120 pages
250 x 168mm
ISBN: 978 185856 198 4
Published 1999

Transformations breaks new ground in our understanding of early literacy. This original and important study tracks young children in a nursery setting and at home and shows the huge range of literacy activities engaged in by three and four year olds in the form of model making, cutting out, drawing and three dimensional modeling, and their abundant ways of communicating their ideas.

Kate Pahl uses her detailed observations of three children from a range of social, cultural and linguistic backgrounds to challenge and develop theories of communication and children's meaning making and to extend our understanding of the dynamic interplay between socio-cultural patterns and the inner worlds of children. She shows how boys use certain approaches to literacy which are seldom recognised for what they are, and the implications of this for boys' learning and literacy.

This book is for early years teachers, nursery nurses and all who live or work with young children. Parents and teachers can facilitate the development of the children in their care by responding to the book's rich illumination of the ways children make sense of and present their worlds.

Kate Pahl has worked with parents and young children in community settings and based her research in the nursery that her three year old son was attending. She is Senior Information and Research Officer for the National Literacy Trust.