md. 95 23p. - eric · document resume. ed 392 016 cs 012 349. author serpell, robert; and others...

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 392 016 CS 012 349

AUTHOR Serpell, Robert; And OthersTITLE Home and School Contexts of Emergent Literacy.

Instructional Resource No. 18.

INSTITUTION National Reading Research Center, Athens, GA.;National Reading Research Center, College Park,MD.

SPONS AGENCY Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED),Washington, DC.

PUB DATE 95

CONTRACT 117A20007NOTE 23p.

PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.

DESCRIPTORS Classroom Environment; *Cultural Context; *EarlyChildhood Education; *Emergent Literacy; *FamilyEnvironment; *Kindergarten; Learning Processes;*Parent Attitudes; Reading Research; TeacherAttitudes

IDENTIFIERS Baltimore City Public Schools MD

ABSTRACTA study examined what children learn in their

transition from home life to the world of school and how they learnit. Subjects were students enrolled in pre-kindergarten andkindergarten classes at 10 public schools in Baltimore, Maryland,their teachers, and their families. A total of 42 families, each witha 4-year-old child enrolled in pre-kindergarten, from 6 neighborhoodsin Baltimore City, Maryland, have been recruited so far. The totalnumber of families involved is expected to reach 90. Data gatheringfocuses on three different aspects of the contexts of school andhome: the recurrent activities that feature in each context; themeanings of those activities, and the ways in which those whoparticipate in them interact with one another. Preliminary resultsindicated that: (1) systematic variations are emerging in the degreeto which cultural themes are emphasized in the home environment; (2)a good deal of commonality exists in parents' ideas on child

development; (3) children often produced elaborate narratives ofexciting events that occurred outside the context of the testingsession, but produced dull, flat retellings of events staged for the

testing session; (4) teachers can steer their students' playfuldiscourse in the direction of "appropriating literacy"; and (5) manyteachers expressed i'Aeas that differed considerably from the"implicit theories" that seemed to be held by some caregivers. (Anappendix presents a 23-item select bibliography of further readings.)

(RS)

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Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made *

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A

ROBERT SEWALL LINDA BAKER SUSAN SONNENSCHEIN

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National Reading Research Center

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U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONoffice of Educational Research and Improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC1

gt/This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organizationoriginating it

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Instructional Resource No. 18Fall 1995

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NRRCNational Reading Research Center

Home and School Contexts ofEmergent Literacy

Robert SerpellLinda Baker

Susan SonnenscheinUniversity of Maryland Baltimore County

INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCE NO. 18Winter 1996

The work reported herein is a National Reading Research Project of the University of Georgiaand University of Maryland. It was supported under the Educational Research andDevelopment Centers Program (PR/AWARD NO. 117A20007) as administered by the Officeof Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. The findings andopinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of the NationalReading Research Center, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, or the U.S.Department of Eclucation.

11

NRRC NationalReading ResearchCenter

Executive CommitteeDonna E. Alvermann, Co-DirectorUniversity of Georgia

John T. Guthrie, Co-DirectorUniversity of Maryland College Park

James F. Baumann, Associate DirectorUniversity of Georgia

Patricia S. Koskinen, Associate DirectorUniversity of Maryland College Park

Nancy B. Mizelle, Acting Associate DirectorUniversity of Georgia

Jamie Lynn Metsala, Interim Associate DirectorUniversity of Maryland College Park

Penny OldfatherUniversity of Georgia

John F. O'FlahavanUniversity of Maryland College Park

James V. HoffmanUniversity of Texas at Austin

Cynthia R. HyndUniversity of Georgia

Robert SerpellUniversity of Maryland Baltimore County

Betty ShockleyClarke County School District, Athens, Georgia

Linda DeGroffUniversity of Georgia

Publications Editors

Research Reports and PerspectivesLinda DeGroff, EditorUniversity of Georgia

James V. Hoffman, Associate EditorUniversity of Texas at Austin

Mariam Jean Dreher, Associate EditorUniversity of Maryland College Park

Instructional ResourcesLee Galda, University of GeorgiaResearch HighlightsWilliam G. HollidayUniversity of Maryland College Park

Policy BriefsJames V. HoffmanUniversity of Texas at Austin

VideosShawn M. Glynn, University of Georgia

NRRC staffBarbara Howard, Office ManagerKathy B. Davis, Senior SecretaryUniversity of Georgia

Barbara A. Neitzey, Administrative AssistantValerie Tyra, AccountantUniversity of Maryland College Park

National Advisory BoardPhyllis W. AldrichSaratoga Warren Board of Cooperative EducationalServices, Saratoga Springs, New York

Arthur N. ApplebeeState University of New York, Albany

Ronald S. BrandtAssociation for SupPrvision and CurriculumDevelopmentMarsha T. DeLainDelaware Department of Public Instruction

Carl A. GrantUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

Walter K:ntschUniversity of Colorado at Boulder

Robert L. LinnUniversity of Colorado at Boulder

Luis C. MollUniversity of Arizona

Carol M. SantaSchool District No. 5Kalispell, Montana

Anne P. SweetOffice of Educational Research and Improvement,U.S. Department of Education

Louise Cherry WilkinsonRutgers University

Production EditorKatherine P. HutchisonUniversity of Georgia

Dissemination CoordinatorJordana E. Rich

University of Georgia

Text FormatterAnn Marie VanstoneUniversity of Georgia

NRRC - University of Georgia318 AderholdUniversity of GeorgiaAthens, Georgia 30602-7125(706) 542-3674 Fax: (706) 542-3678INTERNET: NRRCguga.cc.uga.edu

NRRC - University of Maryland College Park3216 J. M. Patterson BuildingUniversity of MarylandCollege Park, Maryland 20742(301) 405-8035 Fax: (301) 314-9625INTERNET: NRRCgumail.umd.edu

About the National Reading Research Center

The National Reading Research Center (NRRC) isfunded by the Office of Educational Research andImprovement of the U.S. Department of Education toconduct research on reading and reading instruction.The NRRC is operated by a consortium of the Universi-ty of Georgia and the University of Maryland CollegePark in collaboration with researchers at several institu-tions nationwide.

