CHAPTER TWO: Theories and ethnographies of literacy 2.1 Introduction
2.6 Ethnographic studies of community literacies
2.6.2 Literacy and community life in relation to school/education
Following Scribner and Cole’s work in Liberia was a study, Ways with Words, carried out by Shirley Brice Heath (1983) in North America. Heath’s study was concerned with finding out “the effect of pre-school, home and community environments on the learning of those language structures and uses which were needed in classrooms and job settings”
(1983, p. 2). The study particularly focused on the “communities in which the children are socialised as talkers, readers, and writers” (1983, p. 6). Heath studied three different communities that she named as Roadville, Trackton, and Townspeople, in the Piedmont Carolinas. However, the concentration of the study was on the two working class communities of Roadville and Trackton. The Roadville group was a white, working class community with a long tradition of working in the textile-mills, and the Trackton community consisted of black, textile-mill workers coming from a long tradition of farm work. That is, their older generations were farm workers. The Townspeople were white and black mainstream groups of the region, and in the study, they were presented as participant researchers of the other two communities of Roadville and Trackton. All three groups had very distinct social and cultural practices although they shared in the
commercial, political, and educational life of the Townspeople.
Heath (1983) refers to the method she used as, “Ethnographies of communication” (p. 6).
This involved observations and conducting interviews during home visits, listening to and recording patterns of conversations in the communities where the children she was studying were “socialised as talkers, readers, and writers” (see Heath, 1983, p. 6).
Records and descriptions of different aspects of communication were made. This included the natural flow of life both in and out of class and in the community. She also studied the current ecology and history that influenced communication in each community. In this way, she was able to follow the children from their home to the classrooms.
She was able to gain entrance into the two communities because of her childhood
experience of growing up in a mixed race (black and white) neighbourhood, in addition to personally knowing some members of the two communities. With this background, she had a lot of shared experience and similar unconscious habits of interaction. Therefore, the customs of both communities were very familiar to her as the principal researcher.
She was able to live the ordinary daily life of the community she was investigating and avoided as much as possible doing things differently. Research equipment like tape recorders and other items that were not familiar to the community were not used until they became acceptable to the community as much as was possible. The data collection process did not interrupt the normal community life. As mentioned above, Heath used collaborative research methods involving some members of the community like the teachers in the communities she was studying. These teachers were part of her teacher- training programme at the University with whom she developed a research partnership.
Heath’s (1983) findings in the Carolina Piedmont provide evidence for the existence of a variety of literacy practices in people’s lives, and these differences are due to the home and community environment, and social/cultural backgrounds or socialization processes that take place within a particular community. These differences affect the way children learn how to use both oral and written language. The uses of texts are governed by the social rules that regulate the communicative practices in a particular community or group.
In this case, the home and community literacy environments may be supportive of the school literacy and curriculum and vice versa. In her study, the school curriculum was based on, and supportive of the literacy practices of the townspeople. It therefore favoured the children from the mainstream townspeople and it enabled them to perform well in school reading and writing exercises. The children from the working class communities whose home discourses were different from that of the school had problems with learning the school-based literacy discourse. Heaths’ study shows that different cultural practices support different literacy practices. Therefore, for literacy learning to be effective for both adults and children, the teaching and learning discourses must be similar to that of the community from which the learners come (Heath, 1983). The significance of Heath’s study was the development of the concept of literacy events
(discussed in section 2.5.4.2 above). This concept became a key concept in the social practices theory of literacy.
In Namibia, Papen (2001) studied the meaning and uses of literacy in and around the National Literacy Programme in Namibia (NLPN). This adult literacy education programme was implemented in all regions of the country. Although it was not overtly stated, the study was a critique of the policy and literacy perceptions framing the NLPN.
She focuses on showing how the literacy programme is used to achieve the government’s development and political agendas and how these positions are reflected in the
government policy documents, the political speeches and the common perceptions of literacy held by government officials, learners and common citizens. These perceptions were played out through speeches and songs made during the National Literacy Day celebrations.
Using the social practices theoretical framework, Papen (2001) critically analysed the National Literacy Day event, the literacy policy documents, the curriculum and teaching materials used in the NLPN, and public and private speeches made in relation to the adult literacy education programme in Namibia. These secondary and primary sources of data were generated through class observations of, and interviews with, the learners and the adult literacy instructors, and documentary analysis of the government documents. In addition to using the social practices perspective on literacy, Papen (2001) also used the critical model of literacy associated with Paulo Freire to critique the NLPN.
