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3. Literacy, Culture and Identity: Literature Review

Our understanding of the concept of literacy and its implications for education has undergone a major shift in the last twenty five years, mainly as a result of new approaches which consider literacy not as a set of neutral skills but as historically and socially constructed. One of the most influential approaches is 'New Literacy Studies' ( NLS) which views literacy practices in the contexts of schooling, knowledge, and power. It also considers different 'literacies', involving various semiotic systems such as the visual and the digital. Street's 'ideological' model of literacy (1984, 2003 and Street & Street 1991) provides the basis for this view, as it considers the expectations and pedagogies used for the teaching of reading and writing not just as a product of educational institutions but of dominant political and cultural movements. Hamilton, Barton and Ivanic, among others, have extended these ideas to take account of the multiple literacies embedded in specific cultural contexts. For example, the 'Local Literacies' project (Barton and Hamilton 1998) gathered ethnographic data on literacy, and people's reflections on literacy, in a neighbourhood in Lancaster in order to better understand and value the role of literacy, both the 'vernacular' and the 'institutional', in this particular community.

The idea of differences between 'vernacular' and 'institutional' literacies is another tenet of the NLS approach, stemming from the seminal study by Heath (1983) on the relationships between home and community literacies and schooling (discussed below). Other scholars who have influenced these new understandings of literacy are Bakhtin (particularly his concepts of 'dialogism' and 'hybridity') and Bourdieu (particularly his ideas about 'cultural capital'). Some of the ideas of de Certeau, Foucault and Derrida on literature, identity and power relations in social life have also been influential (for a detailed discussion of their impact on literacy studies, see Collins and Blott 2003).

Other groups of researchers have also engaged with these new views on literacy. The New London Group explored the teaching of new forms of literacy (especially visual and digital) which allow students to participate more fully in their learning. Among the members of this group are Kress, Gee, Cazden, Cope, Luke and Luke, all of whom have taken the study of multiliteracies forward in different ways. Their collective 'manifesto' ('A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures' 1996) suggests directions that literacy pedagogy might take in order to help children meet the changes in communications technology that are reshaping the contexts and forms of reading and writing.

Syncretic Literacy Studies is another approach that builds on New Literacy Studies. Here the focus has been mainly on children and their educational contexts within different communities, including bilingual and ethnic minority groups. Gregory, Williams, Volk and Long have all done extensive research in this area. They understand 'syncretism' as 'a creative transformation of a culture' as people negotiate and draw on familiar and new cultural forms. This transformation, or 're-invention', can have significant consequences for both teachers and learners:

The activities that result can disrupt established power relationships and have the potential to create more equitable practices and possibilities for learning because they provide 'Third Spaces or zones of development' […] where teachers can value and build on what children know and where children can help shape learning. (Gregory, Long & Volk 2004: 4)

Some of the key notions shared by Syncretic Literacy Studies are the following:

• Young children are active members of different cultural and linguistic groups and engaging in membership of a group is not a static or linear process.
• Children do not remain in separate worlds but acquire membership of different groups simultaneously, i.e. they live in 'simultaneous worlds' (Kenner 2003).
• Simultaneous membership means that children syncretize the languages, literacies, narrative styles and role relationships appropriate to each group and then go on to transform the languages and cultures they use to create new forms relevant to the purpose needed.
• Young children who participate in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural practices call upon a greater wealth of metacognitive and metalinguistic strategies.
• The mediators, often bicultural and/or bilingual, play an essential role in early language and literacy learning.

