Investigating multiple literacies: WADESTOWN KINDERGARTEN COl Maggie Haggerty, Yvette Simonsen, Mandy Blake, and Linda Mitchell

Since 2002, the Centre of Innovation (Cal) research

programme, funded by the Ministry of Education,

has enabled teachers to work with researchers to document

and enhance their innovative approaches to learning and

teaching within their early childhood settings. Wadestown

Kindergarten became one of the six designated CO Is

in round three of the programme in 2006. This article

discusses the kindergarten's focus on multiple literacies

and its role in communicative competence and meaning

making. It draws on case study documentation from two

children, whose examples illustrate how literacies interact

and support each other, and the affordances offered by

different literacies or what different literacies enabled these

children to do. Kindergarten parents have been involved in

contributing to and interpreting pedagogical documentation

and as members of the cal research team. This article also

discusses how parent input has contributed to the analysis

and generated challenges for ongoing practice.

Wadestown Kindergarten is a two-teacher sessional

kindergarten with 30 four-year-olds attending in the

morning, five sessions a week, and 30 three-year-olds

attending in the afternoon, three sessions a week. The

kindergarten is nestled in the small community of

Wadestown, close to Wellington city. Kindergarten families

are predominantly from a high socioeconomic background.

The kindergarten's programme is regarded as special for

its exploration of multiple literacies within the use of

a project approach. Partnership with parents, whanau,

and community is another strong feature. Parents and

community are regularly involved in projects, assessment,

activities, special events, and daily sessions. There is a well

supported roster of parent helpers and family members who

regularly opt to stay at the kindergarten during sessions.

EARLYCH

Focus on multiple literacies Wadestown Kindergarten's focus on multiple literacies is on

literacies as ways of conceptualising and knowing as well as

on literacies as means of communicating. This focus links

with the communication strand of Te Whitriki (Ministry

of Education, 1996), which highlights domains beyond

the print-based or verbal-based literacies that have tended

to predominate in literacy discourse. Te Whitriki refers to

a number of possible modes of expression: "images, art,

dance, drama, mathematics, movement, rhythm and music"

(Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 72). We are investigating

how the different modalities children use in communicating

and meaning making interact and support each other. What is meant by literacy and what constitutes a literacy

is contested. Traditionally, the notion of literacy has

been language based and included reading, writing, and

verbal literacies. This has been so despite a long history

of music, dance, drama, and the visual arts as forms of

communication. Kress (2000) points out that a focus on

language alone" ... has meant a neglect, an overlooking, even

a suppression of the potentials of all the representational

and communicational modes ... and a neglect equally,

as a consequence, of the development of theoretical

understandings of such modes" (p. 157).

Now, the term "literacy" is being used to suggest

competence in a wider range of areas. Alongside those who

advocate retaining the focus on written and verbal language,

it is increasingly being argued that literacy should be seen

as plural in nature and as embodying a range of modalities

(Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). Technological developments

have stimulated an interest in technological literacy (New

London Group, 1996). The capacity to consttuct texts

which draw on a range of modalities, to integrate words

t FOLIO 1112007

with images, sound, music, and movement, has led to a resurgence

of interest in different representational and communicational modes,

in particular, in relation to digitally afforded multimodality (Hull &

Nelson, 2005). The field of literacy studies is also being challenged and

expanded to incorporate domains such as media literacy (Marsh, 2006),

emotional literacy (Zembylas & Vrasidas, 2005), and critical literacy

(Vasquez, 2003).

Within early childhood education in New Zealand, the work of

Roskill South Kindergarten as a COl (Lee, Hatherly, & Ramsey, 2002;

Ramsey, Breen, Sturm, & Lee, 2006) and exemplars in Kei Tua 0 te PaelAssessment for Learning (Minis tty of Education, 2005) have examined

ways in which children have extended their communicative competence

through developing expertise in use of information and communication

technology (lCT). The Arts have also been a focus of recent research in

early childhood education within another COl project (Wright, Ryder,

& Mayo, 2006). Our project contributes new dimensions to this growing

body of work.

