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This paper provides a telling case account of how a child called Charlie was positioned and (re)positioned himself within and across different situational types of classroom literacy encounters in his first-grade classroom. This telling case is based on a re-analysis of an originating study conducted by the author (HARRIS, 1989); and is founded on a history of research based on revisioning archived data records as new theories develop. Providing a profile of different ways in which a child positions self and is positioned by the teacher, the system and peers, this telling case presents a research approach for understanding positioning processes and their consequences for children as they develop literacy processes and identities. To make transparent how the telling case study led to new theoretical insights, this paper makes visible multiple levels of analytic scale and angles of analysis of positioning (ANDERSON, 2009) that were undertaken to make visible the dynamic nature of positioning as understood through Positioning Theory (HARRÉ & LANGENHOVE, 1999; HARRÉ, 2012). This telling case study, therefore, builds a foundation for developing theoretical understandings of the fluid and dynamic nature of positioning in classrooms, and influences of positioning on children’s opportunities to enact and demonstrate their literate identities and capabilities. RESUMO Esse artigo reporta um estudo de caso sobre como uma criança chamada Charlie foi posicionada e reposicionou-se dentre e através de diferentes tipos de encontros de letramentos escolares em sua sala de aula do primeiro ano do ensino fundamental. Esse estudo de caso é baseado na reanálise de um estudo originalmente conduzido pela autora (HARRIS, 1989); e fundamenta-se em uma história de pesquisa baseada em revisar bancos de dados arquivados à medida que novas teorias se desenvolvem. Ao fornecer um perfil de diferentes formas através das quais uma criança se posiciona e é posicionada pela professora, o sistema e os/as colegas, esse estudo de caso apresenta uma abordagem de pesquisa para compreender processos de posicionamento e suas consequências para crianças no processo de desenvolvimento de letramentos e identidades. Para deixar claro como o estudo de caso levou a novas interpretações, o artigo foca nos múltiplos níveis de escala analítica e ângulos de análise de posicionamentos (ANDERSON, 2009) que foram selecionados para tornar visível a natureza dinâmica do posicionamento a luz da Teoria do Posicionamento (HARRÉ & LANGENHOVE, 1999; HARRÉ, 2012). Esse estudo de caso constrói, portanto, inteligibilidade teórica para compreensão da natureza fluida e dinâmica do posicionamento em sala de aula, assim como das influências do posicionamento nas oportunidades para a criança agir e demonstrar suas identidades e capacidades letradas.

This chapter provides a synthesis of findings on strategies for developing community capacity. More specifically, in this chapter we discuss eight key strategies and their underlying principles that address our final research question about effective strategies for developing local capacity to foster preschool children’s literacy in their home languages and English. We then present our final conclusions for our central research question about how communities in Fiji that do not have access to early childhood services can be supported to build sustainable local capacity to foster their preschool children’s literacy in their home languages and English. We include an account of the capacity that was developed in the study, and the impact and benefit that grew from this capacity.

In this chapter, we present our study’s conceptual framework for understanding language, literacy and learning. We do so against the backdrop of Fiji’s diverse and evolving cultural and linguistic context discussed in Chaps. 2 and 3 and in terms of Fiji’s early childhood curriculum framework, Na Noda Mataniciva. We explore language in terms of a functional view of language and relate this perspective to understanding children’s multilingual language and literacy practices in the communities of our study. Literacy is conceived in terms that situate literacy in children’s lifeworlds and broader cultural and linguistic settings. We relate learning to sociocultural and rights-based perspectives of seeing, understanding and supporting the literate child and literacy learner – recognising each child’s voice and agency and developing child-voiced strategies that foster authentic, culturally relevant and sustaining learning in our study. We close our chapter with an example of how we brought together the three elements of language, literacy and learning in a key action that emerged in the three communities of our study – that is, co-creating multilingual books with children and their families in their home and community settings.

In this chapter, we provide a synthesis of what we learned from the three community CPAR case studies and the stakeholder interviews. This synthesis pulls together recurring themes common across these data sets as well as points of difference, in terms of the first three of our four research questions: (1) What are the literacy development contexts for preschool children in communities in Fiji that do not have access to preschools? (2) What are the enablers and constraints that impact on community capacity to support their preschool children’s literacy learning? and (3) What local resources and strategies can be used to foster preschool children’s literacy in their home languages and English, in communities in Fiji that do not have access to preschools? We close the chapter with our conclusions for these questions. These conclusions lead us into the final chapter where we provide a synthesis of findings for our fourth and final research question that focuses on strategies for developing community capacity.

This article reports a three-year, cross-cultural study on co-constructing culturally sustaining pedagogic (CSP) practices with children and their families and communities, to foster children's literacy in their home languages and English in Fiji's settings. As we argue in this article, dialogue is a vital part of CSP - specifically, authentic dialogic encounters defined as educative encounters with people in and about their worlds, occurring in relational contexts infused with an ethics of care and commitment. The study was framed as critical participatory action research. We present key findings focusing on: ensuring contextual relevance and responsiveness of pedagogic practices, co-constructing CSP practices with children and their families and communities, and documenting children's learning and engagement through culturally inclusive means. We close with discussion about how authentic dialogic encounters served to move toward four tenets of CSP: (1) outcomes must be pluralist, (2) avoid essentializing culture and race,(3) focus on traditional languages and cultures in dynamic ways, and (4) take an inward gaze. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In this chapter, we present our study’s community case developed in the Indo-Fijian rural community of Dovubaravi. The chapter begins with an introduction to the participating children of Dovubaravi, followed by accounts of Dovubaravi findings for each of our study’s four research questions: (1) What are the literacy development contexts for preschool children in Dovubaravi? (2) What are the enablers and constraints that impact Dovubaravi’s community capacity to support their preschool children’s literacy learning? (3) What local resources and strategies can be used to foster preschool children’s literacy in Dovubaravi? (4) What strategies are effective in developing Dovubaravi’s capacity to support preschool children’s literacy development in their home languages and English?

