Exploring Literacy with
Infants
from a Sociocultural
Perspective
New Zealand Journal of Teachers’ Work, Volume 2, Issue 2, 70-75, 2005
JUDY HAMER
The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
INTRODUCTION
The way in which we view literacy impacts on how we view the process of
literacy learning as well as how we view infants as literacy learners. If literacy is
viewed narrowly as a set of reading and writing skills then the process of
literacy learning becomes limited to the acquisition and refining of these skills.
From this perspective our view of infants as literacy learners is strictly limited to
what the infant is or is not capable of doing. However, when viewed from a
sociocultural perspective, literacy becomes a contextually based, broad concept
that is grounded in social practice. Literacy learning then becomes much more
than acquiring skills but includes developing knowledge, attitudes and
understandings about the forms, functions and purposes of literacy. From this
perspective, infants can now be seen as active and capable literacy learners as
they experience and engage with a wide range of literacy practices in their
everyday contexts. This sociocultural approach to literacy also has some
important implications for the way literacy for infants is viewed within the New
Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Wh!riki (Ministry of Education, 1996),
and how educators can support and facilitate literacy learning with infants within
the early childhood education context.
A SOCIOCULTURAL MODEL OF LITERACY LEARNING
The influence of sociocultural theory on early childhood education has
resulted in a broadening of our understanding of how and what children learn.
Sociocultural theory challenges us to widen our perspective beyond that of the
individual child and of knowledge and meaning in isolation. Instead, children are
viewed as inseparable from their social contexts, and knowledge and meanings
are seen as embedded within sociocultural practices. As Fleer (2002a) ex