In this article, we use the term "affordance" to refer to the particular

properties or capacities of a given literacy and the way these capacities

facilitate different kinds of communication and learning. We draw on

the work of a number of writers who use the notion of affordance as a

way of helping to describe the relationship between the learner and the

setting (Carr, 2000; Kress, 2000); a relationship Wertsch (1995, cited in

Carr, 2000) suggests involves social and discursive practices as well as the

materials and tools available. Much of the writing on affordance relates

to materials and tools. Norman (1988, cited in Carr, 2000), for example,

uses the term affordance to refer to the perceived and actual properties

of an object or artefact, in particular, those properties that determine

just how it could possibly be used. Carr (2000) focuses on the affordance

of everyday tools and materials-staplers, glue, scissors, tape, paint, and

card-in relation to children's learning in a New Zealand early childhood

setting. The trend in recent work has been to focus more specifically on the

affordances of digital technologies (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Marsh, 2006).

Carr (2000) emphasises that the focus in her study is not only the role the

technologies and tools play in the children's learning, but the role social

practices playas mediational means for learning (Wertsch, 1995, cited in

Carr, 2000). Like Carr, we are interested in the role social practices play.

Our particular interest is the role different literacies playas mediational

means for learning and communication. For us, the notion of affordance

is a useful one in helping to describe and conceptualise those properties of

a given literacy, which facilitate different possible ways of communicating

and knowing.

We have adopted an open attitude and exploratory approach in our

investigation using a range of methods of data collection, including

photographs, videotaped recordings, and field notes of samples of:

curriculum events where multiple literacies are evident; case studies

of six children over 18 months of age; interviews with participants

including parents, whanau, and children; and focus group discussions

with kindergarten parents. These provide a range of perspectives.

In this article, we explore the way two children, James and Miro,

lise and combine different literacies in the processes of communicating

and meaning making. We discuss insights offered by James' and Miro's

Elillilil'S and other kindergarten parents, and the implications of these

insigllls {ilr teacher practice.

James

James has a particular facility for using and combining different literacies

to communicate. In this section, we focus on an episode in which James

interweaves gesture, verbal explanation, and drawing. The following was

a key episode in drawing our attention to James' multimodal repertoire,

and how this repertoire furnishes him with avenues for exploring how

things work and for constructing meaning.

The episode began with James responding to a question-which Maggie

(relieving teacher) had asked him in passing-with the thumbs in gesture,

pictured in the photo below (see Figure 1). Intrigued, Maggie copied

the thumbs in gesture and asked: "What does this mean, James?" James

replied that it means: "I don't know."

FiGURE 1 JAMES: "I DON'T KNOW"

James proceeded to demonstrate a virtual vocabulary of gestures. The

thumbs down gesture in the next photo (Figure 2), James explained as:

"Not true ... You are not telling the truth."

FiGURE 2 JAMES: "NOT TRUE"

EARLl( CIIII .fUIOOIXF(}I 1.1: 2007

J ames then started to interweave drawing alongside gesture and

explanation. He portrayed, "This is scary", first as the static, mime-like

pose (Figure 3), then as the drawing: "Being scared" (Figure 4).

FIGURE 3 JAMES: "THIS IS SCARY"

FIGURE 4 JAMES' DRAWING: "BEING SCARED"

James produced two further drawings in quick succession: "Being shy"

(Figure 5), and "A lion being fierce" (Figure 6). He named both, without

prompting, as he drew.

FiGURE 5 JAMES'

DRAWING: "BEING SHY"

• F!GU!\E JAMES'DRAWING

"A LION BEING FIERCE"

17

With his next drawing: "Being brave" (Figure 7), James offered a fuller

verbal explanation of the detail it contains, to help to make sense of

what the picture involves: "This is being brave. There's a thing going

in there, but he's not crying. It's a pincher thing." Without this fuller

supplementary information, what is pictured would be difficult to

understand.

