A contrastive ethnographic case study of homes in Cape Town

Lemphane, Polo Adelina

A contrastive ethnographic case study of homes in Cape Town

Master Thesis

2012

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Education

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

This study contrasts children’s digital communicative literacy practices in two homes in Cape Town, South Africa. It aimed to find out whether children’s early engagement with digital media in home settings might vary across socio-economic settings, with implications for their subsequent school-based engagements with reading and writing practices. An ethnographic style contrastive case study approach was employed to investigate the nature and implications of children’s home digital literacy practices across socio-economically divergent settings, namely, in one working class family, where neither of the parents were formally employed in wage labour, and one middle class family, where the parents were both employed professionals. While the two families shared a common relation to South Sotho/Setswana as their family heritage language, they differed widely in other respects, because of different social locations as middle class/working class families, including everyday language use and the social expectations of their young children.

Description

Includes bibliographical references.

Keywords

Education

Reference:

Collections

Masters

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