Family literacies during the COVID-19 lockdown: Semiotic assemblages and meaning making at home

• Published in: Linguistics and education Vol. 74; p. 101166
• Main Authors: Zhang, Zheng, Heydon, Rachel, Chen, Le, Floyd, Lisa Anne, Ghannoum, Hanaa, Ibdah, Susan, Massouti, Ayman, Shen, Jeff, Swesi, Hisham
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.04.2023
• Subjects: COVID-19 pandemic; Family literacies; Learning at home; Linguistics and Education; Posthumanism; Semiotic assemblage; Semiotic resources; Learning at home; COVID-19 pandemic; Family literacies; Semiotic assemblage; Posthumanism; Semiotic resources
• ISSN: 0898-5898; 1873-1864; 0898-5898
• DOI: 10.1016/j.linged.2023.101166

•lockdown household spaces that were replete with a wide range of semiotic resources.•expansive literacy-learning opportunities that were produced in these spaces.•suggestions about building on learners’ semiotic repertoires in literacy curricula. When home became the primary place for children's learning during the COVID-19 lockdown, a dominant rhetoric emerged about a literacy-skills crisis, especially involving learners from low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse families. By documenting the literacies practiced and the literacy-learning opportunities created in and among households during the lockdown in the spring and summer of 2020, this study turns this deficit-oriented rhetoric on its head. Conducted by parents with their children (aged 2-15), this collective biography found that during the lockdown households were forced into spaces that were physically constrained yet replete with a wide range of semiotic resources. Parents and children used these resources, which included multiple modes, media, and languages, to produce expansive literacies and literacy-learning opportunities. The present study offers suggestions about how to recognize and build on learners’ linguistic, cultural, and semiotic repertoires in the creation of literacy curricula.