‘A place of their own’: creating a classroom‘third space’ to support a continuum of textconstruction between home and schoolMargaret Cook

Abstract

This paper uses aspects of ‘third space’ theory tosupport the use of site-based classroom role play as ameans of ensuring continuity of text constructionbetween home and school. A hypothetical continuumof text construction between home and school isdescribed, and it is suggested that schools wishing tosupport this continuum might consider incorporatingsome home-type contexts and pedagogies into class-room practice. A model of site-based role play isdescribed that aims to do this by setting up an actualthird space in primary classrooms, together with someof the educational outcomes of the model’s implemen-tation. Implications for schools and family learningprogrammes are briefly discussed. In conclusion, thepaper argues that if we want curriculum continuitybetween home and school, we need to create ‘thirdspaces’ in schools that bring together the experiencesand pedagogies of both.

Key words: third space; role play; text construction;pedagogies; classroom practice; family learning

Introduction

In this paper I address the issue of how the contextsand pedagogies of home, community and schoolmight be integrated into the language and literacycurriculum of primary school classrooms in such a waythat the process by which children begin to constructtexts at home is not disrupted after they enter school. Isuggest using aspects of third space theory to guideschools in supporting such a process and describe amodel of classroom practice that I believe has success-fully done so. The model includes the creation of anactual ‘third space’ in primary classrooms whereoutside school experiences are recreated, home-typelearning is encouraged and a transition to the schoolcurriculum is made by using the contexts, audiencesand purposes arising in this third space for the latermodelling and construction of texts. Within the class-room, therefore, children experience both home andschool ways of constructing texts, and have direct andimmediate experience of moving from one to the other.While this is not a family learning programme in thetraditional sense, it may serve some of the same

purposes by making the experiences of family andcommunity life visible to schools, just as schools maketheir curriculum real to families in many familylearning programmes.

Using third space theory in schools andfamily learning programmes

Third space theory has been used by many disciplines– architecture, ethnology, cultural studies, linguisticsand education among them – to attempt to explain andresolve the tensions and lack of productivity that mayarise when different cultural and institutional identi-ties come in contact, including those with apparentlysimilar aims (for example, families and schoolsengaged in joint programmes). Moje et al. (2004, pp.45–46) identify three ways in which third spaces arecurrently conceptualised in education: as bridgebuilding between marginalised and conventionalknowledges and discourses; as ‘navigational’ spacesenabling students to bring ‘funds of knowledge’ (Mollet al., 1992) from home to bear on school learning; andas a place where the integration of knowledge anddiscourses from home and school will produce newforms of learning.

Features of third spaces

These third spaces may be conceptual (for example, theuse of curriculum and teaching resources that derivefrom children’s out-of-school experiences of televisionor video); linguistic (as in the intimate discourse aclassroom assistant may have when doing up a child’sshoelaces); or physical (for example where curriculumresources travel to and from home, or where there is aparents’ room within the school). They will all,however, be characterised by the discourses and rolesadopted by speakers and writers within them. Thesewill include home and community discourses as wellas those of the school or other institution, and will beused to further the aims of both. Tejeda (in Gutierriez,Baquedano-Lopez and Tejeda, 2000) juxtaposes thereal, unscripted interaction, experiential script and useof local knowledge typical of third spaces, with the

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monologic teacher script and dominant curricularnorms of conventional classrooms. Meira (2001) seesthe instructional third space as comparable to Vygots-ky’s Zone of Proximal Development, ‘created inactivities in which participants teach each other andlearn from each other’, and marked by dialogue whichbuilds [new] relationships. Beach (2004) talks ofconsequential and mediational transitions in thirdspaces, resulting in changes in individuals’ sense ofself and identity and the construction and reconstruc-tion of knowledge. In doing so, instruction ‘‘is re-keyedso that participation is more symmetrical and teachersand students redefine ‘what counts as knowledge’’’(Baquedano-Lopez and Tejeda, quoted in Eisenhartand Edwards, 2004).

