Att erövra litteracitet: Små barns kommunikativa möten med berättande, bilder, text och tecken i förskolan.

The purpose of this study is to examine how children aged one and a half to three master, express and practice literacy at daycare centres. The study addresses the following questions:  Do children create and participate in their own reading activities? How are the children organised in these activities? Do the children master and contribute to literacy activities? In this case, with what do they contribute and how is mastering manifested? Do reading activities of children influence the other children in the same room at the daycare centre? How could this be observed, if relevant? Does children's contact with literacy have any impact on specific social, cultural and historical contexts at daycare centres? In this case, how is this manifested?

On the basis of selected and analysed cases, the study shows that this group of children as individuals, both in child-to-child relationships and child-to-adult relationships, take part in two types of literacy activities: storytelling/play reading as well as drawing/writing. The children emphasise the activities verbally by expressing what they are doing. Children define themselves as readers and writers. Furthermore, it is interesting to learn that children read and write in the present tense and not in the past tense, as they would typically do in connection with play activities. In general, the authors conclude that their research reveals a new way of understanding the development of literacy in children. This knowledge could benefit child and youth educators and teachers in their work with literacy development in children. The findings are that children organise their literacy in specific places. They prefer complex books, they create knowledge through narratives, and they do not rank narratives, reading and writing.  Children form a manifest of literacy.

This study is an ethnographic field study. Observation of activities and social interaction of a group of young mono-linguistic children aged one-and-a-half to three in connection with storytelling, writing and reading. The group consisted of 10-20 children who were observed over a period of three years.

Björklund, E. (2008). Att erövra litteracitet: Små barns kommunikativa möten med berättande, bilder, text och tecken i förskolan. Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet.