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2014 14: 319 originally published online 31 July 2013Journal of Early Childhood LiteracyMarianne McTavish

recontextualization of school literacy practices in out-of-school spaces''I'll do it my own way!'': A young child's appropriation and

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Article

Ill do it my own way!:

A young childsappropriation andrecontextualization ofschool literacy practicesin out-of-school spaces

Marianne McTavishUniversity of British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

What do young children do with the literacies they have learned at school? This articlereexamines traditional notions of literacy by documenting a second grade childs literacypractices in school and out-of-school contexts. Data collected included field notes,interviews, observations of school and out-of-school literacy practices, and artefacts

(such as worksheets, constructions and computer screenshots) from the school, homeand community contexts. In analysis, literacy practices were traced to show how mean-ings travelled across contexts and switched modes. Findings show that the focal childrecontextualized school literacies in out-of-school spaces and changed them in flexible,playful and technologically contemporary ways. The study offers new knowledge of howschool literacy may impact on some childrens out-of-school literacies and recognizesthat these out-of-school spaces may serve to prepare children more appropriately forthe future.

Keywordsaffordance, digital technologies, childrens meaning making, early childhood literacy,multimodal texts, home and school, home and school discourses, home and schoolpedagogies, home-school practices, family literacy practices

I like to play the game my own way, not the way we do it in school, like with Ms. Davidson. My

way is funner and I get to use the computer. . . Tara, age 7, playing a computer game at

home.

Corresponding author:

Marianne McTavish, Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, 2125 Main Mall,

Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, Canada.

Email: [email protected]

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Sitting next to Tara and in front of her familys home computer, I listen as shedescribes the unsanctioned way she chooses to play her video game. As she

talks, she carefully circles her cursor around the puzzle words that require herto recall the phonics skills she learned at school. Although she read the infor-mation about how to play the game via the online instructions and has pre-viously played the game with her mother, Tara decides to reshape the video

games rules of play to suit her needs, and in doing so, effectively increases thecomplexity of the game. Having observed Tara in her classroom working onweekly spelling exercises, I now see in her home how she transfers the mean-ing of an isolated literacy skill across contexts, competently shifting from the

mode of a printed worksheet to the mode of the computer screen.This appropriation and recontextualization results in the formation of newand challenging ways to play the game, and generates new informationand problem-solving techniques. As Tara demonstrates her prowess, I reflectthat others, such as her teacher Ms Davidson, and her mother Debbie,do shape childrens entry into cultural practices, but it is the children them-selves who contribute to the transformation of those practices (Gaskins et al.,

1992).

Introduction

Literacy in the age of technology

As I ponder the scenario above, I consider how the second decade of a newmillennium continues to heighten our awareness of the lightning speed atwhich global technologies are developed and marketed. These technologiesseductively grab our attention and curiosity, affording us the ability to stream-

line, organize, research and individualize. In turn, they are quickly adapted toour preferences, priorities and ingenuity. As adults, we may grapple with howbest to account for the choices we have to integrate this technology, but foryoung children born into this technological epoch, there may be no choice; itis simply a way of being.

For many children caught in an adult vortex jumbling declines in literacylevels and the advancement of information and knowledge economies, learn-ing about reading and writing may be more akin to making meaning and

solving problems in the multiple contexts in which they live, learn and play.At the heart of this issue is not only the connection between the experiences inschool and childrens lives, but the efficacy of language and literacy educationof young people. We continue to contend with essayist forms of literacy and

320 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 14(3)



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orderly lists of literacy knowledge and know-how (Dyson, 2001b: 9), butthis may not necessarily guarantee success in out-of-school contexts (Gee

et al., 1996; Schultz, 2002). While current educational rhetoric may seem-ingly promote 21st-century learning, the value attached to anachronisticdispositions to texts, particularly print texts, remains high (Burnett, 2010;OMara and Laidlaw, 2011). This point is particularly poignant for teachers

struggling to incorporate new technologies but who are often pushed backto rely on print literacies as those are on which their professional account-ability rests (Merchant, 2009). Children arriving in early childhood settingsand schools bring with them a wide variety of experiences with new media,

often communicating in a variety of modes with myriad materials that aremade of bits and bytes (Yelland et al., 2008: 1). As technology has shiftedtheir world multimodally, these children are seen as initiators of activitiesrather than passive consumers (Yelland, 2010). These new millennials havemotivated researchers to examine how young learners benefit from digitaltools in terms of meaning-making in literate worlds. For example, Forzaniand Leu (2012) suggest that the Internet is a digital tool for the construc-

tion of knowledge that exemplifies young childrens propensity for explor-

ation and interactive learning. Further, Gillen (2009) and Merchant (2009)have also shown how online spaces have provided exemplary opportunitiesfor reading and writing as children work, play and move through virtualworlds. Given that schools maintain a heritage curriculum (Yelland et al.,2008: 1) in response to the different challenges and purposes of the times, what

do young children do with the literacies they have learned at school? Schultz andHull (2002) have called for research into the ways schools impose a version ofliteracy on the outside world. Are we really aware of new literacypractices embedded in the contexts of young childrens communities and

homes? These questions point to the possibility of investigating theaffordances of different contexts and how they may influence the literacy prac-tices of children. Research of this kind may help us to understand how childrennavigate and make meaning in a world for which we may or may not bepreparing them.

