ABSTRACT
The BC: RLL project invited teachers to position themselves alongside the children as learners not only to fi nd out about the children’s worlds, but also to share something of their own. The practitioners were encouraged to consider their own literacy lives and diverse twenty-fi rst century literacy practices and the embedded nature of literacy in different cultural contexts beyond school, in order to explore the complex relationship between literacy and learning. An underlying assumption of this aspect of the work was that in sharing their literacy lives, teachers would be sharing something in and of themselves and would take a more personal stance and position in the classroom. In addition, and signifi cantly, it was expected that through sharing something of themselves and inviting the children to do likewise, this would prompt more open and potentially stronger and more equivalent relationships between teachers and children, built on increased knowledge of one another as individuals. This perception was based on fi ndings from Teachers as Readers: Building Communities of Readers, in which the sharing of teachers’ reading lives was seen to be pivotal in the development of a shared/third space between teachers and children and the growth of strong reader relationships (Cremin et al., 2014). It was also assumed that the opportunities for interaction with parents through the Learner Visits, especially when several repeat visits were made, would foster the development of new parent-teacher relationships.