FIGURE 7 JAMES' DRAWiNG: "BEING BRAVE"

J ames then demonstrated "Being brave". He strikes a pose that looked to

us to be a re-enactment of a pincher thing going into his arm.

Mter a further drawing of "Crying ... bad crying ... 'cause that really

hurts", James' focus shifted from drawing such "states of being". Then

James drew "A shadow" (Figure 8).

Next, he drew a mirror: "This is looking in the mirror. There are two

people" (Figure 9).

FIGURE 8: JAMES'

DRAW!NG:"A SHADOW"

FIGURE 9 JAMES' DRAWING:

"lOOKING IN THE MiRROR"

The ease with which James was able to use drawing to portray the concepts

of shadow and mirror image intrigued us. We were particularly fascinated

by the role the medium of drawing itself was playing in facilitating James'

exploration of these phenomena. It seemed as though it was in and

through the visual medium that James was doing this. Drawing seemed

to operate as a vehicle or tool and to have particular features or properties

EARLY (:EI]LDHOOD FOUO 1 I: 2007

that served as enablers. In our later reading, we found a real connection

between the idea that drawing was offering James particular capacities,

which we recognised, but were struggling to explain, and the notion of

different media offering particular affordances (Carr, 2000; Kress, 2000),

some of which may have been very specific to James.

The mix of fascination and amazement, which we experienced through

witnessing James' fluency with different modalities, was later echoed in

comments made by two parents after they viewed his documentation at

the focus group meeting. We thought the level of interest these and other

parents showed in the documentation significant, and were fascinated by

some of the parallels between our discussion and that offered by parents.

For example, the way in which Parent A compared the complexity and

challenge of having to describe the phenomena of mirrors and reflection

verbally, "You just say it shows my reflection, but at the same time that's

not really describing it," with what was achieved in a drawing: "With a

few stick lines, in a few seconds." We see close parallels between these

comments and the ideas we had been exploring concerning the particular

affordances of a given literacy:

Parent A:

Parent B:

Parent A:

Parent B:

If someone did ask you to describe what a mirror was,

you would actually have to stop and think ...

Yeah you would.

You just say it shows my reflection, but at the same

time that's not really describing it. He was able to do

it with a few stick lines in a few seconds.

And also in drawing the expressions, he grasped the

concept and did a very similar thing.

We also find it significant that the documentation that engaged these

parents was not their own children's documentation. Their thoughtful

engagement runs contraty to the commonly held view that parents will

only ever be interested and ready to fully engage with documentation

that involves their own children.

Immediately after this focus group meeting, James and his family

moved to Vanuatu. In order to better understand James' use of different

literacies, this left us having to retrace the beginnings ofJames' gestural and

drawing literacies as fully as we could through pedagogical documentation

and teacher recollections. We thought it significant that many of Yvette

and Mandy's (Wadestown Kindergarten teachers) recollections were of

times James' mum, Justine, went to considerable lengths to affiliate with

James' chosen mode of expression. The following example, one of those

Mandy shared, also catches the sense of fun and enjoyment both teachers

frequently observed in James' and Justine's exchanges:

My most vivid memory is of James at mat time, greeting Justine

when she comes ro pick him up with this impossibly difficult body

contortion, saying: 'Bet you can't do this, Mum.' [Mandy offers a

rendition ofJames' 'impossibly difficult body contortion'.] And she

Uustine] put down her cell phone and her car keys. A twinkle in her

eye. And a smile. And she did it.

Parker-Rees (2007), studying verbal and gestural conversations between

adults and babies in the United Kingdom, notes "the pedagogical [italics

added] importance of adults' enjoyment of these conversations" (p. 4).

He goes on to observe that, "infants' choices about how fully they will

cngage in imitative exchanges seem to be influenced by their awareness

of the extcnt to which a communication partner is 'tuned in' to their

own movements, rhythms and vocalisations" (p. 7).