The NRRC's mission is to discover and documentthose conditions in homes, schools, and communitiesthat encourage children to become skilled, enthusiastic,lifelong readers. NRRC researchers are committed toadvancing the development of instructional programssensitive to the cognitive, sociocultural, and motiva-tional factors that affect children's success in reading.NRRC researchers from a variety of disciplines conductstudies with teachers and students from widely diversecultural and socioeconomic backgrounds in pre-kinder-garten through grade 12 classrooms. Research projectsdeal with the influence of family and family-schoolinteractions on the development of literacy; the interac-tion of sociocultural factors and motivation to read; theimpact of literature-based reading programs on readingachievement; the effects of reading strategies instructionon comprehension and critical thinking in literature,science, and history; the influence of innovative groupparticipation structures on motivation and learning; thepotential of computer technology to enhance literacy;and the development of methods and standards foralternative literacy assessments.

The NRRC is further committed to the participationof teachers as full partners in its research. A betterunderstanding of how teachers view the development ofliteracy, how they use knowledge from research, andhow they approach change in the classroom is crucial toimproving instruction. To further this understanding,the NRRC conducts school-based research in whichteachers explore their own philosophical and pedagogi-cal orientations and trace their professional growth.

Dissemination is an important feature of NRRCactivities. Information on NRRC research appears inseveral formats. Research Reports communicate theresults of original research or synthesize the findings ofseveral lines of inquiry. They are written primarily forresearchers studying various areas of reading andreading instruction. The Perspective Series presents awide range of publications, from calls for research andcommentary on research and practice to first-personaccounts of experiences in schools. InstructionalResources include curriculum materials, instructionalguides, and materials for professional growth, designedprimarily for teachers.

For more information about the NRRC's researchprojects and other activities, or to have your nameadded to the mailing list, please contact:

Donna E. Alvermann, Co-DirectorNational Reading Research Center318 Aderhold HallUniversiv of GeorgiaAthens, GA 30602-7125(706) 542-3674

John T. Guthrie, Co-DirectorNational Reading Research Center3216 J. M. Patterson BuildingUniversity of MarylandCollege Park, MD 20742(301) 405-8035

NRRC Editorial Review Board

Peter AfflerbachUniversity of Maryland College Park

Jane AgeeUniversity of Georgia

JoBeth AllenUniversity of Georgia

Janice F. AlmasiUniversity of Buffalo-SUNY

Patty AndersUniversity of Arizona

Harriette ArringtonUniversity of Kentucky

Marlin BanningUniversity of Utah

Jill BartonElizabethtown College

Eurydice BauerUniversity of Georgia

Janet BentonBowling Green, Kentucky

Irene BlumPine Springs Elementary School

Falls Church, Virginia

David BloomeAmherst College

John BorkowskiNotre Dame University

Fenice BoydUniversity of Georgia

Karen BromleyBinghamton University

Martha CarrUniversity of Georgia

Suzanne ClewellMontgomery County Public Schools

Rockville, Maryland

Joan ColeyWestern Maryland College

Michelle CommeyrasUniversity of Georgia

Linda CooperShaker Heights City Schools

Shaker Heights, Ohio

Karen CostelloConnecticut Department of Education

Haro`ord, Connecticut

Jim CunninghamGibsonville, North Carolina

Karin DahlOhio State University

Marcia DelanyWilkes County Public Schools

Washington, Georgia

Lynne Diaz-RicoCalifornia State University-San

Bernardino

Ann Egan-RobertsonAmherst College

Jim FloodSan Diego State University

Dana FoxUniversity of Arizona

Linda GambrellUniversity of Maryland College Park

Mary GrahamMcLean, Virginia

Rachel GrantUniversity of Maryland College Park

Barbara GuzzettiArizona State University

Frances HancockConcordia College of Saint Paul,

Minnesota

Kathleen HeubachUniversity of Georgia

Sally Hudson-RossUniversity of Georgia

Cynthia HyndUniversity of Georgia

Gay IveyUniversity of Georgia

David JardineUniversity of Calgary

Robert JimenezUniversity of Oregon

Michelle KellyUniversity of Utah

James KingUniversity of South Florida

Kate KirbyGwinnett County Public Schools

Lawrenceville, Georgia

Linda LabboUniversity of Georgia

Michael LawUniversity of Georgia

Donald T. LeuSyracuse University

Susan LytleUniversity of Pennsylvania

Bert ManginoLas Vegas, Nevada

Susan MazzoniBaltimore, Maryland

Ann Dacey McCannUniversity of Maryland College Park

Sarah McCartheyUniversity of Texas at Austin

Veda McClainUniversity of Georgia

Lisa McFallsUniversity of Georgia

Randy McGinnisUniversity of Maryland

Mike McKennaGeorgia Southern University

Barbara MichaloveFowler Drive Elementary School

Athens, Georgia

Elizabeth B. MojeUniversity of Utah

Lesley MorrowRutgers University

Bruce MurrayUniversity of Georgia

Susan NeumanTemple University

John O'FlahavanUniversity of Maryland College Park

Marilyn Ohlhausen-McKinneyUniversity of Nevada

Penny OldfatherUniversity of Georgia

Barbara M. PalmerMount Saint Mary's College

Stephen PhelpsBuffalo State College

Mike PickleGeorgia Southern University

Amber T. PrinceBerry College

Gaoyin QianLehman College-CUNY

Tom IteevesUniversity of Georgia

Lenore RinglerNew York University

Mary RoeUniversity of Delaware

Nadeen T. RuizCalifornia State University-

Sacramento

Olivia SarachoUniversity of Maryland College Park

Paula SchwanenflugelUniversity of Georgia

Robert SerpellUriversity of Maryland Baltimore

County

Betty ShockleyFowler Drive Elementary School

Athens, Georgia

Wayne H. SlaterUniversity of Maryland College Park

Margaret SmithLas Vegas, Nevada

Susan SonnenscheinUniversity of Maryland Baltimore

County

Bernard SpodekUniversity of Illinois

Bettie St. PierreUniversity of Georgia

Steve StahlUniversity of Georgia

Roger StewartUniversity of Wyoming

Anne P. SweetOffice of Educational Research

and Improvement

Louise TomlinsonUniversity of Georgia

Bruce VanSledrightUniversity of Maryland College Park

Barbara WalkerEastern Montana University-Billings

Louise WaynantPrince George's County Schools

Upper Marlboro, Maryland

Dera WeaverAthens Academy

Athens, Georgia

Jane WestAgnes Scott College

Renee WeisburgElkins Park, Pennsylvania

Allen WigfieldUniversity of Maryland College Park

Shelley WongUniversity of Maryland College Park

Josephine Peyton YoungUniversity of Georgia

Hallic YuppCalifornia State University

About the Authors

Robert Serpell is Director of the doctoral programin Applied Developmental Psychology at theUniversity of Maryland Baltimore County. Bornand raised in England, he received his Ph.D. inExperimental Psychology from the University ofSussex. Dr. Serpell worked at the University ofZambia from 1965 to 1989, and is a naturalizedcitizen of Zambia. His research has focused onsocio-cultural factors in cognitive development andchildhood disabilities. His publications includeCulture's influence on behaviour (London: Me-thuen, 1976) and The significance of schooling(Cambridge University Press, 1993). Dr. Serpelland his co-authors may be contacted at the Depart-ment of Psychology, University of MarylandBaltimore County, 5401 Wilkens Avenue, Balti-more, MD 21228-5398.

Linda Baker is a Professor of Psychology at theUniversity of Maryland Baltimore County and aprincipal investigator at the National ReadingResearch Center. She received her Ph.D. fromRutgers University. Her current research focuseson the social and cultural contexts of children'searly literacy development. She is also interested inthe development of metacognition and compre-hension monitoring.

Susan Sonnenschein is an Associate Professor inthe Applied Development Psychology Program atthe University of Maryland Baltimore County. Shehas conducted research in children's languagedevelopment. She also has explored how parentalbeliefs and practices impact on children's cognitivedevelopment. She is currently one of the principalinvestigators, along with Linda Baker and RobertSerpell, in the Early Childhood Project, a longitu-dinal project investigating the development ofliteracy for children from different socioculturalbackgrounds.

Home and SchoolContexts of

Emergent Literacy

Robert SerpellLinda Baker

Susan SonnenscheinUniversity of Maryland

Baltimore County

National Reading Research CenterUniversities of Georgia and Maryland

Instructional Resource No. 18Winter 1996

Abstract. This report describes the rationaleand some preliminary findings of a researchproject in progress. The Early ChildhoodProject is based in the Psychology Departmentof the University of Maryland Baltimore Coun-ty, is sponsored by the National Reading Re-search Center, and involves the participation ofstudents enrolled in pre-Kindergarten andKindergarten classes at ten public schools inBaltimore City, their teachers, and their fami-lies. The principal instructional applicationthat we envisage for this publication is as aresource for the pre-service and in-servicetraining of teachers. The first draft was for-mulated in May 1994 as an interim progressreport, to provide feedback to the six BaltimorePublic Schools which participated in the firstphase of the project. The style was designed to

be immediately intelligible to preschool teach-ers and principals, as our primary audience.

Later in the year, we used the document fora more explicitly instructional purpose, in thesecond strand of our project supported by theNRRC under the title "Cooperative communi-cation among parents and teachers aboutchildren's emergent literacy." In that context,we invited preschool teachers to react to anddiscuss the contents of the document step bystep as the starting point of an in-serviceeducational experience. Our goal was to stimu-late and support teachers to conduct their own,practice-based inquiries into selected aspects ofhome-school relations.

The long-term objective of the Early Child-hood Project is to improve communicationbetween families and schools about youngchildren's development. Between the ages of 3and 7, most children in America make a transi-tion from their home life to the world ofschool. Instead of living all of his or her life inthe care of the family, the child starts spendingseveral hours of the day at school, in a struc-tured setting shared with a teacher and severalother, unrelated children of the same age.Pre-K and kindergarten classes provide agradual introduction to the world of school,and many parents also take various steps athome to prepare their children for this transi-tion.

Our study is designed to find out in detailwhat children learn in this transitional processand how they learn it. What are the concernsof the adults who care for the child at home?What are the concerns of their teachers atschool? How do these various concerns relateto wider cultural processes in society? Byexploring these questions, we hope to identify

2 R. Serpell, L. Baker, & S. Sonnenschein

some of the factors that contribute in importantways to children's prospects of success in laterlife.

A Contextual View of Child Development

Young children experience a variety ofdifferent contexts, each of which providesdistinctive opportunities, challenges, and sup-ports for their development. One of the goalsof our research project is to provide a detailedand accurate description of two important typesof context between which most young childrenin America from the age of 4 or 5 onwardsstart commuting on a daily basis: the homecontext and the school context. Each of thesetypes of context is made up of a complexsystem of activities that occur again and again.Each recurrent activity has a meaning for thepeople who participate in it. The process ofdevelopment in early childhood involves agradual discovery of those cultural meaningsby the child.

For example, a child who often accompa-nies his/her mother to the supermarket gradu-ally learns that this activity is called shopping,and that it involves the use of money for buy-ing food. A child who often sits down with ateacher or parent and listens to him/her tellabout the pictures in a book gradually learnsthat this activity is called reading a story. Theunderstanding that a young child acquires fromjoining in these everyday activities begins tolay the way for becoming a competent memberof society. Through interaction with adults andwith other children, the young child has anopportunity to discover the cultural meaningsof these activities, and to acquire relevant skills

and dispositions for increasingly competentparticipation in social life. A child who takesfull advantage of this opportunity makes theactivity his/her own (or "appropriates" it),which involves not just passively absorbinghow it is done by others, but also transformingit into a new version of a recognizable culturalactivity: everyone shops or reads stories inhis/her own unique way.

By studying how children achieve this, wehope to identify ways in which their caregiversat home and their teachers at school can assisteach child to make a successful transition intoschool and to derive benefits from schoolingthat parents and others in the home communitywill appreciate. Most educational theorists andpolicy-makers in contemporary Americansociety express the view that the early years ofschooling will be easier for children if thetransition is a gradual one. Hence, the empha-sis placed on preschool enrollment, parent in-volvement in schools, student homework,parent-teacher conferences, and so forth. Bycomparing the home and school environmentsof our cohort of children over time, includingthe ideas about child development held by theirparents and their teachers, we hope to identifyareas of commonality and of discontinuitybetween home and school, and to examine theirsignificance for children's development.

Research Design

Since the winter of 1992-93, we haverecruited a total of 42 families, each of themwith a 4-year-old child enrolled in Pre-K,moving on into Kindergarten in 1993-94. Thefamilies are distributed across six neighboi

NATIONAL READING RESEARCH CENTER, INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCE NO. 18

iL

Home and School 3

hoods in Baltimore City, each of which isserved by a different public elementary school.In some of these neighborhoods, the populationis predominantly Black (or African-American),in some it IN predominantly White (or European-American), and in some there is a mixture ofboth ethnic groups. We expect in the comingmonths to increase the number of participatingfamilies from the present total to about 90.With this larger sample, we shall be able toassess the generality of our findings withgreater confidence. Meanwhile, the presentinterim report describes our research proce-dures and outlines some preliminary findings.

Our research examines three differentaspects of the contexts of home and school: therecurrent activities that feature in each context,the meanings of those activities, and the waysin which those who participate in them interactwith one another. We plan to explore thetelationship between these details of contextand the child's emerging competence overtime: the understanding, skills, and dispositionsthat define what it means to become literate.Details of our methods of inquiry are presentedin a series of Research Reports published bythe NRRC (Baker, Sonnenschein, Serpell,Fernandez, & Scher, 1994; Serpell, Baker,Sonnenschein, Hill, Goddard-Truitt, & Dan-seco , 1995; Sonnenschein, Baker, Serpell,Scher, Fernandez-Fein, & Munsterman, 1995).

For the home context, we have asked theprimary caregiver of each child to describe forus in detail the various activities in which thechild participates, and to explain to us themeanings of those activities from her or hisperspective as a caregiver (in other words as aparent, or a grandparent, etc.), as well as

discussing with us what those activities maymean to the young child. Each family has beenvisited by one or more members of our re-search team several times over the past year.On the first visit, we requested the primarycaregiver to keep a diary of their child's every-day activities at various times of day through-out one week (either in writing or by dictatingto a tape recorder). On later visits, we used aseries of questions to guide the caregiver inexpanding the preliminary account sketched inthe diary into a more comprehensive inventoryof the child's home environment. At the sametime, we prompted the caregiver to share withus his/her implicit theories abcut child develop-ment and about ways in which parerts, play-mates, schooling, and other factors can influ-ence the course of a child's development. Wealso have observed the child interacting withmembers of the family, adults and children, inthe setting of his/her own home. In each home,we have arranged to make a videotape of thechild playing some rhyming and writing gamestogether with an older sibling or neighborhoodplaymate, and of an adult caregiver reading astorybook to the child.

For the school context, we have asked theclass teacher to describe the various classactivities and to explain to us the significanceof those activities from her perspective as ateacher, as well as discussing with us theprogress of each child within the curriculum.We have also observed the child interactingwith the teacher and with other children in theclassroom setting. In each school, we havearranged to videotape the participating childrenwhile they were playing with classmates in a"literacy corner" set up by the teacher in a



corner of the classroom and designed to looklike a little Post Office. We have also video-taped several of the class teachers reading astorybook to the children.

Finally, we have conducted one-on-onesessions with each child where s/he is encour-aged to talk with us and perform various tasksto demonstrate skills and understanding. These"competency testing" sessions were held ateach of the participating schools once in thespring of 1993, and again in the spring of 1994and of 1995.

We expect to repeat most of these proce-dures in 1996, as well as expanding some ofthem to include additional dimensions of thechildren's emergent literacy in the contexts ofhome and school.

