Reflections on language and literacy : recognising what young people know and can do

In the current age, diversity is an increasingly prominent feature of schools and society. Western systems in particular are increasingly made up of communities of young people who come from diverse cultural, religious, linguistic and educational backgrounds. Recent scholarship (Blommaert, 2010) purports that these young people’s linguistic capabilities and cultural experiences are increasingly diverse and dynamic. Yet, societal and institutional mandates have been slow to recognise the complexity of language/s and literacies across all domains of students’ lives. Instead, common educational policies and practices continues to focus on promoting the universal individual development of English literacy, compared and measured by high-stakes, traditional tests. Rarely are the resources and repertoires of students called on in supporting this endeavour. However, common educational theory compels teachers to recognise what students bring to school and asks that teachers build on that knowledge in service of classroom learning. Therefore, teachers must be open to the idea that students do bring myriad knowledges, skills and understandings to school, that these knowledges, skills and understandings are easily revealed, and that there are transparent connections between them and the mandated school curriculum. This chapter employs elements of Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a lens through which to view research undertaken with young people, aged 10-14, in five Australian classrooms. Teachers and students in these classrooms became ethnographers of their own language practices; they critically examined the ways they used language and literacies in their everyday worlds and reflected on how and in what ways these languages and literacies may support in-school learning. The interlocking ‘thinking tools’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1989, P.50) of habitus, field and capital are applied in considering how the ‘unseen half’ (see Chapter 1 in this volume) may begin to become visible when changes are made to educational curricula, teacher pedagogies and classroom practices.