In this article, I re-examine traditional notions of I take literacy to documentone childs literacy practices as they travel from a school to an out-of-schoolcontext, to illustrate what Millard (2003) calls literacy of fusion. However, in

this article I stand in a different vantage point, a view that considers how chil-dren use school literacies for their own purposes outside of school, reshapingthose official practices (Dyson, 2008) to construct meaning on deeperpersonal levels.

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Framing the study

Within a sociocultural perspective, I draw on a body of work articulated inNew Literacies Studies (NLS) (Street, 1993) to understand the nature of lit-eracy learning that not only occurs in formal or informal settings or in or outof school, but also the in-between literacy learning that occurs in daily

interaction as a tool for building and maintaining social relationships, forgetting things done and for deeply personal and internal purposes.

As children participate in the social activities of their daily lives, I am alsointerested in the guidance they are given by adults and others who mediate

these activities by providing them with tools, resources, feedback and infor-mation. As children are guided in these activities, they engage in broad devel-opmental processes as they begin to construct their own meaning. Developinga framework for action (Bruner and Haste, 1987; Dyson, 2003a), childrenlearn appropriate ways of participating in different contexts. As they movebetween contexts, children begin to reorganize and rearticulate theirresources, and in the process, may differentiate and expand their knowledge

about symbolic systems, social practices, and the ideologically complex

world (Dyson, 2003a: 15). By watching how children deal with notionsof multimodality, meaning and the creation of new multimodal texts, we cancome to appreciate and understand the relationship between contexts and thephenomenon of crossing these contexts (Pahl and Rowsell, 2006). Thus, I alsosituate this paper in the field of multimodality to understand new ways of

reading, writing and making meaning.Multimodality asserts that societies use many means of making meaning

beyond those of speech and writing. Kress (2009) states, however, that multi-modality is not a theory; rather, it describes the field in which meaning is

made. Multimodality, Kress contends, when viewed from the perspective ofsocial semiotic theory, enables an account of communication, of meaning andof learning. Social semiotics focuses on all types of social meaning-makingpractices, including those that are visual, verbal or aural in nature (Thibault,1991). These different systems or channels for meaning-making (e.g. speech,writing and images) are known as semiotic modes. Modes can include visual,verbal, written, gestural, musical and auditory resources for communication.An assemblage of any of these modes is referred to as multimodal (Kress and

van Leeuwen, 2001). Social semiotic theory seeks to understand how meaningis drawn from the use of signs (words, images, sounds, symbols, acts, etc.) inthe context of social settings and whether they are within the smaller structureof a family or within larger institutions such as workplaces or schools.




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Children are signmakers who use the resources available to them in theirsociocultural environment (Kendrick et al., 2005). The signs that children use

to produce and convey meaning reflect the here and now of their environmentas well as the resources they draw on from their environment (Kress, 1997).The meanings they attribute to signs are not arbitrary but reflect what isimportant for them at the moment of text production, the here and now of

the social context (Kress and Jewitt, 2003). The sign-maker is constantlytransformative of the set of resources of the group and of her/himself(Kress, 2001: 401). From a multimodal viewpoint, there is also a need toredefine the way we see and interact with texts. This is made possible by new

technologies and the affordances these technologies provide in documentproduction. According to Pahl and Rowsell (2005), texts can be seen asartefacts that link back to people and places. They posit that when texts areseen as artefacts, i.e., as entities with physical form and historical presence,they are exposed as traces of social practice. When texts are created, they arecreated in terms of the interests of the producer and are designated for use in aparticular way. Texts are motivated signs (Kress, 1997) that signify identity

and relate to processes of synesthesia, i.e., the way we create and how we

express that creativity. According to the needs of the signmaker, modalresources may be manipulated and reshaped. Young childrens meaning-making therefore is complex and multi-faceted; young children typicallydraw on different modes, choosing the most appropriate mode for theirmeaning-making activities (Jewitt and Kress, 2003; Wright, 2007).

How we choose to make texts signifies our understandings and interpret-ations of texts. The stuff (Pahl and Rowsell, 2005) (the materiality, such aswords, actions and gestures) we use to make texts is shaped by our identities(Kress, 1997). Therefore, when we create texts, the meaning of the texts is as

important as the stuff we used to create those texts, with some materialsaffording greater power in certain contexts (e.g. creating a piece of academicwriting versus creating a blog post). Therefore, the practices of students usingnew technologies require a broader reconceptualization of literacy as multi-modal design. This is of particular importance where literacy is conceptua-lized in its most restricted sense, as a matter of competencies in reading andwriting.