All the above approaches believe that the kinds and levels of literacy that children obtain, and the values they ascribe to this process as they go through school, will have a powerful influence on how they will engage with the society in which they live, and the roles they will assume in that society as they grow. As Luke and Carrington write:

Literacy - and by association literacy education - are both historically constructed and historically constructive, normative enterprises. In current conditions, they are about the shaping of patterns and practices of participation in text-based societies and semiotic economies. (Luke and Carrington 2004: 53)

For ethnic minority groups, participation in a specific society, particularly through the community and the school, means interacting with cultural and linguistic issues that transform the identities of both the 'locals' and the 'newcomers'. Language plays a decisive role in this interaction and is, in turn, also transformed. This may be of particular importance in the present Scottish context, where nuances of power and appropriateness are already sensitive issues in the interaction of Scots, English and Gaelic language choice within public, political and personal discourse - now altered by the addition of minority and community languages, and by new Scottish writers and thinkers emerging from such bilingual backgrounds.

Identity and literacy are thus intrinsically linked and, as they develop in the early stages of school, can be central in determining educational achievement. Another influential scholar in the area of literacy and culture is Cummins, who has argued for empowering students through reinforcing their cultural identity by incorporating students' language and culture in (American) school programmes. In other words, adding a second language but all the while maintaining the primary language and culture. His research on bilingual students in subordinated groups has confirmed that 'negotiating identities' is 'fundamental to the academic success of culturally diverse students' (Cummins 1996: 2). He concludes that

Bilingual students who feel a sense of belonging in their classroom learning community are more likely to feel 'at home' in their society upon graduation and to contribute actively to building that society. Schools that have brought issues related to cultural and linguistic diversity from the periphery to the center of their mission are more likely to prepare students to thrive in the interdependent global society in which they will live. (Cummins 1996: 236)

Story and poetry are central to early literacy experience, and are a focus of the present project. In 2001, Galda and Beach looked at the development of research on response to literature. They found that 'literary response researchers in the 1990s have focused increasingly on response not simply as a transaction between texts and readers but as a construction of text meaning and readers' stances and identities within larger sociocultural contexts' (Galda & Beach 2001: 66). The studies confirmed that response was learned not only in schools but also through the social practices of the particular cultural worlds in which readers lived.

In what follows we will review other research on literacy, bilinguality and identity which is relevant for understanding the context of bilingual ethnic minority pupils in primary schools in Scotland.

3.1 Literacy and bilinguality

The need for a new educational focus on literacy and bilinguality has been the consequence of two major factors: increasing global migration and the awareness that 70% of the world population is bilingual - making it the norm rather than the exception. Bilingualism has become an important point on the educational agenda of highly developed countries due to the numbers of first, second and even third generation immigrants who go through the school system. ³ In most of these countries, such as the UK, knowledge of other languages is increasingly seen as something positive, which should be nurtured and which has the potential not only to increase bilingual children's cognitive abilities and develop their understanding of new languages but to enrich the host culture as well. In Britain, educational policies are now inclusive and promote a respect for the language and culture that immigrants bring to school and to the community. Some of the main changes in our thinking about bilinguality or 'biliteracy' have been due to the recognition that bilinguality means not just speaking but living in two different languages, so that literacy practices in the context of the 'home' language and of the other school or locality languages are just as important.

It is also now recognized that there is a transfer of cognitive strategies from reading in the first language to reading in the second. This transfer, which also involves cultural and linguistic knowledge, means that bilinguals are more aware of linguistic patterns and operations than their monolingual peers (Vygotsky 1962, Cummins 1978). Gregory and Kelly (1992) summarize some of the early research on the competencies of bilingual children, such as that undertaken by Ianco-Worrall, Ben-Zeev and Skutnabb-Kangas among others, which shows, for example, that bilingual children have a greater sensitivity to social and linguistic situations because they are more concerned with 'getting it right'. Gregory and Kelly's own research confirmed other cognitive and social skills of bilinguals, such as the fact that 'through their developing bilingualism, the children are learning a double set of rules. These comprise not just the lexis and structure of a language but the boundaries of concepts and culture' (Gregory and Kelly 1992: 150). The idea of competencies and achievements of bilingual pupils is also now being incorporated into official government documents on education. ⁴

