ABSTRACT
This chapter is about managing differences in literacy expertise. Within schooled literacy, such differences are managed through procedures of grouping. Such grouping is hierarchical and is related to the seriation of the literacy skills and knowledge from the simplest to the most difficult within schooled curricula. Section 1 of the chapter discusses how this notion underpins ordering and grouping practices in schools. Such practices are embedded in schooled institutions, to the extent that they can become ‘invisible.’ The application of the Foucauldian concept of ranking denaturalises such everyday procedures, thus opening them up for scrutiny. However, to understand the effects of such procedures, it is necessary to study the people they are intended to act upon. To do this, Section 2 explores Amber Class children’s encounter with schooled groupings, discussing how the children’s interpretations of these groupings informed their reproduction of social practices, particularly those of literacy. Investigating these practices offers insights into the values, attitudes and beliefs the children were forming about how best to practise literacy in school. Section 3 returns to the children’s peer culture practices of literacy in order to consider how the children managed differences in literacy expertise. Within the children’s peer culture, literacy expertise could be drawn on as an invaluable shared resource to support the children’s collective reproduction of literacy practices. This work demonstrates how schooled approaches to managing relative expertise might be re-evaluated in order to capitalise on the helpful aspects of the children’s peer culture practices.
