Home literacy and agency : an ethnographic approach to studying the home literacy practices of six multiliterate children in Qatar.

This study investigated the home literacy practices of six children, aged 5-7 years, who
are learning three or more languages and live in Qatar, in a middle-to-upper-middle
class context. In particular, the study examined their biliteracy development and
explored identity and agency issues. A particular interest was their use of media,
technology and popular culture at home. This study draws on theoretical perspectives
offered by the New Literacy Studies, and the fields of semiotics and multimodalities as
well as studies in literacy and popular culture. Mediation, a key concept in the study, is
defined as the process of how social, cultural and historical factors are influenced by
and on an individual. As a result of mediation, there is a production of tools, or objects
and artifacts, one of which may be language. The investigation employed a multiple
case-study design with an ethnographic perspective orientation through having the
participants involved as co-researchers, The six participants and their families were
recruited from an international school in Qatar and represented a range of cultural
backgrounds. Data were generated through observations, literacy journals, semi-
structured interviews and participants' digital photographs. The analysis of the data
employed a grounded-theory approach and was used to analyse the interviews of the
participants and their parents as well as their digital photographs. The findings suggest
that media, technology and popular culture are widely used and generate enthusiasm
and interest in literacy. Additionally, children as young as five years old are aware of
their different writing systems and are participating in distributed communicative
practices with new technologies. Finally, agency, identity and mediation are important
notions since children are active agents in their literacy learning.