. Justine later briefly visited New Zealand and spoke to us about James'

use of gesture and drawing. Justine told us that her response to James'

use of gesture and dramatic play had been to "go with it ... like he might

decide that it's Number One's [a fictional character] birthday today, so

we'll bake a cake. And it's not, but we'll do it anyway." James' drawing

(see Figure 10), Justine explained, is something he has spent a lot of time

doing: "He will sit and just ... just be into drawing." A key factor in the

origins of James' drawing was the input of James' dad, Grant, and his

architectural drawings and models:

At home all we ever really did with the kids was draw and build.

Maybe because of what Grant does ... building and drawing at his

board ... He would be in the office downstairs ... but the boys would

go down all the time when they were little and he would explain what

he was doing.

The influence of Grant's architectural activities on James' drawing is clearly

apparent in the sketch in Figure 10, which Justine showed us. James drew

this recently, straight after watching his dad produce a concept design.

FIGURE 10 JAMES' HOUSE SKETCH

Miro Miro has a rich communication repertoire, which includes the drawing,

conversation, and questions, which feature in this discussion. This

episode centres around a drawing (see Figure 11), which Alex, Miro's

mum, showed us during a parent interview. The drawing is significant,

not only because of its communicative and conceptual complexity, but

because it was Miro's mum who brought the drawing to our attention.

And it is through Alex's explanations and insights that we learn of its

complexity. Alex first explained how the drawing came about and how

Miro responded when asked what her drawing was about:

Hi

Miro goes to gym on a Monday, and she's meant to hoist herself

up to the bar and then spin around, and she just couldn't do it. She

wouldn't do it, so she drew this yesterday. And 1 just said to her

today, 'What's this all about?', and she said, 'I don't know how to

swing over the bar at the gym.'

FARLY CHILDHOOD FOLIO I 11 2007

FIGURE 11 MIRO'S DRAWING OF HERSELF AT THE GYM

Yvette

(teacher):

Alex:

Alex:

Is that a thought bubble?

Yeah, that's a thought bubble. I showed her how

to do those. A few weeks ago, I showed her [what]

to do-we talked about a dog, because a dog was

walking down the middle of the road and she said,

'What's that dog doing, just walking down the

middle of the road?', and I said, 'What's that dog

doing?' And we had this conversation about 'Do

dogs think?' and 'What do dogs think?'

... and how people think, and how people speak, so

there's speech bubbles and thought bubbles. So she's

obviously used that, and I said, 'What's that?' and she

said, That's me thinking about falling off the bar' ...

You've got the grumpy face, because she's there at the

bar and she doesn't know what to do.

In going back over this interview transcript, we wondered what would

have happened if Yvette hadn't asked Alex the question about Miro's

use of the thought bubble. How important was Yvette's question in

helping to open up the dialogue? How significant was it that Yvette's

question was about the drawing? It is from Alex's response to Yvette's

question that we found out how Miro acquired her knowledge of the

graphic conventions of thought bubbles and speech bubbles, and that

Miro learnt this from Alex. Alex's response also offers rich insights of a

family culture of conversation and questions, for example, the way Alex

responded to Miro's question: "What's that dog doing, just walking

19

down the middle of the road?", with a question rather than an answer.

The conversation Alex and Miro then went on to have was also based

around a succession of questions.

Research in the field of family literacy has emphasised the importance

of congruence between the family or home literacies and those of the

educational service (McNaughton, 1995). The work on family literacy

we have accessed has been school based and primarily concerned with

print-based literacy Qayatilaka, 2001). However, we would suggest that

Yvette's questioning is an example of the congruence McNaughton

refers to, and that the significance of this congruence not only relates

to the family's culture of questioning, but to the family's connection

with drawing.

