ABSTRACT
Through work in their classrooms, fi nding out about the children’s literacy lives and through research in homes, the BC: RLL project teachers were enabled to develop new knowledge and understanding about the children’s everyday literacy lives and practices. They were also involved in refl ecting upon their own literacy practices and in reading related academic texts. As Edwards (2010) notes, there are often contradictory beliefs within the profession; some educators ‘see a family’s lack of school-like literacy as a barrier to learning’ while others see the ‘home literacy practices that are already present – however different from school based literacy – as a bridge to new learning’ (189). The project explicitly adopted the latter belief and sought to help teachers explore and extend their own stances and build on the children’s home literacy practices that they observed and documented. As the Chief Ofsted Inspector for English, a member of the project’s Steering Committee observed: ‘What’s really important here is what the teachers do with their new knowledge and understanding – what difference it makes’ (Jarrett, 2010).