Papen’s (2001) findings show how the dominant conception of literacy (the autonomous model) as promoted by UNESCO in the 1960s, informs literacy policies and programmes in Namibia. This conception of literacy sees literacy as leading to economic, social, democratic, and cognitive development. She also points out how such conceptions of literacy hide the negative construction of non-literate people as people who are not able to make proper choices in life such as choosing the right leader and avoiding HIV/AIDS.
She observes that these perceptions ignore “existing literacy and language skills, non- dominant literacy practices and prior knowledge” including informal learning conducted outside the formal settings (Papen, 2001, p. 51).
The literacy programme classes, according to Papen (2001), had a very strong school orientation, in terms of the dominant position of the teacher in the class, dependency on textbook knowledge and the nature of the exercises. The classes also put a lot of emphasis on developing the life skills of the learners. All these undervalue the experience and knowledge of the learners (Papen, 2001).
From the critical/radical literacy perspective, Papen (2001) observed that literacy discourse in Namibia has changed away from the original revolutionary and liberation ideology of the pre-independence struggle years to embrace the economic development ideology emphasising social and economic responsibilities and citizenship in the new Namibia. These, according to Papen (2001) and most of the protagonists of the social practices theory of literacy, are based on the influence of the dominant, autonomous model of literacy. In my view, the actual point for change was necessitated by the need to discourage critical and radical attitudes towards the new government as that may lead to dissension against the government among the population who could begin to question their performance. It was all right during the struggle years since they needed the co- operation of the people to root out the colonialist from Namibia.
In the United States, (US) Purcell-Gates, Degener, Jacobson, and Soler (2000) carried out a highly structured study investigating the relationship between two dimensions of adult literacy instruction and change in the everyday literacy practices of adult literacy learners and how this relates to children’s emergent literacy development. Cast into the bigger dimension of community life, the question would be how classroom instruction in adult literacy classes relates to the social and cultural practices of the community from which the learners come and spend most of their time, or how classroom instruction affects the literacy practices of the literacy learners.
The research questions, which also reflect the two dimensions of instruction, were: “What the relationships are among (a) the degree to which adult literacy classes employ real-life literacy activities and materials; (b) the degree to which students and teachers share decision-making; and (c) changes in students’ out-of-school literacy practices” (Purcell- Gates, Degener, Jacobson, & Soler, 2000, p. 9). Specifically, the two dimensions of instruction in these questions relate to (1) the authenticity of the instructional materials in terms of the real life experience of the learners and (2) the instructor/teacher
collaboration. Authenticity was defined as the actual reading and writing activities in which the learners are engaged in their everyday life and not those designed for the purpose of teaching reading and writing (Purcell-Gates et al, 2000).
The data for this study were collected from three different sources using three different methods from 83 adult literacy classes in 22 states. The three different sources and methods of data collection were questionnaires with teachers, observation of classroom processes, and interviews with students. The findings from these three different sources were triangulated. The classes were given scores reflecting their measurement on the two
dimensions of instruction under investigation. These two dimensions of instruction were firstly, adult learners’ use of real life and authentic materials in literacy learning and secondly, the extent of collaboration between learners and teachers during adult literacy education classes. The data on changes in the literacy learners’ out-of-school literacy practices were analyzed from adult literacy learners’ comments on a 173 question questionnaire about their home literacy practices that can be attributed to their literacy learning (Purcell-Gates et al, 2000).
The following conclusions were made from this study. Adult learners in classes that use real life (authentic) literacy activities and texts read and write much more and use a greater variety of texts in their everyday life. The extent to which literacy instructors and learners collaborate in the learning process has no influence on the everyday literacy practices of the learners. Those students who come to learning centres with lower levels of literacy skills and stay much longer experience more change in their literacy practices than those who come with higher levels of literacy and stay for a shorter time.
Surprisingly, learners attributed their change in literacy to factors other than use of authentic real life material during literacy instruction.
From the findings of their study, the researchers recommend that teachers should use more real life materials and encourage learners to stay longer in class since this has a positive effect on their out of school literacy practices. Researchers are encouraged to investigate further the impact of different aspects of classroom instruction on the literacy practices of literacy learners (Purcell-Gates et al, 2000).