Later, in reflecting on Miro's drawing and the interview with Miro's

parents, Alex and lain, Yvette noted:

I was 'blown away' with this drawing. Here, Miro was thinking about

thinking and representing this through her artwork-a symbolic

representation of her metacognition! Miro's drawing was affording

her an opportunity to visualise herself mastering a situation. This

drawing was a catalyst for a shift in thinking for myself in terms of

how I saw Miro as a communicator and the role that drawing was

having for her as an active meaning maker.

This episode also highlighted for me the importance of having these

meaningful discussions with parents and whanau, and making time to

do this in order to gain insights into the child's world. When reflecting

on this, I was reminded of a passage I recently read from a book, Insights:

Behind Early Childhood Pedagogical Documentation, in which Fleet,

Patterson, and Robertson (2006) explained the importance of pedagogical

documentation in building relationships between educators and families.

They spoke primarily about the documentation provided by teachers for

families; but what I saw and recognised through this example was that

the parents were sharing samples of pedagogical documentation with

teachers about Miro's thinking and learning that lead to a greater "shared"

understanding about her literacy. The background information given to

us from Miro's parents about the picture added to its meaningfulness.

I was challenged to question how to do this for the wider community.

How do we have those meaningful discussions with families to gain

insights into children's learning? How do we build a culture of shared

understanding where families feel they can share examples of their

children's learning with teachers?

Conclusion A key insight from these case studies is that the literacies in which children

develop competence are not only worthwhile in themselves as a modes

of expression and communication, but serve as vehicles for children to

develop understandings, to think about their worlds, conceptualise and

imagine what might be, and explore emotions. Hence, for example:

James' use of drawing to explore sophisticated concepts of shadow and

mirror image and of emotional states; and Miro's use of drawing to

portray herself accomplishing difficult tasks. This insight ties in with the

notion that a given literacy offers affordance or a pathway that mediates

children's learning. One speculation that we intend to pursue through

further research is that the properties of a given literacy are associated

with particular types of learning.

Parents are positioned within our research as valued members of

the project, encouraged to contribute to the analysis and to offer

EARLY CHILDHOOD FOLIO 11: 2007

input from their perspectives. The insights parents provided about

their own children, and the discussion we had together, enabled us to

better understand and interpret the origin and meaning of children's

literacies, and how they are valued and encouraged within the home.

McNaughton (1995) suggests that it is through family activities that

children" develop ideas and values about literacy practices and activities

and their personal and social identity" (p. 17) . We found examples of

this in our case studies, where parents so clearly enjoyed, encouraged, and

responded to their children's literacy practices. These parents seemed to

go to some considerable lengths to affiliate with their children's chosen

mode of expression and, to a degree, shared an interest in or aptitude

for these literacies.

The richness of the pedagogical documentation acted as a catalyst for

discussion with parents. It opened avenues for talking, not only about

parents' own children, but about the literacies of other children attending

the kindergarten, and about ideas and values concerning different

literacies and their role in the broader kindergarten community.

These findings have implications for evetyday practice. They highlight

the importance of: building a culture with parents of shared learning;

having conversations with parents about the drawings, dances, and

technology; going beyond the superficial within these conversations to

gain insights about children's interests and capacities, and how parents

interpret them. Asking questions and being ready to learn from parents,

as well as teachers sharing their professional perspectives with parents, is

part of a culture that enables parental input in pedagogical discussion.

Acknowledgements Special thanks to Anne Meade and Margaret Carr for their useful advice

in the writing of this article.

We would like to thank the Ministty of Education for CO I funding

and support. Copyright for this article is held by the Crown. The views

expressed in this article are the views of the authors and do not represent

the views of the Crown.

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Mallhl Higgerty is a sAl:nkw lecturer at the of Education at of and is a research associate

Email: .... .It ............. . Unda Mltche:!!: !sa senior reMI\~n::her at the New Zealand Council

Researchand a rlls,ean::h lij.SSOCI,ax€

EmaU: Yvette S.:imons.en and Mandy Blak*, are teachers at Wadestown

::M EARLY CHILDHOOD FOUO 11: 2007