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The social accomplishment of literacy: Latino families appropriating technology in an after-school setting
DISSERTATION

, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States

University of California, Santa Barbara . Awarded

Abstract

This dissertation studied the social accomplishment of literacy in an after-school technology-based literacy project, serving immigrant Latino families. Grounded in Socio-cultural and Activity theory accounts of learning and socio-constructionist views of literacy, the research developed an interdisciplinary logic of inquiry to provide a holistic account of literacy.

Accordingly, literacy was studied on three interrelated levels. An Ethnographic Perspective and discourse analysis examined the opportunities for literate events and ways of being to provide an emit view, in and across time, on the whole-group level and on the individual-within-the-collective level. Conversation Analysis examined particular instances of literate practices in the moment-to-moment interactions to account for how participants oriented to “talk-in-interaction” and accomplished these activities.

Research questions included: what were the opportunities afforded for literacy? How was this community composed as evidenced in one family's participation? What were the gains parents showed from participation? What were the practices used in joint mediated activities at the computer? How were these literate interactions structured?

From an ethnographic perspective findings showed the project to be a collaborative learning community, that actively promoted participation by drawing on members' linguistic and socio-cultural funds of knowledge to structure recurrent opportunities for a variety of literacies. Parents developed a range of knowledge areas, including instrumental knowledge in computing and enhanced procedural knowledge about language and literacies. Furthermore, writing and publishing encouraged a heightened sense of agency and involvement in their children's learning.

Literacies at the project developed as a function of participation, across an interrelated set of practices and actions, constitutive of three domains: academic, community and interpersonal. CA revealed how participants organized and structured computer literacies with gestures formulated by reference to their on-screen and off-screen perspectives. Findings showed how gestures accomplished specific social actions in these activities, such as maintenance of mutual attention, and were oriented to as recognizable practices.

Educational implications advocate promotion of these learning communities to work with minority participants for empowerment via literacy development. Directions for future research include strengthening interdisciplinary perspectives, through a focus on languages and literacies as socially situated organized practices, constitutive of a variety of local contexts.*

*This dissertation contains a CD that is compound (contains both a paper copy and CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following applications: Mac OS, QuickTime.

Citation

Perry-Romero, D.J. The social accomplishment of literacy: Latino families appropriating technology in an after-school setting. Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from .

This record was imported from ProQuest on October 23, 2013. [Original Record]

Citation reproduced with permission of ProQuest LLC.

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