Some Preliminary Findings

Home Environments

The :aregivers' own diaries of their child'severyday life, and the more comprehensiveinventories of the child's home environmentthat were completed in our follow-up inter-views, taken together, provide a rich descrip-tion of various recurrent activities in whichthese preschool children participate. Whetheror not their caregivers explicitly think of theseactivities as educational (and many do), theparticipating children encounter many opportu-nities for learning: about the people and objectsthat make up the world in which the familylives, about how adults behave in varioussituations, about how they describe and inter-pret what they are doing, and about manyimportant functions served by reading and

writing. Some of these learning opportunitiesconnect in obvious ways with the school cur-riculum, while others may serve as inspirationfor imaginative teachers to design new andeffective instructional activities.

Strands of experience. Based on our analy-sis of previous research, we distinguish fivedifferent personal characteristics in early child-hood, each of which contributes to becomingliterate: (1) familiarity with print; (2) knowl-edge of the world; (3) awareness of thesounds of language; (4) competence in tellingand understanding stories; and (5) orientationtoward the value of literacy. Different strandsof experience are likely to influence the devel-opment of each of these characteristics. Theinformation we have analyzed to date about thehome environments of children in our samplesuggests that all five strands of experience areavailable to the children in their everyday livesat home and in the neighborhood. Families inall the sociocultural groups we have sampledreported that their children frequently engagein relevant activities. As the size of our sampleexpands in future years, we plan to exploreindividual differences among families in theintensity of relevant experience they providealong ea h of these strands.

Recurrent activities. Our inventory of thehome environment was divided into the fol-lowing broad categories: games and playactivities; mealtime activities; TV, video, andmusic activities; recurrent outings; and read-ing, writing, or drawing activities. Examplesof each type of activity were found in many ofthe caregiver's own diaries, and all of thecaregivers were able to describe several suchactivities when we inquired about them directly.


1 "

Home and School 5

Table 1 illustrates the range of activitiesdescribed. Next to each activity, the letter Por K indicates that caregivers reported onaverage that their child participated in thistype of activity more than once a week,either in the first year of the project whenthe children were enrolled in Pre-K, or inthe second, Kindergarten year.

Cultural themes . Reflecting on the waysin which caregivers spoke to us about theirchildren's home environment, we identifiedthree complementary cultural themes aboutthe nature of emergent literacy, which wereendorsed in varying degrees by differentfamilies:

Literacy is a source of entertainment; bookreading itself is fun, and there are manyother enjoyable activities in which literacyplays a role.

Literacy consists of a set of skills thatshould be deliberately cultivated; childrenshould be given opportunities to practicetheir emerging competencies.

Literacy is an intrinsic ingredient of every-day life; by virtue of participation in theirdaily living routines such as shopping andfood preparation, children come to see thefunctional value of literacy.

In our present sample of families, systematicvariations are beginning to emerge in thedegree to which each of these cultural themesis emphasized by the caregivers. But the num-bers are too small at this stage to warrant anyfirm generalizations.

Parental Perspectives

Much of the character of a child's homecontext is determined by the perspective onchild development, care, and education held bythe adults who organize the child's everydaylife. In most families, a key role is played bythe child's parents. Sometimes other caregiversalso make important contributions. We aretrying to probe these perspectives by askingcaregivers to exnlain to us the thinking that liesbehind their everyday decisions that affect thechild. Some of our questions have seemedsurprising to a number of parents, who indicatethat they have tended to "take for granted"these everyday cultural practices. In mostcases, howev_tr, they have agreed to reflect onthem for us, and many of the interpretationsthey have offered are both clear and consistent.Eventually, we hope to generate an account ofsome implicit theories of child developmentand socialization that make sense of the care-giving practices of individual families and toexplore how these relate to the caregiver'spersonal experience; membership of a particu-lar community, cultural group, or social class;and interactions with the child's school, andwith American society at large through themedia and other channels of communication.

Our first step was to ask each caregiver tointerpret for us the meanings of particularactivities reported in the diary as recurrent inthe child's everyday life. We have noticedthree different ways in which our respondentsexpressed their ideas abont child developmentand socialization. Often the caregiver wouldillustrate personal views with a descriptionof an episode which s/he regarded as a typical



lame .t . xecurrent activities in wrnen rre-t c. arta tunaergarten Lnuaren raruc pate at Home

Games and Play ActivitiesPretend PlayStorytellingWord gamesHand-clap gamesSinging

Board gamesEducational toys

P

P

K

K

Mealtime ActivitiesFood preparationFridge displaysConversationTelevision

P K

Television, Video, and Music ActivitiesSpecific Types of Shows watched:

CartoonsSituation comediesEducational showsGame showsDramas, moviesSportsNewsMusic

Listens to music

P

P

P

K

K

K

K

OutingsVisiting people

Shopping

ErrandsLibraryLessons/classes

P K

Reading, Writing, and Drawing ActivitiesSpecific types of books read to the child:

Preschool

Picture booksStorybooksNonfiction

Other kinds of printDrawingWritingLooks at books on own

P

P

P

K

K

K

K

Note: P indicates that children in Pre-K were reported on average to engage in this activity more than once a week; Kindicates the activity was reported as occurring more than once a week for these children when we reinterviewed theirparents during their Kindergarten year.


I 4

Home and School 7

Table 2. Socialization Goals Mentioned by Caregivers

IM111111111M111111111

Developmental goals cited by caregivers of preschool children:caregivers were asked to specify: "things you see as important for your child as s/he is growing up; goals orhopes that you have for your child."

Social or moral development:safety or escape from hazards; rejection of violence; prosocial attitudes, relationships, social skills,tolerance, nurturance; moral, polite, and respectful behavior; wisdom, good judgment.

