Child Readers and the Worlds of the Picture Book Baird, Adela; Laugharne, Janet; Maagerø, Eva ...
Children's Literature in Education,
03/2016, Volume:
47, Issue:
1
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
Children as readers of picture books and the ways they respond to, and make meaning from, such texts are the focus of this article, which reports on a small-scale study undertaken in Norway and ...Wales, UK. The theoretical framing of the research draws on concepts of the multimodal ensemble in picture books and of the reading event as part of a social practice. The research design was developed from the team’s analysis of two texts,
Pappa
by Svein Nyhus (
1998
) and
What does Daddy Do
? by Rachel Bright (
2009
). Twenty-four children, who were 7 and 8 years old, took part in the study. This was built around two reading events for each book, staged as an immediate response and as a guided response. The data subsequently collected were analysed according to three overarching organisational principles, as
book world
,
real world
and
play world
. For both
Daddy
and
Pappa
, the first reading event showed the children’s responses were mainly directed towards exploring the
book world
. On the second reading event, references to the
real world
predominated for
Daddy
, while for
Pappa
the
book world
was again dominant. Across both reading events and for both books, the
play
world
revealed those occasions when the children expanded the meaning of the story, demonstrating an inventive ability to play with the text. Overall, the children’s responses moved fluidly across the three worlds, showing them to be energetically making connections between the reading, their experience of books and their own lives.
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DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
This paper examines three key education policy documents from Scotland, England and Wales in the eight years after devolution. A close textual analysis of the language of each document is undertaken, ...which is supported by the authors' insider knowledge of these countries. Findings are presented from analysis of a group of selected words, as well as analysis of the visual images used in the three documents. Points of similarity and difference within the shared discourse of policy are identified and these are discussed under the headings of improvement, vision, gaps and disjunctures. Perhaps understandably, each country seems very concerned with its own education policy agenda. However, the extent of this is clearly highlighted by our analysis, which largely reveals national monologues, with little reference to each other's policies across Scotland, England and Wales. It is suggested that more 'national conversation(s)' between these countries might take place.
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Available for:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Challenges facing researcher development are explored in relation to three UK case study initiatives of building research capacity in Education. Drawing evidence from evaluations of these ...initiatives, we argue that expansive research workplaces build research capacity particularly effectively. The nature of expansiveness is dependent upon the range of learning opportunities, engagement with research communities and interpersonal support. The importance of inter-institutional collaboration to promote capacity across the academic discipline is also highlighted. We conclude that the development of, engagement with, and investment in inter-institutional, interproject communities is imperative to the effective building of research capacity.
The Scottish Executive has published a collection of desired policy destinations with designated indicators of progress which set out its ambitions for social justice. Milestone 9, in Social Justice: ...a Scotland where everyone matters, aspires to bring the attainment of the poorest-performing 20% closer to the attainment of all pupils in compulsory education. In the context of Scotland's National Priorities in education, this paper focuses on the lowest attaining 20% of pupils in Scotland's compulsory education sector. The historical and political context of the National Priorities is discussed in conjunction with the challenges of Milestone 9. The main sections of this paper draw on empirical data: to describe more fully Scotland's young people who fall within the bottom quintile and to widen its conceptual frame to include social, economic and spatial constituents; and, through a small interview study, to illuminate how the high-level policy intention of Milestone 9 is mediated into practice. The final section of the paper addresses the implications of norm-referenced and criterion-referenced ways of constructing the poorest performing quintile and places these in the context of contemporary research into absolute and relative social mobility in Scotland.
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