‘Every day he has a dream to tell’: classroom literacy curriculum in a full-day kindergarten

Abstract

Within an era of change to early childhood education and care, this case study of kindergarten classroom literacy curricula sought to understand the production and effects of the curriculum within one urban, Canadian full-day kindergarten that included culturally and linguistically diverse children. Central was a concern for the place of children’s interests and funds of knowledge within this production and what opportunities the curriculum provided for children’s literacy and identity options. Theoretically, the study drew on actor-network theory and multiliteracies. Using ethnographic tools, the study found that the curriculum diverged significantly from what might have been expected. It was comprised of literacy events characterized by educator attempts to control a dynamic classroom through the management of the children’s bodies and voices. Findings suggest that this constrained children from being curricular informants and limited their literacy and identity options. Major actors in the network that produced the classroom literacy curriculum were class size, materials and space with a surprising relative absence of the programmatic curriculum and assessment. The case demonstrates what can happen when a network of actors come together and other actors are not in place to promote literacy curricula that create opportunities to expand children’s communication and identity options.

Keywords:

• curriculum
• actor-network theory
• kindergarten
• literacy
• early years
• funds of knowledge

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant (Heydon, P.I).

Notes on contributors

Rachel Heydon

Her interests centre on early childhood, intergenerational and literacy curricula. Her most recent books are Learning at the Ends of Life: Children, Elders, and Literacies in Intergenerational Curricula (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) and Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning (edited with Mary Hamilton, Kathryn Hibbert, and Rosamund Stooke) (London: Bloomsbury).

Lyndsay Moffatt

Her interests include K-6 language and literacy education, anthropological and sociological approaches to education research, socio-cultural theories of learning, discourse analysis, ethnomethodology, research methodologies, teacher-education research and literacy learning for sustainability. She has published on early literacy learning, using popular culture in the classroom and issues of gender and reading. Her dissertation was an examination of the cultural production of reading in research interviews between parents, teachers and a teacher librarian researcher.

Luigi Iannacci

He coordinates language and literacy and special needs-focused courses at Trent, and has taught mainstream and special education in a range of elementary grades in Ontario. His research interests include first and second language and literacy acquisition, critical multiculturalism, early childhood education, critical dis/ability studies and narrative research. He is the co-editor (with Pam Whitty) of Early Childhood Reconceptualist Perspectives (Alberta, Detselig Press) and co-author (with Rachel Heydon) of Early Childhood Curricula and the De-Pathologizing of Childhood (Toronto, University of Toronto Press).