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Stories that travel: Preservice teachers using photography to understand children´s funds of knowledge in literacy learning
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Stories that travel: Preservice teachers using photography to understand children´s funds of knowledge in literacy learning

Eliza Desiree Butler, Nayalin Pinho Feller and Ana Christina daSilva Iddings
Re-Designing Teacher Education for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children: A Critical-Ecological Approach, pp.136-156
Routledge Research in Teacher Education, Routledge, 1st
2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315440484-14

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Abstract

Teaching Strategies Digital Literacy Early Childhood Teacher Education Family Literacy Education systems
As our focus was to observe how the preservice teachers bridged in and out of school knowledge for children, we used photography as a mediational tool (Vygotsky, 1978) between preservice teachers and their students in the process of teaching and learning about emergent and multimodal literacy practices (Kenner, 2004). Six preservice teachers were observed for one academic semester while enrolled in a course titled Literacy for Young Children. An integral part of the course design emphasized collaboration with families. Each preservice teacher was matched with a voluntary case-study family with whom they conducted their home engagements throughout the 2-year program. Pivotal characteristics of the course design included a personal literacy memoir, 3 home engagements, guided reflections, and the construction of a co-authored guided reading book inspired by classroom observations, photographs taken by the case study child, and informal interviews with the child and their family. Through this process, preservice teachers engaged in praxis (Freire, 1970), as they applied the theory they learned in the university courses to their practice with the children at home/school, and last as they reflected on the teaching strategies/pedagogies they employed.

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