What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School

Abstract

Ways of taking" from books are a part of culture and as such are more varied than current dichotomies between oral and literate traditions and relational and analytic cognitive styles would suggest. Patterns of language use related to books are studied in three literate communities in the Southeastern United States, focusing on such "literacy events" as bedtime story reading. One community, Maintown, represents mainstream, middle-class school-oriented culture; Roadville is a white mill community of Appalachian origin; the third, Trackton, is a black mill community of recent rural origin. The three communities differ strikingly in their patterns of language use and in the paths of language socialization of their children. Trackton and Roadville are as different from each other as either is from Maintown, and the differences in preschoolers' language use are reflected in three different patterns of adjustment to school. This comparative study shows the inadequacy of the prevalent dichotomy between oral and literate traditions, and points also to the inadequacy of unilinear models of child language development and dichotomies between types of cognitive styles. Study of the development of language use in relation to written materials in home and community requires a broad framework of sociocultural analysis. (Crosscultural analysis, ethnography of communication, language development, literacy, narratives.) In the preface to SIZ, Roland Barthes' work on ways in which readers read, Richard Howard writes: "We require an education in literature.. . in order to discover that what we have assumedwith the complicity of our teacherswas nature is in fact culture, that what was given is no more than a way of taking" (emphasis not in the original; Howard 1974:ix).l This statement reminds us that the culture children learn as they grow up is, in fact, "'ways of taking" meaning from the environment around them. The means of making sense from books and relating their contents to knowledge about the real world is but one "'way of taking" that is often interpreted as "natural" rather than learned. The quote also reminds us that teachers (and researchers alike) have not recognized that ways of taking from books are as much a part of learned behavior as are ways of eating, sitting, playing games, and building houses.

Academic Language in Early Childhood Classrooms

“…Children enter school with varying degrees of familiarity with academic language based on their experiences at home (Heath, ; Michaels, ). Children who hear more academic language are likely to use and understand it, which may help them experience greater success in school.…”

Constructing a Collaborative Critique-Learning Environment for Exploring Science Through Improvisational Performance

“…Explorations were not designed as formal interventions intended to "teach" or address existing (mis)conceptions about the science of sound. On the contrary, sound explorations were modeled after Heath's (1982) approach for engaging young people with texts, and documenting how they collectively construct meaning through the discussion and analysis of these texts. Instead of engaging the young men with texts, however, I engaged them in listening to the sound of a tambourine that was generated under several different conditions.…”

“…The design of critique events was informed by Heath's (1982) notion of literacy events, in which young people's patterns of language use in relation to books were examined through group negotiation of meaning from these written texts. In collaborative critique events, the young men's drawings served a similar role in stimulating their interactions around and interpretations of sound transmission.…”

Looking Through the Multicultural Glass: Re-Examination of Syrian Refugee Children Education in Turkey

“…Home, with lots of print and audio materials of the host language, can serve as a rich resource for the child to practice all four skills. In an ethnography research studying three communities and home-based literacy-oriented practices and discussing varying types of literacy orientations and practices, Brice-Heath (1982) reported certain tendencies of literacy-oriented engagement pertaining to a community. For instance, reading cycles, book reading is like a dialogue with turn taking and asking wh-questions with no extension of content with an anecdotal commentaries was the observation in one of the communities.…”