Hall, N., Larson, J., Marsh, J. Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Strickland, D., Genishi, C. Language and Literacy Series. New York, New York: Teachers College Press.

Caires, Susana, et al. “Becoming a Teacher: Student Teachers’ Experiences and Perceptions about Teaching Practice.” European Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 35, no. 2, May 2012, pp. 163–178. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/02619768.2011.643395.

Hall, N., Larson, J., Marsh, J. Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications Ltd., referenced different perspectives on and approaches to early childhood literacy. This handbook indicated that literacy “began to be viewed as a much broader set of print-related behaviors than those conventionally experienced in education” (p. 6), which is important to note because it is made clear that literacy is not solely reading or solely writing; rather, it is a collective set of skills with elements of reading and writing. There are also mentions of the “emergence of early childhood literacy” (p. 7), which indicated again that literacy is both culturally meaningful as well as meaningful with regards to reading and writing, specifically for young children. The writing is concluded by reinforcing the thought that “the process of becoming ‘literate’ is far more complex than it might appear,” (p. 20), indicating that early childhood literacy is a multifaceted topic with many different approaches and pedagogies. In conclusion, I feel that the Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy was relevant to our topic in that it described many aspects of early childhood literacy and debunked some of the conceptions about literacy as a whole. I think this one was helpful because it forces us to reconsider some of our preconceived definitions of literacy, specifically with regards to early childhood literacy.

Strickland, D., Genishi, C. Language and Literacy Series. New York, New York: Teachers College Press. described the affects that childhood stories had on people in early childhood and how they affected their behaviors and views on the world. One example was an anecdote that featured several children discussing the moral of a story shared in their classroom (p. 11). In this story, a classroom of children joke about beating someone up. It discussed childhood mannerisms that were adopted from the reading of a particular story. There was a follow up discussion of theoretical concepts showing that children “play with available [literary] voices” and that “language…is not a transparent medium.” This offers us a lot to think about because it shows how the voices of literature may affect children. If children receive literature that echoes positive messages about education, will they be more open to pursuing a career as an educator? This is relevant to our subject because it mentioned the links between childhood stories and worldview. Our experiments would relate to childhood literacy (obviously), but also worldview, as in what kind of worldview would a person have to want to become an educator. This “worldview” would be about early childhood literacy with the introduction of some other topics to create a more detailed set of questions.

Caires, Susana, et al. “Becoming a Teacher: Student Teachers’ Experiences and Perceptions about Teaching Practice.” European Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 35, no. 2, May 2012, pp. 163–178. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/02619768.2011.643395.  This article was about the experiences of 295 student teachers.  Through this research we can find how student teachers feel about the profession, and some idea into their thoughts behind it.  On page 164 the article discussed “the social dimension of becoming a teacher is at the heart of some main achievements that take place during this stage of ITE [initial teacher education]. Additionally, it has significant consequences for the performance of student teachers in the classroom, their progression and growth in the teaching profession, as well as for the type of teacher they become.”  So obviously there is a social aspect to becoming a teacher, so maybe we can trace back some of those aspects further to the point they decided on becoming a teacher and see how that interacts with their literacy past.  Further in on page 165 they talk about how while knowledge on teachers is growing little is still known about “‘Who’ are these teacher candidates (their educational background, school biography/ early school experiences, reasons for choosing the teaching profession)?”  This is exactly what we hope to clear up, and while this research helps us understand more about student teachers, hopefully we can trace back further through our interviews the “who” aspect.