Abstract
Over several decades, research in early literacy has highlighted the significance of sociocultural contexts (Heath, 1983; Moll, 1992; Perry, 2012) that shape language and literacy practices—a shift away from the conceptualizations of literacy as ‘mastering’ the alphabetic code (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). However, these trends have had little influence on the predominant literacy practices in most Indian classrooms, which do not encourage active engagement and critical thinking (Singh, 2019) and tend to remain disconnected from the lives and lived experiences of children. With major implications for literacy learning, this disconnect is especially evident in the low scores of students year after year (ASER, 2020). Even after the implementation of Right to Education Act (Government of India, 2009) and the launch of the National Early Childhood Care and Education Policy (Government of India, 2013), there has been little effective change on the ground. The limited understanding of literacy education in the country has led to a piecemeal approach to its pedagogy. Recently again, the focus on ‘foundational literacy and numeracy’ in the National Education Policy (Government of India, 2020) has brought into its fold a flurry of activities across the country to implement practices that would be a ‘quick fix’ solution to the ‘problem’ of literacy learning in the country.
The publication of the Early Literacy Initiative (ELI), Resource Books (RBs) and Practitioner Brief Booklets (PBBs) in 2020 by Tata Trusts and Eklavya could have not come at a more opportune moment. These books, edited by Shailaja Menon, Harshita V. Das, Akhila Pyadh and Shuchi Sinha are the product of ELI, a 3-year (2016–2019) project anchored by the Azim Premji School of Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, envisaged to build awareness and knowledge related to early language and literacy in India. The RBs and PBBs address five interconnected and critical themes which include multilingual education in India, children’s literature, children’s writing, teaching and learning the script and reading comprehension. The overarching principles across the books draw upon the theoretical perspectives that would enable individuals and organisations to imagine language and literacy strategies to be organically connected with the contexts in which children learn and live.
ELI PBBs comprise of 21 briefs compiled into 7 thematic booklets, described as follows:
Early language and literacy: Introduction and overview (ELI PBB1): Written in an engaging and conversational style, this booklet introduces the reader to the interconnectedness and interdependence of listening, speaking, reading and writing and elucidates why these need to be taught simultaneously and not sequentially. A comprehensive or balanced literacy instruction in the specific sociocultural contexts and print-rich environment is also introduced. Supporting comprehension (ELI PBB2): The articles focus on research-based principles of teaching vocabulary to enable young children to not just become acquainted with new words but also develop a deep ownership of them. Further, comprehension strategies demonstrate think-alouds, questioning and strategies of activating prior knowledge, prediction, visual representation and summarising using examples from delightful children’s literature. Supporting script acquisition and fluency (ELI PBB3): The principles of phonological awareness and teaching of script are introduced along with specific strategies. There is a focus on developing a relationship between sounds and symbols and ways to encourage students to become word constructors and word solvers as they read and write. Reader’s theatre is presented to involve students in writing of scripts for integration of writing with listening, speaking and reading. Supporting multilingualism (ELI PBB4): The need for creating spaces for children’s languages in classrooms is addressed as a necessity for comprehension and inclusion of the identity, cultural backgrounds and lived experiences. Multilingual pedagogy and the supportive role of a teacher who is not familiar with the language/s of the students are also discussed. Supporting writing (ELI PBB5): This brief focuses on ways for enabling young children to express themselves and communicate their ideas to others meaningfully. The strategies highlight some key aspects related to writing, including establishing relevance for writing, integrating writing with talking, drawing, reading and play and providing guidance for writing to allow children to take ownership of writing. Using children’s literature in the classroom—Part 1 (ELI PBB 6): This brief focuses on two distinct aspects of the usage of children’s literature. The first aspect is the promotion of language and literacy development by using school libraries and ways of setting up a school library for promoting language and literacy development. The second aspect focuses on planning and developing strategies for effective read-alouds and ways of encouraging children’s response to literature. Using children’s literature in the classroom—Part 2 (ELI PBB 7): The second brief on children’s literature focuses on reading illustrations in picture books and introduces the reader to the elements of art and design in children’s literature. The other pieces in the brief emphasises the reasons and ways of incorporating folklore into the curriculum to connect with the sociocultural contexts of the lives of children and to bring in their responses to literature.