Personal development:self-esteem, confidence; pleasure, fun, relaxation, happiness; self-actualization; imagination; independence;responsibility.

Intellectual development:practical, everyday intelligence, competence, self-help skills; communication skills; general knowledge,learning; specific knowledge, learning strategies.

Academic development:achievement motivation, motivation to learn; academic achievement; literacy.

example of the child's behavior. Some, but notall, of the caregivers tried to explain theirchild's behavior and/or their own caregivingpractices with reference to some generalizedprinciple, such as "being there" for the child,or "preparing" the child for the challenges ofschooling. And sometimes caregivers cited awell-known cultural theme to support theirexplanation for their particular child's situa-tion. Themes that were often cited in this waywere: how society should do away with vio-lence, how children deserve to have fun, andthe importance of motivation for achievingsuccess at school.

Socialization goals. We have analyzed themeanings expressed by caregivers for therecurrent activities in their child's everyday lifein terms of how much emphasis they placed onvarious domains of development. Some parentsemphasized developmental goals in the social

and moral domains, such as the rejection ofviolence. Others tended somewhat more toemphasize personal, intellectual, or academicgoals, such as the cultivation of independenceand imagination. Table 2 summarizes the fullrange of socialization goals mentioned by thecaregivers in our sample. Only some of thesegoals were mentioned by any given caregiverin our initial round of interviews. Among thegoals they specified, those which they rankedhighest in importance tended more often to bein the broad domains of social/moral or per-sonal development than of intellectual or aca-demic development.

In our continuing analysis of these inter-views with parents, we are exploring the con-nections perceived by parents among theirvarious goals, their beliefs about the degree towhich children's characteristics are modifiablethrough care and education, and their views on



the most effective and appropriate ways to tryto influence the course of a child's develop-ment. We are also analyzing their expectationsfrom the schools, their views on the ways inwhich their own socialization practices at homecomplement and/or contrast with the education-al practices of the schools, and their impres-sions of the existing channels of communica-tion between homes and schools.

Many factors contribute to a given parent'simplicit theory of child development andsocialization. We are finding some evidenceof differences between parents of girls andboys, between low-income and middle-incomeneighborhoods, and between African-Americanand European-American parents. However, weare also finding a good deal of commonalityamong the views held across all thesegroups.

What Children Bring to School

Children experience their first few years ofschooling as commuters between two worldswith somewhat different cultures: their homeculture and the culture of school. As they growolder they must learn to deal with the differentdemands of these two cultures. At home, theirparents and other caregivers expect certainforms of behavior; while at school, other formsof behavior are often called for. Part of ourproject is designed to analyze the repertoire ofcompetencies and dispositions that these youngchildren acquire at home, and to explore waysin which teachers may be able to build on theirstrengths as well as offering them new andcomplementary knowledge, skills, and atti-tudes.

We have examined a wide range of specificskills and knowledge relevant to emergentliteracy, including recognition of letters, num-bers, and words; recognition and naming ofcommercial products by their labels; detectionand production of rhyme and alliteration;concepts about print; knowledge of the func-tions of printed materials; and expression ofideas in narrative speech. The child's perfor-mance on these various measures provides aprofile of his/her range of competencies, aswell as a baseline against which we shall beable to assess developmental progress oversubsequent years.

In this preliminary report, we will sum-marize what we have learned so far about twoaspects of the children's home-based reper-toire: narrative accounts of personal experi-ence, and playful discourse with other chil-dren. In the coming year, we also plan toexplore children's growing awareness of thesounds of language, and their motivation forreading.

Narrative accounts of personal experience.The ability to give an account in words ofsomething that has happened in one's own lifeis the foundation of all other forms of story-telling. This part of our study revealed thatyoung children's narratives are complex toassess, and that much depends on how adultsphrase their requests for performance.

One member of our research team, SusanHill, compared two different ways of invitingthe 4-year-olds in Pre-K to talk with us. Onemethod was to ask the child to provide anaccount of some recent out-of-school experi-ence mentioned to us by the child's primarycaregiver. The other was to ask them to retell


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Home and School 9

a short event in which the child had partici-pated earlier in the testing session, togetherwith the researcher who was requesting theretelling. This event, which was staged in thesame way for each child, involved a specialbox covered with a picture of the TV character,Barney, an excursion to carry the box from onepart of the school to another, an accident inwhich the researcher dropped several items inthe corridor and the child assisted her to gatherthem up, and a search for another special boxin which the child discovered a colorful stickerthat s/he was allowed to keep.

The children responded quite differentlyto these two types of question. When theresearcher asked the child to describe theBarney Box episode, the child's reply wasgenerally quite brief and flat. But when theresearcher requested the child to tell her aboutan exciting recent event in his or her own lifethat had occurred outside the context of thetesting session, the narratives children pro-duced were often quite elaborate, providing notonly a description of what happened but also astrong indication of the child's point ofviewwhat s/he liked about the event, thecharacters, and their actions.

This finding was predicted in advance ontheoretical grounds. The children's accounts ofpersonal, out-of-school experience were ad-dressed to an audience (the researcher) who wasnaive as to the details of what had transpired,whereas the retellings were addressed to anaudience who was already informed. Thus, whilethe first method could be regarded as an au-thentic request for descriptive information, thesecond was more likely to be interpreted by thechild as a request for a display of his/her

competence. Some children readily agree to suchrequests for display, while others evade or resistthem as unauthentic. To express a point of viewabout the events described seems to haveappeared more appropriate to the childrenwhen providing authentic accounts than whenmerely displaying competence (Hill, 1994).

