ABSTRACT
Understanding how young children learn to write in their classrooms is important. Given that children spend a considerable portion of their school day engaged in writing tasks, the ability to write is critical for their success at school. In this chapter, we use data drawn from an ethnographic study of children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds to explore learning to write in their classrooms from a socio-material perspective. In this chapter we examine the discursive and material practices and resources that contribute to children’s experiences. Using survey data gathered from teachers we contextualise writing pedagogies and then examine the perspectives of two case studies captured through individual interviews, drawings, and writing over a two-year period. We focus on children’s perception of writing pedagogies, teacher and peer interactions, and their selection and use of materials in their classroom spaces to understand the children’s writing development. In doing this, we aim to problematise normative definitions of ‘writing development’, as we lay out the complexity of children’s material and discursive work in early childhood classrooms.