However, these competencies and benefits cannot develop fully unless a context is provided in which they are recognized and encouraged. Xu (2003) provides a clear picture of this in research that describes the different interactions in a kindergarten classroom between two teachers and two children with limited English, one Chinese and one Mexican. The Chinese boy, Qing, was encouraged by his teacher to contribute his knowledge and experience of his native language and to bring Chinese print into the classroom. The Mexican girl, Maria, was put in a situation of decontextualized learning, without any opportunities to involve or discuss or her native language. As a result, while Qing was able to connect functions and forms of Chinese and English, two very different languages, Maria, even after a year, had not made any personal connections between Spanish and English, which are much more similar, and was still struggling to understand basic classroom instructions in English.

Some of the most significant notions about bilingual literacy learning are now commonly accepted in educational contexts but it is worth mentioning those that are most relevant to our study, based on the summary provided by Datta (2000):

• instead of 'subtractive' bilinguality (which involved replacing the first language for the development of the second), 'additive' bilinguality involves valuing and including different languages and literacy practices;
• a second or further language is best learned interactively (through talk with 'native' speakers) and in context;
• children's existing linguistic competence should be recognized;
• children take different meanings from texts, and bring different expectations of meaning to texts, based on their personal experiences, cultural and literacy practices;
• 'affective variables' are a powerful factor influencing bilingual children's educational achievement ;
• a focus on the process of 'imagination and image forming' (as opposed to a solely word-centred focus) is a strategy which enables bilinguals to develop literary language awareness and 'situate themselves imaginatively in the mood and mode of text to appreciate the significance of literary meanings' (Datta 2000: 146).

3.2 Home/school literacy practices

In looking at children's out-of-school literacies, Knobel and Lankshear emphasize the idea that researchers and educationalists need to look into what people do with language and texts as well as where, how and with whom literacy understandings take place:

A concern with literacy practice always takes into account knowing and doing, and calls into play the notion of literacies as a way of describing how people negotiate and construct patterned and socially recognizable ways of knowing and doing and using language to achieve different social and cultural purposes within different social and cultural contexts. (Knobel and Lankshear 2003: 55)

The main contexts in which children interact with language and text are firstly the home and secondly the school. New research, both national and international, attempts to explain how children make sense of school literacy experiences in relation to home literacy experiences.

Shirley Bryce Heath's pioneering study (1983) on the links between these two contexts included an analysis of the way in which narrative and books are used and viewed in different communities. She looks in detail at the consequences of these community literacy practices once children have started school, where certain literacy practices are considered more important than others for further literacy learning (1986). She found that each community had particular 'rules for socially interacting and sharing knowledge in literacy events' and that children were expected to learn and follow these rules. While teachers assumed that all children were learning the same rules, Heath shows that although 'mainstream' (white middle-class) children were learning to take meaning from texts in school-acceptable ways, other communities had different 'ways with books'. Although books were provided in the white, working-class community of Roadville, children were not encouraged to go beyond the prescripted stories, either to create their own or to apply book knowledge to the world around them: 'their community's view of narrative discourse style is very narrow and demands a passive role in both creation of and response to the account of events' (Heath 1986). In Trackton, the working-class black community, there were few occasions for reading with children (no bedtime stories) and the meaning of texts was mainly negotiated orally and in groups. Children from both these communities were unsuccessful at school: either they were unable to take an active role in reading and link the books to their environment (Roadville) or they could not understand the 'social-interactional' rules for literacy events at school (Trackton).

In Britain, Gregory noted the difficulties experienced by children from 'non-mainstream' backgrounds when there was a conflict between literacy practices at home and at school (Gregory 1996). However, she argues that literacy practices in homes and schools are not entirely separate: rather, there is a 'synergistic relationship' which leads to school literacies having a place in the home, through homework, for example, or in playing school. This in turn leads to a transformation of both of these literacies. Dyson's (2003) work confirms this relationship and shows how older siblings have a determining role as literacy mediators between families and schools.

