Writing as defamiliarization processes: An alternative approach to understanding aesthetic experience in young children’s poetry writing

Abstract

This article provides a unique lens for understanding young children’s poetry writing. It focuses on defamiliarization as a cultural tool and practice to engage students’ imagination, playfulness, creativity and aesthetic experience into their poetry writing and to experience the world differently and aesthetically. The research aims of this article are (a) to examine how familiar things were defamiliarized in children’s poetry writing process and poems and (b) to explore what and how aesthetic experiences could result from the defamiliarization process. More specifically, three key literacy events were selected from different writing units during one academic year. Ethnographic discourse analysis was adopted to examine the teacher–student interactive conversations in poetry writing when they defamiliarized their familiar things, places and situation. The data analysis showed that the defamiliarization process made an important contribution to the young writers’ development of language, literacy and their sense of self as a writer. The results exemplified defamiliarization processes as a way to promote the teaching and learning of writing for aesthetic experience beyond linguistic text production. Furthermore, the article provides critical indicators that link children’s writing and multilayered aesthetic experience, and it highlights the critical role of an adult/teacher in channelling children’s affinity with play, imagination, creativity and aesthetic experience into their poetry writing.