Authentic family learning: real life reading and writing in the community

Hardacre, Charlotte ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3155-4132 (2020) Authentic family learning: real life reading and writing in the community. In: LED Showcase Conference 2020, 4th December 2020, Online. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This talk is based on the findings of a doctoral study where Authentic Learning (Peterson, 2007) and Critical Pedagogy (Kincheloe, 2008) were employed to support adult literacy in a community setting. Authentic Family Learning (Hardacre, 2018; Hardacre and Kinkead-Clark, 2019) involves literacy activi-ties that are not simply based on real life interactions but, in fact, are real life interactions. This means that rather than looking at a text produced specifically for improving literacy, learners, instead, con-duct real life activities such as writing letters to their child or creating classroom displays. This ap-proach is particularly well-suited to community-based learning as the myriad of real-life literacy inter-actions learners are involved with provide rich opportunities for authentic literacy activi-ties. Additionally, by making use of authentic interactions rather than classroom-only activities, such as worksheets and set texts, the family learning tutor limits the potential for inadvertently replicating the negative experiences many adult learners recall from their earlier education. This approach is underpinned by the work of New Literacy Studies scholars such as Street (1998), Barton and Hamilton (2000) who approach reading and writing from a so-ciocultural point of view. This positions literacy as more than the straightforward mastery of procedural skills but as a social practice which results from an evolving understanding of the domains in which a person reads and writes. It is also rooted in the Friereian (1968) idea that as we read and write the word we simultaneously read and write our world. The presentation will chart the use of Authentic Learning through an engaging description of the ups and downs of the doctoral study and will provide a range of resources for delegates to use in their own practice after the talk.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Lecture)
Departments:	Learning Education and Development (LED)
Depositing User:	Christian Stretton
Date Deposited:	30 Nov 2020 09:31
Last Modified:	13 Jan 2024 11:30
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/5802

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