Also in Britain, Leena Robertson looked at story-reading practices within community minority language classes and in school. She concluded that in the community classes 'reading' and 'understanding stories' were not inevitably linked, as they would be at school. Also, different kinds of reading have different cultural and educational values: 'In our culture, and therefore, in our pedagogical reading hierarchy, individual reading for meaning is valued highly, and hence rated higher than reciting collectively for religious purposes' (Robertson 1997: 172). In a later study Robertson attempted to find out 'what kinds of additional strengths bilingual children bring from home and community practices into their English lessons' (Robertson 2000). Although some of the bilingual pupils lacked the 'story knowledge' which was assumed by the English literacy curriculum, they demonstrated metalinguistic knowledge and understanding of values and functions of each of the languages they engaged with.

In her research, Kenner (2000 and 2003) describes several case studies of young bilingual children at the threshold of reading and writing. Based on Cummin's ideas that self-esteem depends on strong cultural identity in the classroom (which means being able to use home language within it) and also that concepts developed in one language can interact with those developed in another (through metalinguistic awareness) she underlines the importance of finding out what kinds of knowledge and capabilities bilingual students possess. She talked to the children not only about the written text but also about the visuals, about the ideas being illustrated by pictures and about layout. Her findings showed that while their home lives were multilingual and multicultural environments, 'their primary school lives could be characterized as largely monolingual and monocultural, and therefore as having only a limited connection with children's home experience' (Kenner 2003: 95). She goes on to suggest steps towards developing an 'interactive pedagogy for bilingual children' in which home and community knowledge is integrated into the classroom.

In research which looked at bilingual children in a Scottish primary context, Geri Smyth reported on the way in which teachers responded to these children in the classroom. She found that the overall expectation in a monolingual classroom was that 'any bilingual learners who did not fit "the master model" were problematic and required learning support' (Smyth 2002: 34). Through case studies, she showed that there was no understanding of the cognitive and creative potential of bilinguals, and that, in fact, their efforts were sometimes viewed as the complete opposite because these did not produce the teachers' expected outcomes. Smyth stresses that we need to observe in more depth the creative ways in which bilingual students approach the monolingual curriculum.

Research on home and school literacy links shows that although there is still much to do in some schools, there is an increasing understanding about the importance of bringing pupils' heritage cultures and languages into the classroom. However, research also makes clear that the relationship between these two contexts is not always straightforward, for as Galda and Beach point out, 'the cultural tools that students bring to the classroom remain varied, sometimes closely aligned to those sanctioned by the teachers, sometimes in opposition' (Galda & Beach 2001: 71). In a recent study that extends research on bilingual children being reluctant to use their home language at school, for example, Pagett found that children tried to distance themselves from their home language, even using 'parallel speech' in the home, because they realize that 'English is valued and rewarded institutionally and socially in school contexts' (Pagett 2006: 143). She concludes that understanding and incorporating multiculturalism into schools must go beyond simply 'celebrating diversity' and that teachers and parents (and, we would add, researchers) should also be aware of the children's agenda and 'value children in relation to their own preferred identity and not a teacherly agenda' (Pagett 2006: 144).

3.3 Multiculturalism, identity and texts

Considering Jerome Bruner's influential work on culture and the language of education in the light of research on ethnic minority pupils helps us to understand how 'culture making' is linked to narrative and the construction of self:

Insofar as we account for own actions and for the human events that occur around us principally in terms of narrative, story, drama, it is conceivable that our sensitivity to narrative provides the major link between our own self and our sense of others in the social world around us. (Bruner 1996: 69)

Bruner later expands on this idea, taking ideas from social anthropology:

Like Clifford Geertz and Michelle Rosaldo, I think of Self as a text about how one is situated with respect to others and toward the world - a canonical text about powers and skills and dispositions that change as one's situation changes from young to old, from one kind of setting to another. The interpretation of this text in situ by an individual is his [sic] sense of self in that situation. It is composed of expectations, feelings of esteem and power, and so on. (Bruner 1996: 130)

Margaret Spencer Meek also describes culture, imagination and identity as all coming together in 'the Big Narrative', the 'story we are all part of'. Through texts and narrative, we revise our history but we also look to the future. As Meek suggests, 'For children, reading is a dialogue with their future: their anticipations of 'what will happen next?' and 'shall I be able to cope with it?' (Spencer Meek 2002: 4).

