Literacies, Literature and Learning: Reading Classrooms Differently

247 Pages·2018·7.078 MB·English

by  Karin Murris and Joanna Haynes

Literacies, Literature and
Learning
Literacies, Literature and Learning: Reading Classrooms Differently attends to
pressing questions in literacy education, such as the poor quality of many
children’s experiences as readers, routine disregard for their thinking and
the degrading impact of narrow skills measurement and comparison. This
cutting-edge book moves beyond social, psychological and scientific cat-
egories that focus on individualistic and linear notions of the knowing sub-
ject; of progress and development; and of child as less than fully human. It
adopts a posthumanist framework to explore new perspectives for teaching,
learning and research.
Authors from diverse disciplines and continents have collaborated to interro-
gate the colonising characteristics of humanism and to imagine a different – more
just – reading of a literacy classroom. Questions of de/colonisation are tackled
through the exploration of both education and research practices that seek to de-
centre the human and include the more than human. Inspired by an example of
high quality children’s literature, playful philosophical teaching and the power of
the material, the authors show how the chapters diffract with one another, thereby
opening up radical possibilities for a different doing of childhood.
The book hopes to help transform adult-child relationships in schools and
universities. As such, it should be of great interest to academics, researchers and
postgraduate students in the areas of literacy, philosophy, law, education, the
wider social sciences, the arts, health sciences and architecture. It should also
be essential reading for teacher educators and practitioners around the world.
Karin Murris is Full Professor of Pedagogy and Philosophy in the School of
Education at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Joanna Haynes is Associate Professor in Education Studies at Plymouth
University Institute of Education, UK.

Literacies, Literature and
Learning
Reading Classrooms Differently
Edited by Karin Murris
and Joanna Haynes
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Karin Murris and Joanna
Haynes; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Copyright © 2016 Viviane Schwarz. From HOW TO FIND GOLD
by Viviane Schwarz. Reproduced by kind permission of Walker
Books Ltd, London SE11 5HJ.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-30192-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-73209-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To creative experimentation and mutual collaboration
across and through differences of age, gender, race,
species, disciplines, professions and status.

Contents
List of figures ix
Acknowledgements xi
PART I
How to find gold in literacies 1
1 Philosophical playthinking in a South African literacy
‘classroom’ 3
KARIN MURRIS WITH JOANNA HAYNES
2 Posthumanism, de/colonising education and
child(hoods) in South Africa 25
KARIN MURRIS
3 Philosophy for Children: a postdevelopmental relationality 50
KARIN MURRIS AND JOANNA HAYNES
4 The ‘classroom’ and posthuman research methodologies 64
KARIN MURRIS AND JOANNA HAYNES
PART II
Finding gold in a South African literacy classroom 85
5 Beyond words: materiality and the play of things 87
THERESA GIORZA AND JOANNA HAYNES
6 Bodies with legs: ‘fidgeting’ and how recording
practices matter 110
KARIN MURRIS AND SUMAYA BABAMIA
viii Contents
7 Chairs and questions at work in literacies 129
ROSE-ANNE REYNOLDS WITH JOANNE PEERS
8 Digging and diving for treasure: erasures,
silences and secrets 149
KARIN MURRIS AND JUDY CROWTHER, WITH SARA STANLEY
9 The text in the classroom: decolonial reading practices 173
CHRISTOPHER OUMA
10 Philosopher children moving through spacetime 187
KAI WOOD MAH AND PATRICK LYNN RIVERS
11 Facilitating and difficultating: the cultivation of
teacher ignorance and inventiveness 204
JOANNA HAYNES AND WALTER KOHAN
Contributors 222
Index 227
Figures
2.1 Cogito ergo sum on the back of a toilet door at the University
of Cape Town. 28
2.2 Venn diagram situating critical posthumanism in the ‘posts’. 31
3.1 How to Find Gold (2016). 54
4.1 The ‘classroom’. 65
5.1 Floor, bodies, worldmapping, from How to Find Gold
(Schwarz 2016). 95
5.2 Playing with string. 98
5.3 Feet that speak. 100
5.4 Relaxed toes and angry toes. 103
5.5 The soles/souls of shoes. 103
5.6 Scissor power. 105
5.7 Feet waving. 105
5.8 Scissors become toes. 106
6.1 Pen-ink-foot-teacher-child entanglement. 115
6.2 Spell-bound listening to the story. 116
6.3 ‘The American-Objective View’; camera man and his assistant. 120
6.4 The GoPro – a wide-angled view with a fixed camera. 121
6.5 Bodies with legs entangled in the classroom. 122
6.6 Book-crocodile-children’s-entangled-bodies-map-floor-
paper-camera-koki pens. 123
7.1 Chair with chair bag. 135
7.2 Bird’s eye view of the circle. 136
7.3 Anna with Crocodile on her back. 138
7.4 The giant squid. 140
7.5 The boy, the chair and the book. 143
8.1 The ‘classroom’. 151
8.2 Secret fears. 152
8.3 The children pass a secret around. 155
8.4 Crocodile invites Anna to make a secret face. 156
8.5 Ameera intra-acting with Tshepo. 158