‘If she’s left with books she’ll just eat them’: considering inclusive multimodal literacy practices

Abstract

This article reports on aspects of a small-scale study conducted in the south of England which explored the learning experiences of three 4-year-old children with identified special educational needs, who attended a combination of early education settings – one ‘more special’ and one ‘more inclusive’ (Nind, Flewitt and Payler, 2007). The paper reflects on the concept of inclusive literacy, and proposes that a model of literacy as social practice can provide an enabling framework for understanding how young children with learning difficulties interpret and use a range of shared sign systems. Drawing on an ethnographic, video case study of one girl, Mandy , the paper gives an overview of her observed literacy experiences in the three different settings and then focuses on the collaborative, multimodal nature of the literacy events and practices she experienced. Detailed multimodal analysis highlights the salience of embodied action and the shapes of inclusive learning spaces in her inclusion in literacy events, and points to the importance of valuing individuals’ idiosyncratic and multimodal meaning making. The article concludes with discussion of how opportunities for literacy learning can be effectively generated in an inclusive learning environment for young children with learning difficulties.

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ORCID for Melanie Nind: orcid.org/0000-0003-4070-7513

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