Introduction



 Who are we?


Lynne Paul & Margie Meleisea
Nayland Kindergarten is based in Stoke Nelson, providing early childhood education for 85 3-5 year olds.  We are a full day kindergarten running two sessions, each with 40 children and 4 teachers, 2 student teachers, parent helpers and an office administrator.  Nayland Kindergarten is part of  Nelson Tasman Kindergartens, which strives for high quality early childhood education and teachers as researchers.

The teachers have been actively involved in  research for 5 years, exploring the role of ICT (E Learning) through the multiple lens of creativity, visual art, transition to school and literacy.



Description:
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The TLRI Project - Overview

Literacy Learning in e-learning contexts is a research project funded through a Teaching and Learning Reseach Initiative (TLRI) grant.

Researchers and teachers (ECE, primary and secondary) have worked collaboratively to re-examine data from archived action research inquiries focussed on e-learning (undertaken as part of e-fellowships and the ECE ICT Professional Learning Programme) to highlight how literacy learning is taking place in e-learning contexts.

The aims of the project are to:
  • Help fill the gaps in the current New Zealand research literature on e-learning as contexts for literacy learning
  • Collectively theorise the literacy e-learning connections and pedagogical processes that are operating in NZ schools and early childhood centres by supporting teacher researchers to 're(tell) their stories' with a common focus that they did not necessarily have when the studies were conducted.

For the purpose of the project, the teachers and researchers have used Luke and Freebody's (19??) 'Four resources' model as a framework for literacy analysis. This model suggests that to be considered literate in an increasingly globalised and technological world, students need opportunities for learning how to
  • decode texts (audio, gestural, spacial, visual and multimodal and printed texts)
  • make meaning from and compose texts
  • use texts for particular purposed and in particular contexts (social and cultural)
  • critique use and transform texts