Movement, meaning and affect: the stuff childhood literacies are made of DANIELS, Karen Diane Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/21513/ This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version DANIELS, Karen Diane (2018). Movement, meaning and affect: the stuff childhood literacies are made of. Doctoral, Sheffield Hallam University. Copyright and re-use policy See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk Movement, meaning and affect: The stuff childhood literacies are made of Karen Dianne Daniels A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the Doctorate in Education February 2018 [Type text] Dedications I would like to thank my friends and colleagues, past and present, who live out positive visions for the world through the work that they do. I could not have done this work without you. I would like to thank my two doctoral supervisors, Professor Cathy Burnett and Professor Guy Merchant. They have been the very best of teachers and their unwavering support, guidance, advice, encouragement and endless patience has been invaluable. I would like to thank my colleagues who work in Teacher Education at Sheffield Hallam University and make it an exciting place to be. I would also like to thank the members of the Language and Literacy Research in Education research group. Our lively and challenging discussions have been so important. Thank you too, to the class teacher and the children in this study. You allowed me to join in with you over the course of the fieldwork and beyond. I want to thank my parents, Doreen and David Harris, who have always taken such good care of me and taught me from an early age to ask questions and value education. I thank Stuart for believing in me and being my friend. Last but certainly not least, I dedicate this work to my two daughters, Carly and Catherine. I acknowledge to you both that this really is ‘Your Song’. i Abstract This thesis emanates from an ethnographically informed study involving a close examination of the multiple ways that meaning making emerges in children’s ongoing, self-initiated activity. I adopt a poststructuralist frame which provides conceptual tools of emergence, movement and affect and pay attention to activity that spontaneously arose across children. I present a detailed description of the significance of movement in young children’s meaning making that involves the re- shaping, re-imagining and repurposing of materials and classroom areas. Movements are seen as integral to children’s symbolic meaning making and the kinds of practices that emerge. I make four contributions to knowledge through presenting new insights into movement during the process of meaning making in one Early Years settings as follows. I have shown the way children’s interest played out in their movement and identified three prevalent interest/ movement formations. I have underlined the importance of movement by illustrating the ways in which movement is deeply implicated within material arrangements of the classroom. I have suggested that the quality or dynamics of movement are related to affective atmospheres. Through juxtaposing movement, materials and classrooms, I have generated a conceptual framework for analysing the way in which agency is distributed across children’s moving bodies, the classroom, and its materials. My account of children’s activity has implications for the way that teachers might work to: see literacy as a collective endeavour deeply implicated with available materials be open to diverse pathways to literacy learning acknowledge literacy development as a non-linear trajectory take account of children’s spontaneous exploratory movement in classrooms take account of the way that movement contributes to the affective atmospheres in classrooms offer children opportunity for spontaneous exploration of meanings, real and imagined, so allowing diverse child-generated sites for participation forge broader understanding of the relationship between literacy and play ii Table of contents Dedications ……………………………………………………………………………... i Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………….. ii Table of contents ……………………………………………………………………….. iii Chapter 1. Introduction 1.1 A personal introduction and some professional concerns ……………………… 1 1.2 Thinking with theory and looking through lenses ………………………………... 2 1.3 It is just about what children do ……………………………………………………. 3 1.4 A brief outline of the thesis …………………………………………………………. 4 Chapter 2. Literacy defined in a statutory curriculum and literacies in everyday life: autonomous views and sociocultural accounts …………………………….. 8 2.1 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………… 8 2.2 Contrasting home and school experiences from sociocultural perspectives ….. 