This dialogue begins before school and continues into young adulthood when it becomes more conscious and also provides a space to reflect on identity. This was evident in a thought-provoking study by the French anthropologist, Michèle Petit (2001), on libraries and ethnic minority users in deprived urban neighbourhoods. She found that reading provided a private space for young adult readers in contexts where they had very little personal space (particularly young Muslim women). Through their words, she shows the potential that reading has to create an identity that is not based solely on ethnicity, or on antagonism between 'them' and 'us', but a more plural, more flexible one, that is open to change (Petit 2001: 57). Like Bruner, she also concluded that young people were able through reading to take 'authorship' of their own selves and lives 'supported by fragments of stories, images, phrases written by others, and from them obtain the strength to go to a different place from which they seemed to be destined by everything else' (Petit 2001: 47). ⁵ Her findings show young people becoming reflective and critical through their reading. They confirm Cummins' argument that the affirmation of identity is a critical process which occurs through reflection on both their heritage background and the culture of their new country (Cummins 1996).

There are also studies which have been based on multicultural literature: for example, Enciso (1997) looked at constructions of difference in a book by Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee, by 4th and 5th grade American students. She wanted to find out how they related their own understandings and experiences of 'difference' to the way in which it was represented in the story. She shows how these readers negotiated 'the meaning of difference' by asking questions such as 'Who is like me?' 'Is his/her story my story?' 'Are these experiences I've had or would like to have?'. This and other studies try to explore how what Thomson calls children's 'virtual school bags' (full of different experiences, knowledges, narratives, interests and understandings) can be opened in the classroom (quoted in Nixon and Comber 2006: 129). However, it is important to note that cultural and personal experiences may not always have the positive outcomes expected by the teacher. Galda and Beach cite examples of research, for example, which showed that readers may reject a character's action when these did not correspond to their own experiences or did not reflect their cultural expectations (Galda & Beach 2001: 65). Petit also points out that instead of providing an opportunity for readers to express themselves, some texts can be too close for comfort and have the opposite effect (Petit 2001: 50).

Minns (1990) looked at much younger readers: preschool children who were already part of reading and writing networks in the home. She traced the way in which they found their own pathway to reading in the context of their family's views on learning which were in turn based on social or cultural beliefs and traditions. In an in-depth case study of 4 year old Gurdeep, she shows how he has to learn different lessons from different forms of narrative: in this case, the moral tales told by his Sikh mother and the Western texts he finds in school. The cultural assumptions involved in the text do not only have to do with the themes and morals, but also with a particular view of the child reader:

Authors are writing books like these within a specific cultural framework and with a particular audience in mind - notably the hypothetical child reader who is socialised into responding to a story by making conversation out of it. Their books are presented in ways which encourage the child to ask questions about the story, to predict what will happen next and to match what does happen against experiences in their own lives; the books require them to investigate and use their imagination, to stop and discuss and to interpret the words of the author. This presupposes a way of reading which is not shared by everyone and tensions can be set up between child, teacher and parent if there is a cultural mismatch about the way in which a book is to be read and understood by a child […]. (Minns 1990: 112)

