ABSTRACT
In the face of the rapidly changing nature of literacy and the persistence of defi cit discourses in education which conceive of some families as lacking valuable literacy experiences, there is arguably an urgent need to establish new links between home and school which build on the practices and understandings that already exist in homes and communities. The BC: RLL project invited teachers to do just this: to position themselves as learners and researchers, refl ect upon their assumptions constructed in part by the available discourse and open themselves up to new learning about children and families. The project enabled teachers to undertake Learner Visits to children’s homes and to see the children they taught through a new research based lens. They were supported to become attentive observers and engaged listeners (Forsey, 2010), trying to understand children’s everyday literacy lives, widen their understandings about twenty-fi rst-century literacy identities, habits and cultures, and rethink the relationships between children’s, families’ and schools’ practices. They were also supported as they began to unlock the children’s and their families’ funds of knowledge and make connections between these and their lives in school, such that new and more responsive classroom approaches could be created that recognised, validated and built on children’s literacy lives and fostered positive literacy identities.
