(Luke, Comber & Grant 2003 p. 21)
As a child I remember turning the colour splashed pages of 'My Treasury of Fairy Tales' book and delving into the worlds illustrated before me. As the tales drifted from my mum's lips I became absorbed with the fantastical characters of fairies, mermaids and talking animals. This is where my love of reading began.
When first considering the word 'literacy', like traditional pedagogical practices, I thought of reading and writing (O'Toole 2003). I believed I was literate in the sense that I could read and write and was "at ease with letters" (O'Toole 2003). These were the very skills that I had acquired through many years of being read fairy tales and nursery rhymes. However I was essentially forgetting that I was also cultured and educated a component of being literate that I had not previously reflected on (O'Toole 2003). And yet I had become cultured and educated through my early experiences with 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Snow White' where I had broken the code of these texts into understanding and identifying the images and names associated with each character. My mum hadn't taught me literacy but had rather given me an insight into how to approach reading a book (Bull & Anstey 2005). It was this experience of the way of approaching reading that contributed to my cultural capital that empowered me throughout school (Bourdieu 1986). It is in this reflection that I can identify that literacy is both literal and metaphorical. It is a form of social transformation where an individual’s literacy skills ultimately impacts on their life chances (O'Toole 2003). It is the understanding of these various capitals and the literacies associated with each that influences my teaching so that I can provide an equitable and all inclusive learning environment for my students.
No comments:
Post a Comment