ABSTRACT
The incident described above is just one of a series of our encounters with the child in question which raised questions about the ways in which young children draw upon their experiences as they seek to understand the world they encounter and, more particularly, the texts of that world. Much of the existing literature which explores young children’s literacy development and their related use of other media either sets out to demonstrate a deficit model, whereby the non-traditional, non-print media are seen as damaging the child’s chances of becoming literate, or to compare the differences between the use of different media (Robinson and Mackey, 2003). However, there are clear indicators available in research that a more productive way of understanding children’s media use might be to start from what Tyner (1998:7) has called an asset model: ‘An asset model for media teaching assumes that mass media and popular culture content can work as a benefit to literacy instead of as a social deficit.’ Tyner does not develop her argument-that we may increase our understanding by exploring what assets a person brings to bear on a literacy event —but this chapter will seek to use a case study of one child, Verónica, to test what might be meant by an asset model and what this might mean for those responsible for helping young children to become literate in today’s world. The case study offers a starting point for an investigation of the role of popular culture in the literacy development of young children and the ways in which the situated practices a child encounters may act to help the child develop a set of competences on which to draw-an asset model.
