Research Directions: Directions for Studying Early Literacy as Social Practice

In this essay, the author addresses the current status of emergent literacy research. First, she sets the stage by briefly exploring the important questions and continuing contributions of the emergent literacy perspective. Next, she examines some inherent theoretical tensions especially how emergent literacy’s research questions have bounded and constrained what is currently know about preschool literacy. Finally, she turns her attention toward new questions and new opportunities for understanding that flow from re-theorizing early literacy learning as social practice. Using data from her own studies of preschoolers’ early writing interactions, the author illustrates some exciting possibilities for expanding our understandings of early literacy learning.