It is within this framework that I trace the literacy practices of Tara, a seven-

year-old, second grade student from her school to an out-of-school context inthe overlapping activity systems of which they are a part. In this analysis,I look at how meanings travel across activity systems (i.e. the contexts ofschool and out of school) and re-embed themselves. In doing so, I draw on

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the concept of recontextualization (Dyson, 2003a; Iedema, 2003), and thelifting of particular genres, texts and practices across sites and their remix

(Dyson, 2003b) and reappearance in different contexts. I attempt tomove away from thinking about the stability and staticity we bestow upontexts, contexts, individuals and communities, and towards thinking about thepractices that are mediated by texts. I also ponder the connections between

different contexts in producing meaning, and the shifting of individualidentity across different activities and contexts (Maybin, 2000). In particular,I look at how literacy, when used as a mode of representation in a particularmedium, can enable meaning to traverse contexts and switch modes

(Kell, 2006).

Background to the study

I observed Tara for six months, making one or two visits each week to her

classroom during varying school hours and then one or two visits each weekto her home and to her community activities. In this study, I largely took onthe role of a passive observer. However, at times, this proved difficult. Because

I had observed her in her home, in the classroom, Tara would acknowledgemy presence, usually with a simple greeting. However, as the study progressedand the she began to see me more frequently, Tara largely ignored my comingsand goings. During my observations I was mainly positioned at the back of theroom behind her, so that she could not see me as she went about her daily

routines. During home observations, she would not address me directly, butoften made comments as she metacognitively worked through difficult gamesand projects.

During my observations, I wrote field notes and, with Taras permission, I

collected a number of artefacts (such as worksheets, journal entries, construc-tions and video-game screenshots) from her school, home and community. Ialso interviewed Tara in her home and at school, and also made notes ofconversations she had as she was involved in various literacy events.

The school context

Tara attended a designated inner-city school in Western Canada, a short

walk from her home. At the time of the study, the schools top priority forstudent learning was to improve reading and writing at all grade levels. Interms of the literacy curriculum, there were 34 learning outcomes (with sub-outcomes) for second grade in English Language Arts. In order to




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accommodate the large number of learning outcomes expected to be taughtacross the second grade curriculum, Taras teacher, Ms Davidson, developed

strategies that served to integrate the learning outcomes. In the classroom, MsDavidson mainly instructed her students as a whole group (with the exceptionof guided reading groups), and the events I documented through observationand recorded as field notes were embedded in the regular activities and rou-

tines involving all the children. Table 1 and the descriptions following show asampling of the literacy events I observed within the school context.

Language arts lessons. Language Arts lessons were formal lessons conducted by

Ms Davidson and involved direct instruction on specific concepts (e.g. com-prehension, vocabulary and spelling) related to reading and writing.Depending on the focus of the lesson, Tara completed worksheets on vocabu-lary or dictionary skills, and/or worked with different types of texts in theme-related activities. For example, after having been read an informational text onpumpkins, Tara was required to create a procedural text for how to grow and

raise a pumpkin from seed to harvest.

Library time.The children in Taras class received one 40-min. library period perweek. During the class scheduled period, Ms Davidson had her allotted prep-

aration time while the teacher-librarian, Ms Barrett, instructed the class.Library time provided opportunities for reading and sharing, opportunities

Table 1. The literacy events observed in Taras school context.

Instructional routine Activity

Language Arts lessonse.g. reading and writing

Participation in direct instruction lessons by theteacher on specific skills and concepts of curricular

aspects of reading and writing (e.g., vocabulary,

spelling, and organization)

Library time Multimodal text reading, viewing, and sharing

Browsing, selecting, and borrowing from a collection

of appropriately levelled texts

Accessing other resources such as computers,

media, and the Internet

Participation in discussions with the teacher-librarian

on a group and individual basis

Science and Social Studies lessons Participation in direct instruction lessons by the

teacher on specific skills and concepts of curricular

aspects related to Science and Social Studies

McTavish 325



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to browse, select and borrow from a collection of appropriately levelled texts;and opportunities to access other aspects of the librarys resources (if per-

mitted) such as computers, media and the Internet. Tara also had access to theteacher-librarian for an extended and more individually based period of time.

Science and social studies lessons. The skills and concepts of Social Studies and

Science were taught through a balance of direct instruction lessons andhands-on activities. These lessons were taught to the children through theuse of integrated themes. These themes were then delineated into units ofstudy (e.g. mapping) with accompanying readings from a series of appropri-

ately levelled books. After reading selections from the books, Tara wasrequired to complete a written activity that included paper-and-pencil activ-ities such as sequencing events, cloze activities, paragraph writing, answeringquestions or list making.

The home context

Tara lived with her mother Debbie, her father, her twin brother Tom and her

older brother and sister, David and Amy, in an inner-city neighborhood withinthe schools catchment area. In the home, traces of Taras literacy practicesspilled out and spread throughout the rooms. Her composed notes and mes-sages to her family were tacked to the fridge and walls of the kitchen.Notepads, magazines, DVDs, popular culture figurines and craft projects lay

in piles in the dining room and living room. Taras literacy practicesembedded space, place and time and these were central to her recontextua-lization. Table 2 and the descriptions following show a sampling of the liter-acy events I observed within the out-of-school context.

