Children, Literacy and Ethnicity: Reading Identities in the Primary School

Product Description Mainstream narratives suggest Black and African Caribbean children, white working class children, and boys, are 'failing' to learn to read. This book investigates intersections between race, class and gender in the picture of the 'poor reader', starting with young children's voices. What is the place of home learning in the story of children learning- or failing to learn to read? What do we learn about children's identity formation as they engage with books? Social science has not focused on reading as a social practice in the lives of children, starting with their perspectives, and this book fills a major gap. Policy and teachers' discourses are well represented in the literature; children's experiences of reading are not. This book not only shows the complex meanings children make of reading, but also that through consulting pupil voice it is possible to explore different issues around reading than those in adult-led debates. Review “This book makes an important contribution to both the social science critique of education and the sociological understanding of young children’s identities formed in a multicultural and super-diverse primary school. Educationalists including school teachers and social science researchers will find their horizons broadened in this study of the ways in which minority children learn to read.” (Katharine Tyler, Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, UK) About the Author Alexandra Scherer is Lecturer in Childhood Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UK. Her research focuses on exploring children's literacies, their identity work and their agency.