9 2.3 Young children, print literacies and early education contexts: constructed disjuncture ……………………………………………………………………………….. 12 2.4 Researching literacy as an ideological practice ……………………………..….. 17 2.5 Literacy in the statutory curriculum: an autonomous view of standardised literacy ……………………………………………………………………………………. 18 2.6 The problem with researching literacy from an autonomous view ……………... 21 2.7 Meaning making, culture and developing understandings of young children’s literacy practices …………………………………………………………………………. 23 2.8 Insights from seminal ethnographies exploring young children’s literacy practices from a sociocultural perspective ……………………………………………………….. 25 2.9 Chapter summary …………………………………………………………………….29 Chapter 3. Expanding notions of literacy: sociocultural and sociomaterial perspectives ……………………………………………………………………………. 31 3.1 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………... 32 3.2.1 Agency and social theory ……………………………………………………….... 32 3.2.2 Young children as cultural agents ……………………………………………….. 34 3.2.3 Taking up literacies and children as agents ……………………………………. 36 iii 3.3.1 Semiosis and young children’s meaning making practices …………………… 36 3.3.2 Meaning, modes and representation ……………………………………………. 38 3.3.3 Synaesthesia and affordances ………………………………………………...… 41 3.3.4 Semiosis and participation in the cultural world of the classroom ………...…. 42 3.4 Drawing relationships between play, the meanings children make and early literacy …………………………………………………………………………………….. 43 3.5.1 Materials and classrooms ………………………………………………………… 46 3.5.2 Play, literacy and materials ………………………………………………………. 47 3.5.3 Classroom materials as ‘tools’ for literacy instruction …………………………. 49 3.5.4 Digital tools shaping new literacy practices ……………………………..……… 51 3.5.5 Classrooms as organised learning spaces for early literacy ...……………….. 53 3.5.6 Classroom time as a resource …………………………………………………… 54 3.6 Chapter summary and research questions ………………………………………. 56 Chapter 4. A methodology for observing young children’s meaning making practices ………………………………………………………………………….……… 59 4.1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….. 59 4.2 Justifying an ethnographic approach……………………………………………… 60 4.3 Systematic empirical inquiry through observation in a naturalistic setting ….… 63 4.4 Introducing the research setting ……………………………………………..……. 65 4.5 A snapshot of a typical field visit …………………………………………………… 67 4.6 Summary of data generated during the fieldwork and moving towards inductive processes …………………………………………………………………………………. 69 4.6.1 Photographing children’s activity in the learning environment ………………. 69 4.6.2 Field notes …………………………………………………………………………. 69 4.6.3 Filming episodes of children’s activity ……………………………………………71 4.7 Reflective log and reflections on the data generation process ……………….. 73 4.8 The crisis of legitimacy and the crisis of representation ……………………..… 73 4.8.1 The challenge of the least adult role ……………………………………………. 74 4.8.2 Challenges or researcher bias in observation …………………………………. 77 4.9 Ethical considerations in observing young children’s activity in a iv school setting …………………………………………………………………………….. 79 4.9.1 Protecting the rights and interests of participants ……………………………... 80 4.9.2 Children as research participants ……………………………………………...... 81 4.9.3 The ethical challenges of filming children ………………………………………. 84 4.9.4 Gaining children’s ongoing consent to be observed and filmed …..…………. 85 4.10 Moving from data to inductive analysis and coding ………………………….. 86 4.10.1 The process of inductive coding ……………………………………………….. 90 4.10.2 Refining the focus ……………………………………………………………..... 90 4.11.1 Tools of analysis : Analysis of micro-movements ……..…………………….. 93 4.11.2 Analysis by movement mapping ………………………………………………. 96 4.12 Further analysis: identifying interest/movement formations ……………...….. 97 4.13 Movement as multi-scalar ……………………………………………………... 101 4.14 Representation of the data ………………………………………………………. 102 4.15 Chapter summary ………………………………………………………………… 103 Chapter 5. The Frozen © Spot Tray: Converging interest …………………….. 105 5.1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….105 5.2 Introducing the episode …………………………………………………………… 107 5.3 The spot tray ………………………………………………………………………... 107 5.4 Narrative account 1 ………………………………………………………………… 108 5.5 Narrative account 2 ………………………………………………………………… 113 5.6 Converging movement/interest ………………………………………………...... 116 5.7 Converging movement/ interest and dynamics of activity ……………………... 117 5.8 The significance of movement in the episodes …………………………………. 119 5.9 Walking and negotiating classroom spaces …………………………………….