ABSTRACT
Early years literacy education in Australia, USA and UK is increasingly constructed as a de-democratised space—characterised by a growing preoccupation with formalised basic literacy skills instruction, literacy for school readiness, and high stakes accountability. In such a space, children’s agency is diminished, and the full range of capabilities necessary to democratic participation is obfuscated. If literacy education programs are to foster children’s capabilities for engaging in democracy, then meaningful pedagogies are needed that marshal children’s agency, foster children’s reflective literacy practices, and draw children together to help forge collective bonds integral to democratic participation. Framing literacy as social practice in contemporary socio-political contexts in an action research study of 3–8-year olds’ democratic participation, we examine the pedagogies that mobilised and fostered children’s literacy capabilities; and the literacy capabilities that were involved.