Playtime. Upon returning from school in the afternoon, Tara participated inan unstructured playtime. This time usually extended until dinner time andinvolved the physical spaces of Taras home, her backyard and the neigh-borhood. Within this general free time, Tara participated in several otherroutines such as TV watching, video-gaming and imaginary play withfriends and family.

Playtime provided Tara with many opportunities to engage in multimodal

literacy events. For example, a favourite activity of Taras was to do art andcraft activities. Taras mother kept a cupboard in the dining room to hold all ofthe supplies (e.g. pens, paper, glue, scissors, paints and craft books, whichwere bought at a discount at Debbies work) so that Tara could create what she




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desired. Tara constructed these creations wherever there was room, spillingfrom the dining room to the living room as Tara required more space. During

construction, Tara consulted craft books and began her projects by readingand following the instructions. Soon the project diverted and incorporatedother interests, including ideas and icons from popular TV shows and movies.Debbie labelled and displayed these creations on the walls of the living roomand on the kitchen refrigerator.

During this unstructured playtime, Debbie also provided Tara with oppor-tunities to engage in literacy events through apprenticing Tara in the art ofwoodworking, as Debbies father had apprenticed her. For example, duringone visit to the home, I observed Debbie preparing for Halloween night as she

constructed a simulated graveyard, complete with wooden painted tomb-stones and pumpkins. Together, Tara and Debbie read the directions onhow to create these representations from a magazine. Through oral instruc-tions from her mother, Tara learned how to use a jigsaw tool. Then, Tara andDebbie consulted Taras Halloween-themed school library books in order tocreate the faces on the pumpkins and the epitaphs on the tombstones.

Pretend play with peers and outdoor play at home were also ways thatengaged Tara in different modalities. For example, in an event that will be

discussed later in the paper, Tara collaboratively reconstructed a school libraryevent with her friend, Alexis, that involved the reading and computer scan-ning of books for check-out from a school library. Similarly, in an outsideplay event with neighbourhood children, Tara stopped the childrens baseball

Table 2. The literacy events observed in Taras out-of-school context.

Out-of-school

routine Activity

Playtime Reading instructions for crafts and projects

Consulting and reading texts

Constructing and assembling texts (notes, letters, lists, paintings,

projects, etc.)

Reading drawings for projects

Computer time Reading informational texts found on websites

Reading instructions for game playing

Reading visual information on games

Video gaming Reading on-screen instructions, rules and cues Reading, viewing and assessing visual information to make decisions

regarding play

McTavish 327



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game in frustration so that she could draw a picture in the dirt with thebaseball bat to reinforce the rules of the game to the other players.

Computer time. The family computer, located in the living room, was a well-used technology in the home and Tara waited her turn to access it. Once shehad her opportunity, this routine offered Tara numerous opportunities to

engage in multimodal literacy events.During computer time, Tara played a variety of games including Aladdin,

Search and Rescue and Eye Spy. Debbie purchased these games from the localdepartment store, or she temporarily downloaded them from a game website

that let the user sample the game for one hour of playtime. When Taraaccessed the Internet, one particular website she visited was Yahoo Kids. Thiswebsite provided a number of activities including an Ask Earl activity wherechildren could pick a question from a number of online choices and gaininformation about a number of different subjects. Tara enjoyed answeringchallenging questions such as Why does a laundry basket have holes?

Although Tara usually played these computer games by herself, occasionallyher twin brother Tom joined her as he too drifted in and out of the spaces of

the home. Tom added helpful hints for playing the game or made commentsabout a particular score he achieved for the game in comparison to Tarasscore. Even when Tara played alone, she engaged in a running commentary onthe game, strategizing and asking questions. She attended to the writteninstructions or print clues that the game offered to help her raise her score.

Tara often joined her older sister Anne during Annes computer time. Taraidolized her teenaged sister Anne, who gave her a glimpse of the outsideworld. As Anne accessed the world of information, communication and tech-nology, she invited Tara to listen to music, watch YouTube, play Internet gamesor communicate by texting and taking pictures on Annes mobile phone.

Video gaming. Taras family owned three video-gaming systems: X-Box, PS2 andGameCube. Tara and Tom had a TV in their room specifically for the purposeof playing video games and used one of the available three systems.Interestingly, Tara played these games occasionally, but she preferred towatch Tom play giving him helpful hints to raise his game scores. Her self-imposed responsibility was to read aloud the pop-up game directions, cues

and rules that Tom usually ignored. Strategically, she played the game verydifferently than Tom did, but they worked together for a mutually satisfyingsingle game score.




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Exploring one childs recontextualization practices across

contexts

During my analysis of the literacy events documented in school and out ofschool, I began to see the crossings of meanings between contexts, fromschool to home, and how they were embedded. In this analysis, I designed avisual variable-by-variable data matrix (Miles and Huberman, 1994) to

show the relationship between the two contexts and to ascertain the patternsand directions of Taras recontextualizing mechanisms across the two con-texts. From this analysis, I then traced Taras recontextualization events thatcrossed from school to home, triangulating my interview notes, my obser-

vations and the artefacts I collected. The data were then categorized intothemes related to the recontextualizations in terms of Taras knowledge andskills relating to subject disciplines, instructional routines and instructionalmaterials. The three examples below illustrate these themes.