Characteristic features of third spaces would thereforeseem to be: the use of learners’ own ‘funds ofknowledge’ (Moll et al., 1992) to inform the curricu-lum; flexible teaching and learning roles; and un-scripted dialogue in which there is equality ofparticipation. The outcome that results will be a‘real’ one, more than the activity that producesit, and showing the contributing influencesof both learner and teacher. The example exploredlater in the paper is of the ‘authentic’ texts produced bychildren at home and school where their ownexperiences have provided authentic contexts, pur-poses and audiences, and the texts incorporatethe formal features required by schools and the ‘outthere’ world.

A continuum of text construction

If school text construction is to draw in this way on thefunds of knowledge that children bring to school, wewill need to align the pedagogical discourses of homeand school. Figure 1 (Bentley et al., 2004) representsgraphically a hypothetical continuum of text construc-tion that might be achieved were schools to create thirdspaces where home funds of knowledge and home andschool’s teaching and learning expertise could meetand inform new learning (in this case, the constructionof school-type texts). In this continuum, the learner athome uses techniques of improvisation and transfor-mation to create new ‘sedimented’ texts, whichintegrate the experiences of home and school (Pahl,2002) and where the learner is supported by a varietyof learning interventions, models and resources con-tributed by families and communities. A hypotheticalmirror image shows how schools might replicate thisprocess by creating home-type discourses in class-rooms using home funds of knowledge, and home-type learning and teaching roles, while also contribut-ing their own traditional ways of teaching textformation. Where there is this kind of overlap betweenthe contexts, discourses and support patterns of homeand school, a ‘third space’ is created in which new andauthentic texts, influenced by both home and school,can be constructed.

Home pedagogical discourses

Over the years we have learned a considerable amountabout the pedagogies supporting the production ofhome-produced or ‘unschooled’ texts, and the kind ofdiscourses they produce (e.g. Cazden, 1992; Wells,1986; Wollman-Bonilla, 2001). Of special significancewithin the process are the supporting roles thatfamilies (both adults and peers) may play throughallowing ‘mess’, extemporising props, making acces-sible ‘adult’ resources such as paper, pens, scissors,staplers, and household and non-toy objects (Vygots-ky’s ‘pivots’), recognising and valuing the texts ashaving real purposes, entering imaginative play asequal players, and celebrating creativity and ingenuity(Vygotsky, 1978).

Intervention is typically through encouragement andby means of what I call ‘open scaffolding’ wherechildren take the conversational initiative, the aim ofthe interchange is unknown, and the adult models,challenges or informs in an ad hoc manner (Cazden,2001, pp. 61–63). To do this effectively, the adult mustknow what the child knows, where that knowledgecould take the child with adult (or peer) help and howto provide appropriate intervention without imposingan aim different from the child’s. This is, in essence,the process operating in Vygotsky’s Zone of Pro-ximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978), which Meira(2001) interestingly interprets as a pedagogical thirdspace, ‘‘an intersubjective symbolic space createdin activities’’.

Home

Sedimentation into texts

School

Improvisations

Transformations

Transformations

Improvisations

Figure 1: Framework for a continuum of children’s textconstruction from home to school

Source: Bentley, Cook and Pahl (2002), revised Jan 2004

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School pedagogical discourses

The kind of pedagogical discourse typical of schools isvery different from this. The ‘symbolic space’ mostoften created by teachers is one in which they aredominant and in which they adopt fairly inflexibleroles and patterns of interaction often set for them byan external authority. Of course teachers also createintersubjective spaces in which the roles are equal andlearning aims undetermined, but these are often inpersonal interchanges (such as when helping childrento change for Physical Education) and are rarelyexplicitly built into the curriculum.

This is not to minimise the importance of school-typediscourse, including the place of explicit modellingand teaching of text forms within the continuumabove. Learning how to construct ‘schooled’ as well as‘unschooled’ texts has a legitimate place in languageusers’ development and this means children taking onboard at some point the forms and rules of ‘schooled’texts, not all of which they will have experienced orbeen explicitly made aware of outside school. At thesame time, it is also underselling young learners topresent tasks of text construction as valid meaning-making opportunities, which do not arise from the realpurposes and audiences encountered in their ownexperience.

