Before Writing: Rethinking the Paths to Literacy

by Kress,Gunther

• ISBN13: 9780415138048
• ISBN10: 0415138043
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-01-03
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Gunther Kress argues for a radical reappraisal of the phenomenon of literacy, and hence for a profound shift in educational practice. Through close attention to the plethora of objects which children constantly produce--drawings, cut-outs, writings and collages-- Kress suggests a set of principles which reveal the underlying coherence of children's actions-- actions which allow us to connect them with attempts to make meaning before they acquire language and writing. This book provides fundamental challenges to commonly held assumptions about both language and literacy and thought and action. It places these challenges within the context of speculation about the abilities which will become essential for children as young adults, and calls for the radical decentering of language in educational theory and practice.

Table of Contents

List of colour plates	ix	(1)
List of figures	x	(3)
Preface	xiii
1 Literacy, identity and futures	1	(17)
Literacy in the contemporary context	1	(4)
Some necessary tools for rethinking	5	(3)
Literacy	8	(2)
A social semiotic theory of representation and communication	10	(4)
Some characteristics of speech and of writing	14	(4)
2 `My Gawd, I made it like Australia': making meaning in many media	18	(26)
Representing the world	18	(6)
How real is real? Or, imagining in different modes	24	(5)
`What is to hand'	29	(4)
Design and intention	33	(4)
`Mere copying'	37	(1)
Expression in many modes: synaesthesia	38	(6)
3 Making sense of the world: `The seagulls are reading the newspaper'	44	(21)
Some current ideas and debates about reading	44	(4)
How can we get evidence for reading?	48	(1)
What is reading? Some principles	49	(9)
Reading and the context of culture	58	(5)
What does reading mean? A brief history of the word	63	(2)
4 Drawing letters and writing dinosaurs: children's early engagement with print	65	(22)
Making paths into writing	65	(1)
What's in a name? Print as a complex system of signs	66	(7)
Drawing print: a child's view of the written environment	73	(9)
Drawing ideas, or drawing sounds: the logics of writing	82	(3)
Display and visual space: the design of the page	85	(2)
5 `You made it like a crocodile': a theory of children's meaning-making	87	(24)
Developing a framework	87	(1)
Interest	88	(3)
Motivated signs	91	(3)
Transformation and transformative action	94	(2)
Multimodality	96	(3)
Representation and communication	99	(2)
Reading	101	(3)
Resources for making meaning	104	(4)
Imagination, cognition and affect	108	(3)
6 Literacy and theories of language	111	(28)
The present common sense in theory and in practice	111	(5)
What is literacy? Unravelling some complexities	116	(6)
Speech and writing: `drawing sounds'	122	(5)
Designing meanings	127	(3)
Structures and meanings of visual communication	130	(9)
7 Teaching literacy, learning literacy	139	(18)
Moving into literacy': childish principles	139	(7)
A new literacy curriculum?	146	(4)
The shape of the new literacy curriculum?	150	(7)
8 Futures	157	(8)
The current situation	157	(5)
New curricula, new aims	162	(2)
Designing futures: what do we want?	164	(1)
Sources and contexts	165	(5)
Bibilography	170	(2)
Index	172