From mapping a skills worksheet to designing a virtual bedroom

During the study, the children in Ms Davidsons class engaged in a Social

Studies unit that focused on Canada. The design of this integrated unit ensuredthat the children learned a number of facts about Canada, including informa-tion about the people, symbols, geographic regions, landforms and the like.Ms Davidson required the children to read and complete printed worksheets aspart of an All about Canada booklet. During one class lesson, the children

learned rudimentary mapping skills by mapping a room using symbols. Forthis particular lesson, Tara needed to complete a worksheet that required herto think about and choose a room in her home, to remember and locatewhere each piece of furniture was, to choose a symbol for each piece of

furniture, and then to draw these symbols in the space provided on theworksheet (see Figure 1). For this assignment, Tara drew the bedroom sheshared with her twin brother, Tom, from a birds-eye view, complete withtheir beds, TV, dresser and wardrobe.

Several days later during an after-school observation in Taras home, Iwatched as she began her playtime with Sims(a strategic life-simulation com-puter game) on the GameCube video gaming system in her bedroom. Thefollowing excerpt from my field notes describes the scene:

Tara takes the Sims game software out of the box and inserts the disk into the GameCube system. Shepicks up the controller and makes sure that it is attached.

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She settles on the bed and begins the game. She reads and selects the Get a Life option from the

playing menu on the screen and begins to create a new Simscharacter. Tara tells me that she is goingto create a character that looks like her.

After naming her new character after herself, she chooses her skin colour, hair colour, body type

and clothes. After clicking the A button on her controller, Tara then moves on to create

Figure 1. Taras mapping of her bedroom in the school context.




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a new neighbourhood. Reading the on-screen directions, Tara is asked to select a name from the pop-

up menu. She deletes the default name and enters a new name, Southcity, from the on-screen letterpad. A neighbourhood screen then appears and offers Tara a list of building lots so that she can begin

building her house. After reading through the choices, she selects a lot, and reads the street address

and purchase cost. She deliberates if she can afford her choice, and then deciding she can, shepurchases the lot. After purchasing the lot, Tara begins to build her house using the Build Mode

from the Modes menu. She scrolls through the available build tools to select an item to build. She

begins with her bedroom. Using the control stick she moves the bedroom frame to where she wants itto appear on her property. Using the L and R buttons and the C stick on the controller, she

rotates the bedroom until she is satisfied with its position. She tells me that she now wants to add

walls and windows. Selecting the wall tool, she builds four walls and then with the window tool, she

adds windows. With these in place, she then rotates the room so that she can view it from above.

There! she says, now Ill add the furniture kinda like I did in school but Ill do it my own way.

Tara then accesses the Buy Mode menu and scrolls through the available items that are listed

within a specific category. She selects a bed with a heart-shaped headboard and its cost appears on the

screen. Pressing the control pad she selects the bed and positions it in the room, moving it several

times until she is satisfied with where it stands. She continues adding furniture in this manner(see

Figure 2).

Figure 2. Taras mapping of her virtual bedroom in the out-of-school context.

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In this example, we can see that Tara took the skills she learned from herschool literacy practices and recontextualized them in a meaningful way in her

virtual and imagined bedroom. Through the affordance of technology, Tarasability to map her bedroom in her own unofficial (non-school) (Dyson,2001a) way reinforced, extended and reshaped her learning of mapping.Following completion of her bedroom, Tara saved the game on a memory

card in order to return later to finish building other rooms in her imaginedhouse. This particular game had unlimited replay value in that there was noway to win the game, and Tara could play on indefinitely. This game providedTara with the use of a different set of literacy skills other than those skills

required in the school literacy practice of completing worksheets, and offeredher choice and flexibility within its virtual landscape

Changing the rules changes the game

At school, during the instructional routines that included Language Artslessons, Tara completed worksheets to build spelling skills. These lessonsfocused on visual memory and on spelling words correctly. The assumption

was that the children would remember to use the words and spell themcorrectly based on the childrens visual memory of the shapes of the wordsand letters. These lessons and the corresponding practice worksheet activitiesbegan early in the school year and continued throughout, increasing in dif-ficulty as the students gained the appropriate skills. In addition to practising

the visual memory of words, the students had to read simple instructions inorder to complete the worksheet. An example of such a worksheet is seenin Figure 3.

On this particular worksheet, in the top section, Tara had to find where the

spelling words were to be placed in the boxes, based on the shapes of theirletters. In the bottom section of the worksheet, Tara had to unscramble theletters to form the words that appeared in a small group at the bottom ofthe page.

