Work

Bringing ethnography to a multimodal investigation of early literacy in a digital age

Year: 2011

Type: article

Abstract: In this article I reflect on the insights that the well established traditions of ethnography can bring to the more recent analytic tools of multimodality in the investigation of early literacy practices. First, I consider the intersection between ethnography and multimodality, their compatibility and the tensions and ambivalences that arise from their potentially conflicting epistemological framings. Drawing on ESRC-funded case studies of three and four-year-old children’s experiences of literacy with printed and digital media, 1 I then illustrate how an ethnographic toolkit that incorporates a social semiotic approach to multimodality can produce richly situated insights into the complexities of early literacy development in a digital age, and can inform socially and culturally sensitive theories of literacy as social practice (Street, 1984, 2008).

Source: Qualitative Research

DOI: 10.1177/1468794111399838

Author: Rosie Flewitt

Institution: The Open University

Language: English

Topic: Literacy, Media, and Education

Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,650