ANÁLISIS DE IMPORTANCIA Y GOBERNABILIDAD- IGO

The most resilient theme in the last two decades of New Literacy Studies has been the home-school mismatch hypotheses (Maybin, 2007) and the need for schools to engage more with children’s experiences out-of-school to make writing relevant and meaningful (Dowdall, 2006, 2009; McClay, 2002; Marsh, 2003; Millard, 2003; Pahl, 2002). There is no doubt that David, Mark and Steven all appear to write about subjects and experiences that are of interest to them, if they can create an opportunity. David writes about sport and the Olympic Games, Mark chooses to include words from the books he reads and Steven writes about his previous and anticipated travels. However, on closer inspection it seems that there are deeper, more personal reasons for writing about these subject areas.

As I re-read the accounts and compare the boys reasoning for their writing, I see boys writing not about their interests alone, but about events and experiences that are significant in terms of highlighting positive family relationships. Although David is interested in sport and writes about the Olympic Games, our conversations about his writing, and therefore the subsequent narrative, make no reference to the names of specific athletes who were competing, or to the races themselves or to the quality of the sports event. Instead he talks about the event as a family day out, travel routines and being together with his mother, father and brother. This aspect of togetherness is important to him and such days and weekends away have formed a part of his childhood, mainly through involvement with the Caravan Club.

Togetherness is also important to Mark and Steven. Mark enjoys reading and using new vocabulary that he encounters in books in his writing but it is the one-to-one time with his mum that is really special and important to him. Steven is an

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and to recommend Athens to his teacher as a place for a holiday. Steven has never visited Athens but it is a place in Europe that he associates with Stephanie, his mother. That is because she had flown over the city to start her new job and, more importantly, continues to do so when she returns home on visits. It would be a journey that Steven himself would soon make with both of his parents and siblings. Therefore, a focus on Athens signifies being reunited as a family. Being together as a family is also important for Steven.

Although research has identified that writing in school apparently involves an abandonment of home culture (Geisler, 2013) the boys’ narratives show that they will search for ways to include a reference to it. However, the boys are not simply writing about what interests them out of school, they are writing about what is important to them; relationships with close family members. They are ideologicising their literacy practices in a world where autonomous models prevail. Similarly, Lancaster (2014) found that the process of meaningful mark making with pre-school children was integrally linked to sequences of interactions between carers and children, and their shared histories. The boys’ narratives suggest that at age 10 this remains the case and each narrative provides an insight into how they each draw on the stable periods of their life and aspects of their families’ narrativised identities as sources for their writing in school. For example Mark’s nightly story sharing had become a family tradition that had begun with his mother and her first born daughter some twenty years earlier.

The previous section has addressed research question 3 as it has considered how the boys are participating in the production of themselves as writers in terms of developing their ideas in relation to composition. I now turn my attention to the aspect of transcription.

7.1.2 From Composition to Transcription

Although the boys’ lesson objectives often relate to the compositional aspects of writing, for example Mark’s work on story writing and his objective, ‘I have thought

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about the build-up for my story,’ the assessment of the boys’ work tends to focus on

the transcriptional aspects of writing, for example, ‘I thought you were going to use

more ‘!’.’ The majority of assessment related comments in the boys’ school books

make reference to spelling corrections and or to the quality of their handwriting. Therefore, it is often through assessment and marking that the teacher prioritises the transcriptional aspects of writing over the compositional. As a result, it is not surprising that the boys tend to associate writing in school with developing skills of transcription, that is spelling, handwriting and those measurable skills associated with VCOP (vocabulary, connectives, openers and punctuation). It could also be considered inevitable that this association impacts on the boys’ perceptions of what it means to be a writer (research question 2) and the transcriptional challenges they face. One of those key challenges related to spelling.

Spelling – An over-reliance on a phonemic strategy

Each of the boys’ narratives highlights worries associated with spelling. For David it is the chore of checking spellings. Mark wants to get spellings right and Steven, who is learning English as an additional language, muses about the fact there are so many spelling patterns to learn. However, their narratives also show a common feature in that they all rely heavily on a phonemic approach to spelling. All of the boys are a product of the recent government policy that puts phonics at the heart of learning to read and spell (Rose, 2006). Although this is intended as an initial strategy for children in Foundation and Key Stage 1, the boys who are in Year 5, have not developed an understanding of a range of strategies to spell unfamiliar words. Instead the phonemic approach was the method of choice, and in Mark’s case, still being advocated by his teacher. Mark is keen to point out his teacher’s mantra of ‘Say it, spell it!’ This presents a real issue for Mark who has a slight speech impediment which is clearly identified in his phonetic spellings. David too explains that when he is under pressure to spell an unfamiliar word he just ‘thinks

about how it sounds.’ This over-reliance on one strategy has impacted negatively on

all of their confidence as spellers. They know they make mistakes. Although they are all able to attempt a spelling, they are clearly disheartened as they are aware that there is a correct way to spell every word and they all want their spellings to be

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correct. This positioning of themselves as struggling spellers impacts negatively on their identities as writers in school, for good transcriptional skills equate to being seen as a writer in the figured world of the primary school. However, their stories also highlight broader issues relating to the implications of the phonics focus policy in Key Stage 1, and the subsequent repercussions this policy has at upper Key Stage 2 and beyond, if teachers fail to introduce alternative strategies to support spelling.