A few weeks after I observed Tara completing the worksheet in school, Ivisited her at home to observe her during playtime. The following is takenfrom my field notes:

It is shortly after school and I sit on the living room couch to observe Tara as she plays on thecomputer. She calls to her mother and asks her to come to help her load the new Disney games CD

that she found on the front of the cereal box package that morning. Debbie comes in and loads the

CD for her. After the CD is loaded, Debbie shows Tara the games that the CD includes, and starts




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encouraging feedback. The game involves showing a picture of an object under which there are spacesfor each letter of the word that represents the picture. Below these lines is an alphabet. The object of

the game is to spell the name of the object by selecting the alphabet letters for each space. As Tarachooses a letter, the words yes or no appear, and she moves the letter into the correct spot. Thefirst object is a cup, which she names and spells correctly. Tara talks to herself as she plays. The

spelling of the objects becomes more difficult as the game progresses. At one point, Tara proclaims,

This ones hard! as she cant figure out what the object is.(It is an animated picture of a

small harp). After a moment, she randomly eliminates letters until only the correct letters are

remaining for the word. She then unscrambles the letters and places the entire word in the space.

Aladdin bobs his face in pleasure and tells her she is correct.

This particular computer game required the player to have word and spel-ling knowledge, but also to have a certain amount of specific backgroundknowledge. Many of the objects presented demanded knowledge that Tara didnot have. However, the game allows you to make random letter selections inorder to fill the letters spaces non-sequentially in order to spell the wordcorrectly. Not wanting to spell the word in this manner, but rather trying

to solve the word by correct letter sequencing, Tara preferred to use herunscrambling strategy, a more difficult way than the game intended for figur-

ing out the unknown word. She ignored the games help, unscrambled theword, and then looked to see if she was correct. As I watched her, sheexplained that she did not like to play the game the way it was supposed tobe played. She liked to play it a different way, with a way she learned inschool, i.e., the way she completed the spelling worksheet at school. In the

example provided, the first picture that Tara had difficulty with was a cartoonimage of a harp. Other images, such as a goblet and a chest, also stumped her,but she was able to solve the puzzle with her unscrambling strategy. Tarasway to play the game was different than the game designers intentions, and

she successfully recontextualized the spelling skills learned in school into thecomputer game at home, gaining new information as she played.

Take Out as Many Skinny Books as You Want: Playing school at home

In her school journal, Tara wrote about her play dates with other children inthe class. She particularly liked to play with her classmate, Alexis, who wouldcome over to Taras house after school where they would paint, play dress-up,

listen to music and play house. I often observed them as they easily filled theirtime together.

One of the girls favourite activities to do at Taras home was to playschool. Usually the girls played in Taras bedroom where there was the




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greatest access to childrens books, as books were some of the most importantprops for their imaginative play. If the game involved an art lesson, the girls

moved to the dining room so that they could have easy access to Taras artcupboard. The girls spent most of their time playing school and devisingactivities that were loosely structured on the daily routines of their classroom.During school they took turns reading to each other, doing alphabet activ-

ities, handing out and correcting worksheets and taking on the role of MsDavidson.

During one play date, the girls decided to enact their school day from thestarting point of entering the classroom first thing in the morning. They

followed the opening routines of the day by getting their library books outof their pretend backpacks, then taking attendance and then getting ready todo a book exchange. At this point, the girls decided to re-enact the librarybook exchange routine in their makeshift library in a corner of Taras room.Alexis took on the role of student and Tara took on the role of Ms Barrett, theteacher-librarian. I recorded their conversation as they continued with theplay:

Alexis: Hello Ms Barrett, I wanna return these books today and take out new ones.

Tara:OK, Alexis. Put your books here. Wait. Ill have to check them in here on my computer...

[Pretends to check in books, makes beeping sounds]OK. Go and find some new books.

[Alexis goes to find some new books on Taras bookshelf and brings back five

books to Tara]

Alexis: Heres my books. Can I take them out please?

Tara: OK. . .wait. . .you need to wait in the queue. Over here!

[She waits until Alexis is in the queue and then pretends to check the books out,

making beeping noises].Alexis! You have too many books here. You cant take all these out. Thats too many! These here are

too big for you. Go put them back!

[Alexis looks distressed. She begins to whine to Ms Barrett]

Alexis: Awwwwwwwwww. . .!

Tara:Oh, ok. . .you can take out as many skinny books as you want this onetime. But dont lose

them. . .and dont tell the other kids I let you ...

In this event, in their world of play, the girls appropriated the practice oftaking out books from the school library. However, in the context of theirpretend library in Taras bedroom, the girls recontextualized and changed thispractice. In play, Tara changed the teacher-librarians two books only

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lending rule to take out as many books as Alexis wanted. Careful not to bendthe rule too far, Tara let Alexis take more than two books out this one time,

and limited her to skinny books. When asked, Tara told me that skinnybooks were not chapter books, or those big books at the back of the library.These skinny books were the storybooks that the children had the greatestaccess to in the school library; the big books were the large informational texts

with engaging visuals and more difficult printed text. In her imaginative playat home, Tara felt able to change this school practice which had thwarted herown book selection in the school context. Assuming the role of Ms Barrettgave her the power in this game to change the school rule.