ELI resource books comprise of 45 original blog pieces and approximately 150 annotations across 5 themes on early literacy written by a diverse group of stakeholders—from practitioners to academics. Each of these resource books contains annotated bibliographies, talks, presentations, essays and opinion pieces related to each theme. The annotated reading resources are very helpful in identifying easy, moderate and difficult readings. These are described as follows:
Multilingual education in India (RB1): The 10 blog pieces in this section present a glimpse of the multilingual fabric and the varied contexts of use of language across the country. While emphasising on the need to develop and strengthen language and literacy in the home language, there is a focus on developing multiple languages as a resource including the unequivocal role of English. Children’s literature (RB2): The blog pieces in this book foreground the role of literature in literacy instruction, as it enables children to connect with the known and unknown worlds through print, especially as they learn to read and read to learn. The blogs explicate upon the types of children’s literature, social and cultural contexts of portrayal of children, writing of children’s literature and exploration of authenticity. Children’s writing (RB3): Moving away from the copywriting of letters, words and sentences, the blog pieces unpack the process of writing as being connected with communication and expression. They explore the idea of writing and how, as a meaningful process, it relates to talk, reading and our everyday and far-off lives. Assessment of writing is also explored as a way of developing the craft of writing and not just as a mechanical ‘correction’ of the product. Teaching and learning the script (RB4): The learning of scripts in the Indian contexts, often disconnected from the process of learning itself, tends to occupy a major part of the curriculum. In these blogs, the focus is on understanding the nature of the scripts in their arbitrariness, how children learn scripts and the pedagogy of the same. Reading comprehension (RB 5): Comprehension, one of the critical components of the reading process, is the most neglected aspect in classroom pedagogy and yet, the most assessed component. Moving away from the idea that meaning is actively constructed by the reader and not transmitted by the text, the blog pieces also explore ways of facilitating comprehension in multilingual classrooms, comprehension of English and ways of constructing meaning from texts.
The pedagogy of language and literacy becomes especially challenging, owing to the rootedness of oral language and ways by which it connects with the culture and identities of the young learners and their communities. The single biggest contribution of this collection is that it brings together the diverse landscape of language and literacy practices across the country. This diversity is also a reflection of the authorship of these blogs and briefs. In addition to the ELI team, some authors are individuals who have done innovative work in communities through their organisations or research at their institutions in early literacy. Much of their writing has evolved over decades of work in their communities in trying to understand the nature of Indian languages and develop organic practices that would enable children to become readers and writers. It is this work that reflects the space of early literacy in the Indian context as the defining voice.
Addressing classroom instruction that largely remains focused on rote learning, copying and recitation, the collection provides evidence-based strategies in a guided manner to indicate the interlinkages between the different components of literacy and the complex processes by which children become literate and the relationship between the two. It follows a principle-based approach in contrast to advocating for one ‘method’ over another (CECED, 2016). This principle-based approach is evident in the books. Across the books, there is emphasis on building an understanding that literacy learning is simultaneous not sequential, a focus on multilingualism, use of children’s literature, an emphasis on modelling, using Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) (Duke & Pearson, 2009) to enable children to become independent readers and writers and so on. To illustrate a few examples, the brief titled, ‘Teaching Comprehension Strategies, Part 1: Introduction and Overview’ (PBB2), discusses how GRR could be used by teachers to model comprehension strategies and then guide students on how to use it before they could use it independently. Further, the strategies related to use of idea webs, idea sketch, picture walk and prediction illustrate activities using texts from children’s literature such as, Ismat’s Eid and the Sea in a bucket. It also provides a list of children’s literature which would be appropriate for specific comprehension strategies. The brief titled ‘Using Mother Tongue to Facilitate English Language Learning in Low Exposure Setting’ (PBB4) provides writing samples from English and Marathi to explicate upon GRR in multilingual settings. It also introduces some real-life confusions that teachers may face in trying to understand the various languages spoken by children in their classes. The blog pieces in RB4, ‘Teaching and Learning the Script’, introduce the nature of scripts in different Indian languages and connect the decoding process with meaning making and the communities in which children live. The comprehensive discussions across the books enable the reader to get a deeper understanding of the five themes and understand the simultaneity of ways of learning literacy and the sociocultural nature of the processes.
As an exhaustive resource in literacy for practitioners and researchers, it addresses the Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat (Government of India, 2014, p. 1) initiative which sees language and literacy’s aims as ways to ‘enable children to become motivated, independent and engaged readers and writers with comprehension possessing sustainable and lasting reading and writing skills and achieve learning levels appropriate to the class of study’. While each of the collections has been carefully compiled, there are also some limitations of this collection. First, the variety of voices, especially in the RBs lends itself to variations in the ways by which the articles have been written for practitioners. Some of the articles are much more theoretical than others and would perhaps need some scaffolding to understand with respect to specific contexts. Second, the introduction and the conclusion blog pieces in the RBs enable the reader to bring together the diverse collection of blogs; a similar organisation would be beneficial for the PBBs as well. Third, this series could be taken further to address inclusion in literacy, teacher education, family literacy, literacy assessment and role of technology. In conclusion, given the uniqueness of the books, especially the fact that research and practice in early literacy is practically non-existent in India, this collection should be seen as a way to build this important but neglected domain of work in the country. It has critical implications for policy implementation to provide a nuanced understanding of language and literacy practice and pedagogy.