Playful discourse with other children. Ineach Kindergarten classroom of the partici-pating schools, in 1993-94, the class teachercooperated with another member of our re-search team, Akintunde Morakinyo, in settingup a literacy corner designed to look like alittle Post Office, with writing materials, enve-lopes, stamps, and play money. Children tookturns to play in the "Post Office" and wore aspecial "mailman's jacket" when doing so.Inside the lining of the jacket was sewn aportable transmitter microphone which enabledus to record the children's speech while theyplayed. Analysis of these records together withthe videotape is generating some very interest-ing information about how youbg childrenincorporate literacy materials within theirimaginative play. It is clear from our findingsthat teachers can steer their students' playfuldiscourse in this context in the direction of"appropriating" literacy.

All of the children showed signs of enjoy-ing their activities in the literacy corners. Butthe degree to which they incorporated any ofthe literacy materials into the fantasy worldthey created varied considerably. One impor-tant factor influencing the degree to which thishappened was the amount of interest shown bythe class teacher. Teacher's input in the formof comments and suggestions tended to steerthe play toward literate themes. Another influ-



ential factor was the length of time allocated toplay sessions in the corner. Children in classeswhere more time was spent in the corner tend-ed to display more connections between theirplay and the practices and concepts of literacy(Morakinyo, 1994).

Teacher Perspectives

Each of the teachers in whose pre-Kinder-garten classes our children were enrolled gaveus an extensive interview about personal educa-tional philosophy, classroom practices, andimpressions of the child and his/her develop-mental progress. Similar interviews wereconducted in the Spring of 1994 with the Kin-dergarten teachers. In addition to providingvaluable information about the behavior of eachchild in the classroom context, these interviewsprovide a window into the perspective of animportant group of professionals on childdevelopment and socialization. Although oursample of school teachers is still small, it isapparent that they share some of the beliefsexpressed by the children's home caregivers. Inother respects, many teachers expressed ideasthat differed considerably from the "implicittheories" that seemed to be held by somecaregivers. Furthermore, somc teachers indi-cated that they regard a certain proportion oftheir students' parents as hold 'ng radicallydifferent views about child-rearing from them-selves.

Such apparent contrasts in perspective,whether or not they are completely valid, posea significant challenge for cooperative commu-nication among the adults responsible for childrearing in the complementary contexts of home

and school. During the third year of the proj-ect, while our study cohorts were enrolled infirst grade, we began to share our findings onthis topic with a group of in-service, preschoolteachers, as a basis for stimulating them toundertake their own action-research projects.Each of these teacher-inquiry projects wasdesigned to enhance the quality of cooperativecommunication among parents and teachersabout children's emergent literacy (Serpell,Baker, Sonnenschein, Gorham & Hill, 1995).

Conclusion

The complexity of the research design ofthe Early Childhood Project is deliberate.Understanding the early development of chil-dren's literacy from a contextual perspectivecalls for the integration of many differentvariables. This report has focused on the pat-terning of recurrent activities in which childrenparticipate, the implicit theories of the adultsresponsible for their care and education (in-cluding their goals for the child's develop-ment), and the various strands of the children'semerging competence (including the narrationof personal experience and the incorporation ofliteracy materials within imaginative play).Each of these elements is part of a complex jig-saw puzzle that we are trying to assemble aswe track the development of these childrenover time. We hope that this preliminaryaccount will be a valuable resource for thepreparation of teachers to define their roles inthis complex configuration.

Author Note. We are grateful to the City ofBaltimore Department of Education, and to the


Home and School 11'

Principals and Teachers of the Baltimore CitySchools for their support and participation. Theresearch we describe has been a joint endeavor withour team of Graduate Student Research Assistants:Hibist Astatke, Marie Dorsey, Sylvia Fernandez,Victoria Goddard-Truitt, Linda Gorham, SusanHill, Akintunde Morakinyo, Kim Munsterman, andDeborah Scher. In preparing the present version forwider dissemination by NRRC, we decided that abibliography (see Appendix) of more technical doc-uments emanating from the project could usefully beappended. We have also included a short list ofpapers that we assigned for reading in our in-servicecourse for preschool teachers. The richness andintensity of the discussions generated by thesereadings at the course sessions encourage us tobelieve that they were an appropriate selection forthis audience.

References

Baker, L., Sonnenschein, S., Serpell, R., Fernan-dez, S., & Scher, D. (1994). Contexts of emer-gent literacy: Everyday home experiences ofurban pre-kindergarten children (Reading Re-search Report No. 24). Athens, GA: NRRC,Universities of Georgia and Maryland CollegePark.

Hill, S. (1994). Culture, context, and personalnarrative. Unpublished master's thesis, Univer-sity of Maryland Baltimore County.

Morakinyo, A. (1994). Discourse variations amongAfrican-American and European-American kin-dergartners' literacy-related play. Unpublisheddoctoral dissertation, University of MarylandBaltimore County.

Serpell, R., Baker, L., Sonnenschein, S., Hill, S.,Goddard-Truitt, V., & Danseco, E. (1995).Parental ideas about development and social-ization of children on the threshold of schooling.

Manuscript in preparation, University of Mary-land Baltimore County.

Serpell, R., Baker, L., Sonnenschein, S., Gorharn,L., & Hill, S. (1995). Cooperative communica-tion among parents and teachers about children'semergent literacy. Manuscript in preparation,University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Sonnenschein, S., Baker, L., Serpell, R., Scher,D., Fernandez-Fein, S., & Munsterman, K. A.(1996). Strands of emergent literacy and theirantecedents in the home: Urban preschoolers'early literacy development (Reading ResearchReport No. 48). Athens, GA: NRRC, Universi-ties of Georgia and Maryland College Park.



