Before Writing : Rethinking the Paths to Literacy

ISBN-13: 9780415138055 / Angielski / Miękka / 1996 / 198 str.

Gunther Kress

Opis

Arguing for a reappraisal of the phenomenon of literacy, and hence for a profound shift in educational practice, this volume plays close attention to the plethora of objects which children constantly produce: drawings, cuttings-out, writings and collages. The author suggests a set of principles which give insights into the underlying coherence of children's actions; actions which allow us to connect them with attempts to make meaning before they acquire language and writing. This book provides fundamental challenges to commonly held assumptions about both language and literacy, thought and action. It places these challenges within the context of speculation about the abilities and dispositions and calls for the radical decentring of language in educational theory and practice.

Recenzje

'A call for a fundamental change in education. Provocatively, he defines school as a place where teachers insist the world can only be known through the abstractions of written language. His book shows the fascinating ways in which children express and exchange meaning on their progress to literacy.' - New Scientist

'Before Writing has radical implications both for linguistic theory and for educational practice. It calls into question the accepted focus on written language as a privileged system of representation.' - Journal of Sociolinguistics

Spis treści

List of colour plates, List of figures, Preface, 1 Literacy, identity and futures, 2 ‘My Gawd, I made it like Australia’:making meaning in many media, 3 Making sense of the world:‘The seagulls are reading the newspaper’, 4 Drawing letters and writing dinosaurs:children’s early engagement with print, 5 ‘You made it like a crocodile’:a theory of children’s meaning-making, 7 Teaching literacy, learning literacy, 8 Futures, Sources and contexts, Bibliography, Index

O autorze

Gunther Kress