In this chapter, the development of literacy competence is intended as a process of progressive connection of the everyday writing repertoires with the more formal writing genre characteristic of schooling, through students’ participation in innovative activities in the “third space” (Gutiérrez, 1993; 2008; Gutiérrez, Rhymes, & Larson, 1995). Moving from Jack Goody’s conceptualization of writing as a “technology of intellect” (Goody, 1987; Olson, 1996), it is considered that young people work out highly contextualized writing repertoires in their everyday life to achieve specific goals in practice. These repertoires may differ from the literacy competencies required in school and this divergence may produce in students from non-mainstream backgrounds an experience of “cultural discontinuity” (Mehan, 1998) that, in turn, may be an element of school failure. To mediate the development of appropriate literacy repertoires in multicultural schools, it is required the construction of a “third space”, in which the existing everyday writing repertoires may be transformed to achieve expressive and argumentative goals in social communication. The empirical basis for the analysis derives from a school ethnography, conducted in a secondary school serving a student population of recent immigration in Italy in a working-class town in Northern East Italy.

THE ‘THIRD SPACE’, WHERE EVERYDAY AND FORMAL WRITING PRACTICES MEET

Sorzio P.
;
Bembich C.
2024-01-01

Abstract

In this chapter, the development of literacy competence is intended as a process of progressive connection of the everyday writing repertoires with the more formal writing genre characteristic of schooling, through students’ participation in innovative activities in the “third space” (Gutiérrez, 1993; 2008; Gutiérrez, Rhymes, & Larson, 1995). Moving from Jack Goody’s conceptualization of writing as a “technology of intellect” (Goody, 1987; Olson, 1996), it is considered that young people work out highly contextualized writing repertoires in their everyday life to achieve specific goals in practice. These repertoires may differ from the literacy competencies required in school and this divergence may produce in students from non-mainstream backgrounds an experience of “cultural discontinuity” (Mehan, 1998) that, in turn, may be an element of school failure. To mediate the development of appropriate literacy repertoires in multicultural schools, it is required the construction of a “third space”, in which the existing everyday writing repertoires may be transformed to achieve expressive and argumentative goals in social communication. The empirical basis for the analysis derives from a school ethnography, conducted in a secondary school serving a student population of recent immigration in Italy in a working-class town in Northern East Italy.
2024
978-989-35106-5-0
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11368/3077818
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