Appendix

Suggestions for Further Reading

The following select bibliography falls into four sections. Section 1 contains another resource wehave produced, that was, like this report, specifically designed to be useful to teachers. Section 2contains some chapters by one or more of the principal investigators that attempt to relate the EarlyChildhood Project to various issues of concern to teachers. Section 3 contains some reports aboutother research designed to improve communication between families and schools about youngchildren's development. This set of readings was compiled for an in-service course sponsored bythe NRRC for preschool teachers at schools that participated in the Early Childhood Project in1993-94. Section 4 contains some detailed, technical reports and graduate student reports onvarious aspects of the Early Childhood Project.

Section 1Instructional Resource

Sonnenschein, S., Baker, L., & Serpell, R. (1995). Docutnenting the child 's everyday home experiences:The ecological inventory as a resource for teachers (Instructional Resource No. 11). Athens, GA: NRRC,Universities of Georgia and Maryland College Park.

Section 2

The Wider Educational Context of the Early Chi'''ood Project

Baker, L., Allen, J. B., Shockley, B., Pellegrini, A. D., Galda, L., & Stahl, S. (1996). Connecting schooland home: Constructing partnerships to foster reading development. In L. Baker, P. Afflerbach, & D.Reinking (Eds.), Developing engaged readers in school and home communities (pp. 21-42). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Baker, L., Serpell, R., & Sonnenschein, S. (1995). Opportunities for literacy-related learning in the homesof urban preschoolers. In L. Morrow (Ed ,), Family literacy: Connections in schools and communities (pp.236-252). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Serpell, R. (1993). Interaction of context with development: Theoretical constructs for the design of earlychildhood interventionprograms. In L. Eldcring & P. Leseman (Eds.). Early intervention and culture (pp.23-43). Paris: UNESCO.

NATIONAL READING RESFARCII CENTER, INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCE NO. 18

Home and School 13

Sonnenschein, S., Brody, G., & Munsterman, K. (1995). The influences of family beliefs and practices onchildren's early reading development. In L. Baker, P. Afflerbach, & D. Reinking (Eds.), Developingengaged readers in school and home communities (pp. 3-20). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, Inc.

Thompson, R., Mixon, G., & Serpell, R. (1995). Engaging minority students in reading: Focus on the urbanlearner. In L. Baker, P. Afflerbach, & D. Reinking (Eds.), Developing engaged readers in school andhome communities (pp. 43-64). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Section 3

Recommended Reading about Other Research

Multiple entries into inquiry: Dissolving the boundaries between research and teaching. By: Jervis, K., Carr,E., Lockhart, P., & Rogers, J. (1995). In L. Baker, P. Afflerbach, & D. Reinking (Eds.), Developingengaged readers in school and home communities (pp. 247-270). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, Inc.

Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. By: Moll,L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Theory Into Practice, 31, 132-141.

Learning to read and write in an inner-city setting: A longitudinal study of community change. By:McNamee, G. D. (1990). In L. C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky and education. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Extending the literate community: Reading and writing with families. By: Shockley, B. (1993). The NewAdvocate, 6, 11-24.

What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school. By: Heath, S. B. (1982). Language inSociety, 11, 49-76.

The role of culture in minority school achievement. By: Jordan, C. (1992). The Kamehameha Journal ofEducation, Fall, 53-67.

Educating poor minority children. By: Corner, J. P. (1988). Scientific American, 259(5), 42-48.

Effects of literacy materials from school on Latino children's home experiences and early readingachievement. By: Goldenberg, C., Reese, L., & Gallimore, R. (1992). American Journal of Education,100, 497-536.



Section 4

Technical Research Reports Arising from the Early Childhood Project

Baker, L., Sonnenschein, S., Serpell, R.,.Fernandez, S., & Scher, D. (1994). Contexts of emergent literacy:Everyday home experiences of urban pre-kindergarten children (Reading Research Report No. 24).Athens, GA: NRRC, Universities of Georgia and Maryland College Park.

Sonnenschein, S., Baker, L., Serpell, R., Scher, D., Fernandez-Fein, S., & Munsterman, K. A. (1995).Strands of emergent literacy and their antecedents in the home: Urban preschoolers' early literacydevelopment (Reading Research Report No. 48). Athens, GA: NRRC, Universities Georgia and MarylandCollege Park.

Student Reports Based within the Early Childhood Project

Astatke, H. (1995). Older playmates' contribution to preschoolers' acquisition of emergent literacy skills.Master's thesis in preparation, University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Danseco, E. (1995). African-American mothers' and teachers' ethnotheories on child development: childproblems and home-school relations for children wit,' and without disabilities. Doctoral dissertation inpreparation, University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Fernandez, S. (1995). Knowledge of rhyme and alliteration in preschoolers from different socioculturalbackgrounds. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Goddard-Truitt, V. (1995). An exploratory study of the relationship between parents' implicit models ofsocialization and child-rearing customs. Doctoral dissertation in preparation, University of MarylandCollege Park.

Hill, S. (1994). Culture, context and personal narrative. Unpublished master's thesis, University ofMaryland Baltimore County.

Morakinyo, A. (1994). Discourse variations among African-American and European-American kinder-gartners' literacy-related play. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland BaltimoreCounty.

Scher, D. (1995). Attitudes towards reading and children's home literacy ( nvironments. Unpublishedmaster's thesis, University of Maryland Baltimore County.


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