Review of Socio-Cultural context of Literacy Learning

Week 1 Blog:

Peer Reviewed Article: The Socio-Cultural context of Literacy learning. By Caroline Barratt-Pugh.

I had chosen to explore this article as the socio-cultural context of literacy learning drew my attention therefore I felt I wanted to explore and gain further knowledge based around literacy and the socio-cultural aspect of it. I found the article to be very interesting and informative as it explained a significant amount of history and what literacy used to be like for young children, to then compare and focus on the more recent studies regarding literacy for children. The key element from the article was the four main perspectives developed from different theorists on early literacy and how each theorist has contributed to the understanding of literacy. A strong argument found in the argument was that children at a very young age learn about literacies through their participation in social and cultural events, which may include literacy practices (Barratt-Pugh, 2000). The second main message I gained from the reading was that becoming effective literacy users is not as simple as just being involved in social and cultural practices as literacy learning is complex multifaceted processed which is constantly evolving around us. From this article for me as a future educator I have gained knowledge around the notion of literacy and to allow that all children will be coming into the early childhood care with a different level of literacy practices. Therefore allow the children to explore and show their literacy practices to myself and for me to be there to guide and possible help them to expand their literacy.

References:

Barratt-Pugh, C (2000). The Socio-cultural Context of Literacy Learning