A Sociocultural Approach to Reading, Language an

A Sociocultural Approach to Reading, Language and Literacy
    Good morning. Today’s lecture is to introduce you to a sociocultural approach to literacy learning.
    First of all, what does taking a sociocultural approach actually mean? Just a few points: What a sociocultural approach does is that it rejects the difference between psychology and anthropology. But the crucial point about sociocultural research is that it really transcends (超越) academic disciplines. It’s not just interdisciplinary; it actually transcends disciplines. And it focuses on the inevitable link between culture and cognition through engagement in activities, tasks. or events.
    As part of a sociocultural approach, it is crucial that we understand the role of mediators (调停者) of culture, those who actually facilitate the taking of one language or one culture into another. Part two of what I want to address briefly is "What are the implications of taking a sociocultural approach?" One is recognizing the importance of home and community literacy practices and learning styles, and how these are taken from home to school. Second, it means realizing bilingualism and biliteracy (双文化) as giving cognitive, social, and cultural advantages. Taking a sociocultural approach also means tracing the syncretism taking place as children blend old and new practices. Nobody, and certainly not young children, is fixed in any particular way of learning. Taking a sociocultural approach means understanding the crucial role of " important others" who assist pupils in the learning process. Also for me, taking a sociocultural approach means enabling participants in your research to express their own understanding of the learning process. It’s very, very easy to go from our own assumptions, but we need to go from our participants’ understanding.
    And so finally, there are three principles I want to highlight. The first is based on Michael Cole’s expression "where culture and cognition create each other". It’s to uncover the language and literacy knowledge held by people, as well as ways of learning in their communities, and to become clear about how these may either contradict or complement those which count in school.
    The second principle is based on Jerome Bruner’s expression "the joint culture creation between teachers and pupils". We need to document the role of crucial mediators of language and literacy in different contexts and how this mediation takes place in the dynamic syncretism emerging so that new and existing practices come together.
    And for the final principle, I go back to Fred Erickson, a very brilliant ethnographer (人种志学者), who says, "What ethnography (人种志，人种论) is all about is giving a voice to those whose voices would not otherwise have been heard." And so, crucially, my third principle is to go from what people themselves view as being important in education in their life, rather than from what we think they should be seeing as important.
    Those are the three principles that I want to conclude with: uncovering the funds of knowledge in people’s life, looking at the joint culture creation between teachers and pupils, and giving pupils and their families a voice in their own education.
    That is all for the lecture. Thank you!