ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will advocate the need to adopt a “dialogic approach” for understanding the development of literacy in primary school children in a comprehensive and novel fashion. In doing so, I will try to establish much needed bridges between, on the one hand, contemporary dialogic perspectives on teaching and learning and, on the other, recent research which analyses literacy as a situated sociocultural practice. Adopting a dialogic approach to understanding the development of literacy entails explaining the intricate inter-textual and inter-contextual relations among talking, reading and writing as participants engage in diverse social practices, not only in the “here and now” (immediate context) but also in the “there and then” (wider institutional, sociocultural and historical milieu). It also requires taking account of the subtle ways multiple semiotic modes are interwoven when participants attempt to create meaning and construct knowledge jointly. I will argue that the adoption of a dialogic approach to teaching and learning enables researchers and practitioners to establish solid grounds not only for understanding the development of literacy but also for enhancing oracy and literacy practices in the primary classroom.
