Ways with Words

I have just finished reading Shirley Brice Heath's Ways with Words. Her landmark book details ethnographic research completed by Brice some forty years ago in the Piedmont Carolinas. Tracton, an African-American community, and Roadville, a white community, are both mill towns with very different approaches to the acquisition of language.
Heath explores the local environments at length and discusses the way language is learned by emphasizing the differences in titles of the chapters: Learning how to talk in Trackton and Teaching how to talk in Roadville. In Trackton for example, "Everyone talks about the baby, but rarely to the baby" (p. 75). In Roadville by contrast, "As adults talk to their children, they teach them how to talk and how to learn about the world. They sort out parts of the world for them, calling attention to these, and focusing the children's attention" (p. 127). These different experiences had implications for the way children from both environments approached school and learning.
What fascinated me most however was the last chapter entitled, Learners as ethnographers in which a fifth grade science class engaged in gathering information about growing food from their local community members. Students were required to use both written and oral data sources. After gathering data, students were to compare "local people's folk concepts" of growing food to "scientific" methods. Interviews with the "best farmers" were summarized and placed in a "science book" along with growing information compiled from research. The published "science book" served as the culminating activity for this science unit. What a beautiful illustration of authentic learning! Students engaged in real inquiry with real purposes and were highly motivated during the process. In the midst of this information gathering and reporting students learned to negotiate the language differences between home communities and school communities.
I have not started Local Literacies yet, however I am interested in how literacy will be discussed by Barton and Hamilton and if I'll draw parallels between the two ethnographies. Looking at these studies provides helpful information to educators concerned with meeting the needs of their diverse populations.