Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in an Urban Primary School

Dyson supports efforts to make literacy curricula accessible to our schools socioculturally diverse population. This two-year ethnographic study of K3 children focuses on six students who would normally be deemed at-risk and who do not tell stories in the written language format valued by most early literacy educators. Their literacy learning, particularly their writing development, is portrayed as a social process in a complex social world. Dysons key theme is the link between composing a text and composing a place in this social world.