http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
Researching School Literacies Through Two Ethnographic Case Studies of Reading and Writing Practices In and Outside of Classrooms in Singapore
The research on which this case account is based was motivated by my interest to understand what counts as literacy in schools. I started my career as a primary school teacher, teaching English language to children. The children were avid readers. Although they were good readers and communicators, what baffled me were the dismal language scores they obtained and their struggles with writing despite frequent exposure to literacy. Consequently, I became interested in what and how pupils read and write beyond classrooms and how such insights can address the gaps in literacy learning. This case account provides a glimpse of my PhD study on the meanings of people's ways of using literacy in two schools in Singapore using two ethnographic case studies. Previous work on literacy research in Singapore tended to focus on developing pupils linguistic skills and teacher-pupil interactions in classrooms. My research involved studying how teachers used literacies to help pupils make sense of the norms, values, and traits that identified them as pupils of their school. The investigation drew on the case study approach, typified by detailed analysis and interrelationships of phenomena within the study. Ethnography, with its emphasis on observations, in-depth interviews, and researchers prolonged time spent at research sites during data gathering, was used to enrich the case study in uncovering the diverse ways in which literacies were taken up as practices. The case account presented here also shows how findings from one case study were developed into themes for constructing another case.