‘Five on the First of December!’: What can We Learn from Case Studies of Early Childhood Literacy?

Abstract

This article considers the importance of in-depth case studies in research into young children’s language and literacy learning, and asks how the findings of such research can be utilized. Two case studies from a larger ethnography of home and school learning are offered as exemplars: one child is from an English, and the other from a Bangladeshi, background, but the two were born on the same day, and start school in the same classroom. Their home experiences of literacy and other forms of learning are compared: though neither child’s early literacy experience is ideally matched to the classroom they enter, the English child is enabled to ‘make up’ home disadvantages in ways which are not available to the Bangladeshi child. When differences in their experiences and outcomes are theorized, it is suggested that communication between home and school is the key to successful adaptation to school literacy learning.