This study, funded by UKLA in 2019, explores the everyday family shared reading experiences of five young people with learning disabilities. It considers the embodied, affective and sociomaterial dimensions of sharing traditional print books, personalised iPad stories and remote online classroom shared reading over Zoom during COVID-19 lockdown.
Funding was used to supply iPads, protective cases and the Pictello App for each participating young person. Pictello is an App that permits assemblage of photo, video, text and voice recording to create personalised multimodal stories. Data generation was conducted remotely due to lockdown and involved initial interviews with parents and young people where possible, weekly diary entries reflecting on experiences, the production of home video showing interaction with the iPad stories, and final interviews reflecting on the experience of participation. Personalised stories were also collated for analysis.
The study resulted in publication of three academic articles. The first article (Doak, 2021), published in Pedagogy, Culture & Society, uses discourse analysis to compare and contrast how parents undertake discursive work to make sense of their child’s positioning outside of normative literacy trajectories and can subsequently arrive at quite different understandings of ‘literacy’. The second article (Doak, 2023), published in Literacy, focuses on the role of the young people in authoring the personalised iPad stories. It argues that all the young people, including those with the most severe disabilities, can be regarded as ‘authors’ if a more expansive understanding of ‘authorship’ is adopted. A model for such an expanded definition is proposed, with three axes of interpersonal, temporal and technological distributed authorship. The final article (Doak, 2024), published in Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, explores the value of family shared reading through the sociological lens of ‘family practice’ (Morgan, 1996). It argues that shared reading is typically discussed in terms of its instrumental, cognitive and developmental benefits. By way of contrast, participants who are considered unlikely to acquire independent reading and writing provide a useful counterpoint to this narrative, as family shared reading nevertheless retains muchvalue in their lives. Dimensions of value included emotional regulation, bonding with siblings, marking time and routine, inclusion in book-gifting practices reinforcing the young person’s centrality, presence and role in a family celebration such as Christmas. Personalised stories in particular can celebrate achievements and important moments for the young person.
Additionally, I wrote two articles which share findings with a wider audience including families and teachers: these were published in SEN Magazine and PMLD Link. Findings were also shared at UKLA’s international conference (2021 and 2022) as well as the 22nd European Conference on Literacy in Dublin (2022).
As this project draws to a close, I would like to express my gratitude to UK Literacy Association for their funding, support, and patience with pandemic-related delays!