ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I argue that ethnographically principled research can enhance policy makers’ understanding of how young children learn to read and write in schools. I take the example of a recent UK policy document, ‘Bold Beginnings’ (2017), to discuss how policy research can become constrained within the dominant discourses of schooled literacy. I then describe how the ethnographic approach I adopted in my own research offered a set of principles that allowed me to adopt a robust yet open-minded approach to research Amber Class’ children’s literacy practices. This approach supported my move away from my professional, schooled perspective of young children’s classroom activity to the perspectives I described in detail in Chapter 1 of this book. I argue that such a shift in perspective has the potential to elicit key questions and insights into the familiar phenomena of young children being taught to read and write in the classroom. Such questions and insights can equip those concerned with literacy and schooling with a deeper understanding of young children’s engagement with being taught to read and write in school.