Seeing the possibilities in these practices

What do young children do with the literacies they have learned at school?For Tara, the literacy practices in school and the skills and information

learned within these practices travelled successfully across the school contextto be recontextualized in the space of her home. Specifically, Tara used theinformation and skills learned from the school practices of finding infor-

mation and filling in blanks and spaces on worksheets to assist in the pro-duction of an imagined bedroom on a video game, and to change the natureof a computer game by changing its rules of play. Tara was very clear on theboundaries between the two spaces and also in her abilities to manipulatewhat passed through them in her own way, as she repeatedly described it.

The nature of out-of-school contexts allowed Tara the freedom to changethose school practices (e.g. the borrowing of particular kinds of texts) thatTara may have found unsettling, without fear of retribution. The creation ofa transformative third space (Gutierrez et al., 1995) in out-of-school con-

texts opened up an area where Tara used play to explore new literacy prac-tices, assume pretend identities and use materials freely and withoutscrutiny. As Tara moved across the many different textual landscapes(Carrington, 2005) out of school, she developed and deployed particularskills and knowledge and expressed her identity and place in the socialworld. In doing so, she created new texts and literacies and transformedthe traditional view of what is meant by literacy.

In this sense, Taras sense of identity and agency was at the forefront in

imagining herself as a 21st-century learner (Wohlwend, 2009). Perhaps Tarawas exercising agency which, I argue, may extend the theoretical concept ofthe third space. Here, I question the notion of the boundedness of contextsor spaces which third space theory seems to imply. Perhaps childrens notions




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of communication and contexts are broader and more global than we ima-gine, calling into question our conceived imaginations of a contemporary

childs as unworldly (Carrington, 2005: 24). In this study, the space ofrecontextualization may be perceived as boundless; it is the boundaries thatother contexts erect (such as the school) that may prove problematic in theirpossibilities for the re-entry of recontextualized practices. From this perspec-

tive, the present energy devoted by teachers and researchers in trying to bringthe literacy practices in the lives of children to be used in the literacy instruc-tion in schools may be misguided (Larson, 2009). It seems more realistic toconcentrate efforts on supporting those out-of-school contexts that enable

children to recontextualize school practices for wider and more global use.In Taras case, meanings across contexts moved in a unidirectional pattern

from school to home where they were re-articulated in unique and multi-modal ways. But what factors largely determined the possibilities for theserecontextualizations to occur? In the following text, I share four elementswhich may have contributed to these new literacy practices. I offer them asan insightful beginning into the potential renovation of contextual spaces

which allow for the sustainability of engagement.

Extended time to engage in recontextualizing processes

School contexts are often organized into tightly scripted production schedules,with rigidly kept time slots for specific activities (Wien, 1996). For Tara, the

out-of-school contexts enabled extended periods of time for her to take up andpursue her interests. During this unstructured time, in after-school or weekendhours, Tara had time to explore and play in ways that were self-directed and self-fulfilling. As Wohlwend (2010) states, understanding play as a new basic in

this technological world can be seen as a multimodal way of making texts,accessing remote resources, and importing distant identities (149). Thesechunks of time throughout the day and throughout the week allowed Tara tocontinue working on ideas and to expand on and solidify conceptions of liter-acy, arguably preparing her for the world beyond school. Unstructured timeopened possibilities for her to create, imagine and explore on a deeper level,and to take on identities not possible in the official practices of school.

Choice of mode

During this extended play time, Tara had many choices to draw on and torepresent her recontextualizations in out-of-school spaces. She used computer

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games, video console games, visuals and play to make meaning and pursuenew identities, such as gamer, problem solver and leader among her peers.

She used these modes to solve her real-world problems and to make decisions.As a result, she gained acceptance into new communities of practice out ofschool. Similar to other studies (Carrington, 2012; Marsh, 2011; McTavish,2009), many children maintain separate literate lives in out-of-school set-

tings, where they are allowed to use and create multimodal texts embedded inmeaningful, social contexts.

Flexibility to facilitate change

Tara was able to change the familiar in the school to the familiar at home(e.g. the printed mode of a worksheet to the mode of the computer screen) inorder to make and change meaning. In this way she was able to take anagentive role in changing school literacy practices. In out-of-school contexts,the adults in Taras life approved of this flexibility despite the fact that some of

the practices (e.g. video-gaming) stood in opposition to particular forms ofliteracy valued in school. As such, she was able to forge new pathways across

multiple literacies and across contexts. When children are given genuineopportunities to demonstrate their interests and competencies beyond theliteracies of back to basics, we can see that children are capable of under-standing the world beyond their immediate contexts and how they choose toparticipate in them (Nichols, 2007).