3.4 Bilinguality, popular culture and digital media texts

Many new studies are taking into account the way in which bilingual children interact with both popular culture and digital culture. In 2003 Marsh reviewed studies of children's literacy practices in the home which were linked to popular culture. She found that popular culture and media texts were often the first encounter bilingual children had with their new culture and that they were deeply embedded in the literacy lives of families. Parents tended to view these texts in a positive light, because of their learning potential in terms of language and the social links provided with other children. In many homes, there were often media and digital texts in other languages as well and children drew from this store of texts to help them make meaning in their new contexts, both at home and at school. However, two years later Marsh (2005) found that

Despite the growing attention paid to the place of popular culture and media in children's lives, there is still relatively little analysis of the way in which young bilingual children draw on different elements of their popular cultural worlds to create hybrid text spaces in which various threads of their identities collide and merge. (Marsh 2005: 6)

Gregory and Kenner (2003) discuss the extent to which media and technology were used in bilingual households to maintain their heritage culture and language(s), for example, through keeping in touch with relatives abroad, with the community in the UK, or for religious purposes. Multilingual media offers possibilities of learning new languages but also of maintaining the heritage languages in ways that were not possible before the new technology of computers, videos and digital cameras. Kenner (2000 and 2005) has looked further into the role of popular and media texts in bilingual children's literacy worlds. She discusses ways in which traditional texts have been transformed due to new media forms, so that the multimedia texts which children encounter, although dominated by English, also offer children hybridity and a multiplicity of identities. She provides evidence that children were familiar with a wide range of these texts and were able to incorporate them into their own creative literacy skills. Kenner stresses the importance that popular cultural texts have for the children and that

as well as knowing 'what counts' in terms of Anglo-American culture, they also have many other experiences in their home and community lives which are not visible in mainstream magazines, TV programmes or computer games […] given the opportunity they will share their hybrid cultural knowledge with their peers at mainstream school and produce texts which take this hybridity even further. (Kenner 2005: 86)

Pahl (2004 and 2005) has also done innovative ethnographic research on children and popular media texts in the multilingual homes, observing children's play with console games and the artifacts and ephemera that result from them, such as drawings and other creative expressions of response. In some cases, the narratives that children constructed were related to family histories and cultural identities and eventually themselves became part of wider family narratives. Like Kenner, Pahl argues that these hybrid experiences should be recognized and built on in educational settings. Pahl, Kenner and Marsh, among others, show that there is still much to find out about the relationship between the literacy of ethnic minority children and their use of both popular culture and digital media texts.

3.5 Research implications for a Scottish context

Findings and strategies from previous research provided the platform for developing our approach in the Scottish context described in Section 2. Little research has been done in this context, however, and our study therefore set out to explore:

• the intersections of home and school literacies through discussion and shared experience
• the mediated literacies of picture books through the analysis of text and illustration
• the experience of asylum/ethnic minority bilingualism as it meets the 'bilingualism' of the Scottish school context [Scots in the playground and Standard Scottish English in classroom pedagogy]
• the provision of spaces where 'language and life histories' can be heard, and 'self-authorship' can begin in a new country
• the use of Scots language as a 'neutral venue' or third frame of reference where the language of power and the language of relative powerlessness or poverty can encourage equality [since everyone is a relative stranger to its use in the classroom context]
• the use of whole-class sessions that may offer a 'metalinguistic' but also community-based focus
• the focus on 'ephemera' of comics, videos, drawings, speech-bubbles, both in the texts chosen and in the writing/drawing activities
• the use of accents and oral features of story-telling, such as voice, first-person narrative or poetry, or moral issues arising from wrong decisions, to make an impact in terms of shared human experience.

In the following section we will begin by looking at the ways in which Scottish literature and language influence the construction of identity and then focus on studies which have involved ethnic minority pupils responding to texts.

Summary

Recent changes in our understanding of literacy have led to new research on the ways in which multiple literacies operate in specific cultural contexts. Because of the new educational issues raised by immigration in a global world, some of this research has focussed on the relationship between literacy, identity, bilinguality and culture, including the impact of ICT. The implications of this research are also relevant to the changing Scottish context and formed the basis for the present project.

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