Children, literacy and ethnicity: reading identities in the primary school

Abstract

The field of literacy studies has recently suffered a great loss with the death of Brian Street. His seminal work in 1984 conceptualised literacy as a social practice, and most importantly led to the consideration of, “whose literacies are dominant and whose are marginalized or resistant” (2003, p. 77). Acknowledging Street’s influence on her research and reading, Lexie Scherer begins her journey into the world of children’s perceptions of reading and themselves as readers, in a multi-ethnic, inner-city, London primary school. Her study offers a fascinating account of identity and subjectivity construction, challenging what she sees as a “lack of theorisation of minority children’s raced and ethnicised identities” (Scherer 2016, p.13). Central to Scherer’s work is the issue of children’s voice, and this is powerfully exemplified in quotes from children that she includes at the start of the book, indicating quite clearly diverse reading preferences. “We want to learn to read with books with white people, girls, inside” (p. 1) declares Aliyah, a seven year old British Pakistani girl