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" The impact of home and community culture on the development of higher order reading skills "
Ford, Merryl
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1096787
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TLets485953
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| Main Entry
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Ford, Merryl
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| Title & Author
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The impact of home and community culture on the development of higher order reading skills\ Ford, Merryl
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| College
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University of Brighton
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| Date
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2007
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| student score
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2007
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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The study aims to consider the ways in which home and community cultures canand do impact on the development of reading skills; not just in the early years oflearning to read, but throughout the secondary school years and indeed beyond.The introduction sets the scene, describing the current situation in secondaryschools in general and my own in particular, and discussing how my own.experience of that situation brought me to the research question formulated. Thestudy is therefore a response to a professional problem within my own schoolpractice.An overview and analysis of literacy theories follows within the literature review, inwhich I discuss the ways in which aspects from a range of research studiesunderpin and/or illuminate the issues raised both prior and during this researchproject. Beginning with the broad UK context, this chapter then considers the workand theories of systemic functional linguistic researchers, that builds on the workof M.A.K. Halliday; of critical literacy proponents who have developed the seminalwork of Pierre Bordieu; of ethnographic research from Shirley Brice Heath andother anthropologists, and on to New Literacy approaches and those ofresearchers from the social construction of literacy perspectives. These views arethen traced back to work of the paedology movement and L.S. Vygotsky inparticular, on mind, thought and language; links are made to Jerome Bruner'snotion of Language Acquisition Support Systems and Language AcquisitionDevices and how this approach has evolved to the social-political perspectives ofresearchers such as Macedo and Friere.The methodology chapter proVides the 'background story' to the project; theresearch paradigm and the research design. This is followed by a section onoutcomes, which presents the qualitative data from pupil questionnaires andinterviews, together with responses to the parents' questionnaires. Within thesepresentations a number of inferences and propositions are raised for considerationby the reader. These are discussed further in relation to the quantitative data extracted from the yg cohort SAT results. At this point the main findings and/orinferences are drawn out and defined, highlighting two major issues. The first ofthese was the distinct correlation between levels of achievement and attainmentand the reading culture of the home, often regardless of data which indicatedeither higher or lower attainment than was actually achieved. The second, andless expected outcome was the impact of the reading of fiction by participants andtheir families. Where pupils out-performed their predicted levels, the data gainedfrom interviews and questionnaires showed that both they and their familiesengaged with the reading of fiction on a regular basis, often across a range ofgenres.In the 'reflections' section, the aim is to offer suggestions for ways forward that canaddress the specific issues raised through the main findings of the project. Theseare not exhaustive, and relate to findings apparent in a particular school, butevidence considered throughout the literature review suggests very strongly that asimilar profile will be found in the majority of high schools across the country.Finally, chapter five provides what is entitled 'A Reflexive Perspective'. Here, Idescribe the ways in which the process of moving through my professionaldoctoral studies has impacted on both my personal and professional development,in terms of my thinking, my understanding and my responses to the professionalissues that arise within my work.
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University of Brighton
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