Young children’s literacy in the activity space of the library: A geosemiotic investigation

Abstract

An ecological approach, emphasizing the importance of understanding multiple contexts for learning, underpins this study of libraries as activity spaces for young children’s literacy participation. Five libraries serving a diversity of communities were the subject of ethnographic investigation incorporating participant observation, visual documentation, and parent and librarian interviews. A geosemiotic approach was taken to the analysis of this data with an emphasis on the ways in which sociocultural and material qualities of libraries as places and spaces impacted on families’ access and participation. It was found that physically accessing the library is not equally easy for all, not all communities have equally well-resourced libraries, and the social space of the library does not hail all categories of family in the same way. However, in the case of one site where discourses of leisure, consumption, and modernity were materialized throughout the space, the effect was more inclusive. For those families that do navigate successful membership of libraries, there are potential benefits related to strong connections between the performance of early literacy activities in libraries and the participation structures of the school-entry classroom. However, literacy activities run in libraries require unobtrusive parental regulation of children’s participation, a requirement that may marginalize some families.