This chapter provides a review of research related to language and literacy learning in multilingual settings. This review is presented against Fiji’s contextual backdrop and linguistic landscape that we presented in Chap. 2. More specifically, we examine the call to action in the Pacific concerning the maintenance of Pacific languages vis-a-vis the cultural and historic significance of Pacific languages and related cultural and linguistic rights; self-determination in Pacific early childhood care and education, with a particular focus on language and literacy as we examine key regional initiatives and frameworks (viz. the Dakar Framework, the PRIDE Project, universal access to early childhood care and education services and Fiji’s Kindergarten curriculum guidelines); young children’s literacy in their home languages and English, with careful consideration of how children navigate different languages in terms of code-switching and translanguaging; culturally sustaining pedagogy, including an exploration of educational practices related to language and literacy teaching and assessment; and implications of the foregoing review for informing the study at hand.

This chapter provides a rich, in-depth account of insights about literacy learning in Duavata. We begin with an introduction to the participating children and their families of Duavata, followed by Duavata findings for each of our study’s four research questions: (1) What are the literacy development contexts for preschool children in Duavata? (2) What are the enablers and constraints that impact on Duavata’s capacity to support their preschool children’s literacy learning? (3) What local resources and strategies can be used to foster preschool children’s literacy in their home languages and English in Duavata? (4) What strategies are effective in developing Duavata’s local capacity to support preschool children’s literacy development in their home languages and English? In addressing these questions in the context of the Duavata community case study, we illustrate literacy learning possibilities and their realisation for young children in Duavata and evidence how Duavata’s community capacity developed to support their children’s literacy.

This chapter presents the findings of the Wavu case study on developing strategies and community capacity to foster young children’s multilingual literacy. It begins with an introduction to the participating children and their families of Wavu, followed by Wavu findings for the study’s four research questions: (1) What are the literacy development contexts for preschool children in Wavu? (2) What are the enablers and constraints that impact Wavu’s community capacity to support their preschool children’s literacy learning? (3) What local resources and strategies can be used to foster preschool children’s literacy in Wavu? (4) What strategies are effective in developing Wavu’s capacity to support preschool children’s literacy development in their home languages and English?

This book offers a comprehensive report on a three-year, cross-cultural, critical participatory action research study, conducted in children’s homes and communities in Fiji. This project contributed to building sustainable local capacity in communities without access to early childhood services, so as to promote preschool children’s literacy development in their home languages and English. The book includes rich descriptions of the young children’s lived, multilingual literacy practices in their home and community contexts. This work advances research-based practices for fostering young children’s multilingual literacy and building community capacity in a post-colonial Pasifika context; further, it shares valuable insights into processes and complexities that are inherent to multiliteracy and cross-cultural research.

This chapter introduces readers to the project on which this book is based – that is, a 3-year, cross-cultural study in Fiji about understanding young children’s multilingual language and literacy practices in their homes and communities, and using these understandings to collaboratively develop strategies for fostering children’s multilingual literacy with them and their families. An overview of the project’s full team and summaries of the book’s chapters are provided. Ultimately, this chapter positions the book as a collaborative product of sustained dialogic encounters in the forms of extended talanoa in iTaukei settings and baat-chit in Indo-Fijian settings. These encounters involved a diverse range of co-investigators, children and adults alike, across time, place and setting; and led to the co-construction of knowledge and practices for developing community strategies that support young children’s multilingual literacies in their home and community settings.

This chapter explores cross-cultural data collection and analysis in a study on developing community approaches to foster young children's multilingual literacy in Fiji communities. How important it is, then, that cross-cultural research is multi-voiced research from inception to dissemination. Dialogic encounters were more complex for the project leader who engaged in all the community settings, as well as with stakeholders and the ERG, so as to develop a cross-cultural view of the entire study. Cross-cultural analysis with community mentors, framed by study's conceptual frame work, was the most significant contributor to understanding Dovubaravi's cultural contexts and literacy practices. In Wavu, families' acceptance of the researchers was crucial to all aspects of our cross-cultural collaboration. Our collaboration with an iTaukei early childhood educator, Mere Krishna, who worked with us as a research assistant, also supported our cross-cultural collaboration.

In early years literacy policies and decision-making, children’s voices are quite silent despite their right to have voice in matters affecting their lives (UNCRC, 1989). Calling for a rights-based shift in literacy research, this chapter reports a study of children’s voices about reading in their second school year. This study was driven by moral and pedagogic imperatives to engage with children’s voices about their reading education at school. Constructing children as competent participants, key informants and human rights bearers (Mayall, 2002), this study is framed by a sociocultural perspective of reading (Luke & Freebody, 1990). Children’s perspectives of their participation, efficacy and wellbeing as readers at school provoke reflection on consequences of what is provided in early years programmes, highlighting importance of understanding these consequences through children’s voices and considering children’s views in policy and decision-making.

This self-study explores my mediation as a literacy teacher educator in the context of a professional development undertaking that involved developing and leading an early school years literacy course. I examine the tensions that arose in the light of my own professional history and explore ways that the tensions led me to reconcile conflicting messages through processes of reframing. I describe how I put my reframings into action in the way I designed and presented the professional development course. This self-study advances knowledge about teacher education in terms of its role in mediating connections between research, policy and practice, identifying some of the tensions that occur in this mediation and illustrating how, as teacher educators, we can use these tensions to reframe our mediation.