, "The Egypt Game," are explored. The responses are analysed from a group and individual student perspectives. The responses demonstrate the complex understandings that young students created about this book.…