Imagination and challenge

The possibilities for imagination and challenge in the out-of-school contexts

were many. Tara constructed her world with the words and visuals borrowedfrom the practices of school. In her imagined worlds, she could act a headtaller than herself (Vygotsky, 1978: 102) in play. Here, the children orga-nized their behaviour to meet the challenges they brought into existence. Inthis world, they were able to exercise agency within and against the perceivedrules of the game whether it be a computer or video game, or the rules ofthe inflexible practices of school. And at the intersection of the out-of-schooland school contexts, each context impinged on the other and created new

opportunities for Tara and ways of being. In this study, play, a transform-ational semiotic practice and multimodal resource (Wohlwend, 2009: 119)liberated Tara to take on roles to explore literacy practices and materialsassociated with school in risk-free zones (Wohlwend, 2008).




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Implications

This article has investigated the new literacy practices embedded in the home

and community contexts of one young child. What has emerged, I suggest, isthe need for a reconceptualization of contexts that reflect a dynamic system ofvalues, beliefs and standards developed through understandings shared bychildren, teachers and parents.

It is generally uncontested that the school has responsibility to preparechildren to meet the literacy demands in their everyday lives and also fortheir future opportunities. Many educators are beginning to consider thatthese future out-of-school contexts will indeed require not only the use of

conventional print literacies but also new multiliteracies to access and con-struct information within private and public economic sectors, and withinlocal and global corporate worlds. In this sense, a heritage curriculum mayprovide a foundational base for the prevalence and significance of new tech-nologies. However, for citizens of the 21st century, the education system mustgo beyond the 3Rs to include the 4Cs (Critical thinking and problem solving,Communication, Collaboration and Creativity and innovation) (Parnership for

21st Century Skills, 2011). Yelland et al. (2008) point out that for children to

live meaningful lives in these new times, new skills and knowledge need to belearned and practised beyond those demonstrable criteria required to meetstandardized tests. This will require a view that children come from homesand communities with a range of skills, practices and funds of knowledge(Moll et al., 1992) and these should be valued and extended.

Questioning assumptions about the right kind of literacies that childrenneed is difficult for educators who may hold particular attitudes about the roleof technology and multimodal meaning-making. To this end, teachers maywant to view and analyze the Internet and other multimodal texts to identify

the texts audience and purpose. Teachers may realize that the traditionallydefined correct use of literacy skills (e.g. those for reading, writing andviewing) may, in fact, apply accordingly to these texts. Similarly, when tea-chers reflect on their own literacy practices (digitized or not) in their everydayprofessional and personal lives, they may come to understand their ownpractices as social practices, and they may examine how these texts and prac-tices inform their teaching (Larson and Marsh, 2005). This may assist in theirunderstanding of what literacy skills children need now, as well as what they

will need in the future.Teachers teaching in inner-city or urban areas are often aware of (and often

contribute to) a deficit view of the children they teach. At the same time, theyrecognize the increased marginalization of these students in terms of the few

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resources to which these children have access. While this remains a dire issue,teachers can address this by acknowledging the existing practices and funds of

knowledge that these children possess and may bring to school. For example,in this study, video and computer game playing were two particularly preva-lent practices in Taras out-of-school contexts. If these practices fail to beacknowledged, children may begin to see school as irrelevant and archaic,

bound by a system of rules to which they need to adhere. The issue at handmay not be one of old versus new literacies, but how these literacies aremeaningful, relevant and purposeful for the foreseeable future.

The idea that children make meaning and learn in all contexts (in and out

of school) and through different modes and technologies has further impli-cations. Lankshear and Knobel (2004) have shown how examining the out-of-school practices of learners is invaluable, but we should not feel the need topedagogize such practices. Our new awareness of childrens out-of-school practices does not mean that children may want to bring thesepractices into the classroom. However, support for these practices mayoccur by enabling flexibility, choice and creativity in particular types of

homework or out-of-school projects assigned, ways in which engage chil-

dren and promote these new practices. Drawing on the knowledge that thesepractices often involve family members, friends or knowledgeable others, wecan understand and be sensitive to childrens cultures, languages and ways ofknowing. If children choose to bring these practices or resulting texts of thesepractices back into the school, they may be used judiciously to construct the

curriculum. As a whole, we need to provide contexts, as Yelland (2011)contends, in which we can expose young children to different modes ofrepresentation. In doing so, we assist them in formulating new understand-ings about their world and building meaning about their experiences.

Families also need to be recognized for the ways they provide their childrenwith periods of unstructured time to play using materials and resources ofchoice, such as technology and popular culture. Families can also continue toshare their own multimodal and technological practices with their children.For example, they could show their children how to conduct searches on theInternet, and critically examine and assess the information they find. Familiescould also play computer and video games with their children to understandhow childrens problem-solving capabilities can extend beyond their own

conceptions of what their children are capable.In conclusion, I argue, as others have argued previously (Knobel, 2001;

Levy, 2009; Lynch, 2008; McTavish, 2007, 2009; Yamada-Rice, 2010), that ifwe are committed to preparing students for the information age, we must be




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able to understand the unique ways children and families do literacy; wemust not ignore what occurs in contexts out of school. Contexts that afford

opportunities for children to engage in literacy in terms of flexibility, uninter-rupted time to play and explore, access to multimodal resources and scaffold-ing by others will certainly guide children more appropriately to that goal.

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