Using third space theory to support acontinuum of text construction

The curriculum model described below includes all thefeatures of third space theory identified above, inparticular the use of ‘funds of knowledge’, the supportfor home-type discourse and the explicit connection ofthis with teaching for the production of ‘schooled’texts. It brings together the two discourses of home andschool by linking children’s experiences in a speciallycreated ‘third space’ with the formal teaching andconstruction of ‘schooled’ texts. While the focus for textconstruction has usually been writing, the model hasalso been used to develop children’s use of spokentexts, their ability to use a range of thinking skills andthe quality of teacher assessment.

The model includes explicit measures to transferchildren’s out-of-school funds of knowledge to theclassroom by the sharing by teacher and children of anexperience (preferably an out-of-school one) and theimaginative transformation of this through role playbased in an actual third space in the classroom. Sharedexperiences organised by schools have included visitsto garages, airports, garden centres and restaurants,and the children have added to these their knowledgedrawn from commonplace family trips, televisionseries, hospital visits, and so on. Parents are told aboutthe shared experience and asked to help with resourcesand be supportive at home, but only if the child showsan interest. This is to ensure that the curriculum ‘traffic’

across the home–school divide is mainly from home toschool.

The initial shared experience forms the basis for acollaborative recollection in class in which the physicalaspects, roles, systems and linguistic features of theexperience are recorded in a mind map (a ‘schooled’text) by the children and teacher together. This map isthen used by the teacher and children to plan andresource the area, and to establish four to six set rolesfor play sessions. These roles ideally constitute a socialgroup (including those in a story) in which a highdegree of interaction and an unequal distribution ofpower might be expected (hospital staff and patients;restaurant staff and customers; a Victorian ‘upstairsand downstairs’). The site recreation uses a prepon-derance of child-produced materials, including experi-ential texts, and everyday resources collected fromhome and school. Resources have, for example,included notices made by four-year-olds for a hospitalreception desk, William Morris wallpaper for aVictorian sitting room printed by ten-year-olds; notesfrom the Ugly Sisters to Cinderella (‘Clean the kitchenat once!’), objects brought from home (a toy stetho-scope, lace curtains, catalogues and brochures broughtin by parents); and a few school props provided by theteacher (tables and chairs, a computer or toy cashmachine, a cold-frame for a garden centre). The role-play area thus functions not only as play site but also asa visible reminder for the children of the initialexperience, their own ability to recreate it, and the‘real life’ written and graphic texts that inform andstructure it.

Once the role-play area is established, children andteacher (or other adult) select a role, the adult usuallytaking one of equal or inferior status, and there is aperiod of familiarisation in which adults and childrenengage in free play within the site. This phase of themodel thus equates with the kind of home discoursetypical of a family outing where the experience isshared, talked about afterwards, and then recreated bythe children in imaginative play, with the adultsengaging in an ad hoc way. There is of course stillsome element of school-type discourse: the teacheridentifies the initial experience, organises the sharedrecollection, and controls access to the site. But thepattern of control still mirrors to some extent that of aparent at home, the content of the experience whichconstitutes the children’s funds of knowledge is centraland visibly high status throughout, and the positioningof the adults in mainly inferior roles means thatinterchanges between adults and children are largelyunder the children’s control.

Once this home-type discourse is established in theclassroom site, explicit measures are taken to constructthe ‘navigational space’, which will enable the chil-dren’s recreated funds of knowledge to move on tobecome the contexts, audiences and purposes for thelater construction of schooled texts. The teacher, in role,

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now introduces into the established play a challenge orproblem relevant to the situation that can be ‘solved’by the construction of a text form planned by her butnot made known to the teacher. The discussion ofpossible solutions is then used by the (out of role)teacher to provide the contexts, audiences and pur-poses for the modelling of the formal features of anappropriate collaborative or (for older children)independently constructed text. For example, four-year-olds came into the role-play ‘clinic’ one morningto find the doll ‘baby’ covered in red spots. Theydiscussed what this might be and how to prevent ameasles outbreak spreading and then, with the teacher,planned and wrote together a letter to a reluctantmother persuading her to have her baby immunised.

This last stage completes the process of text construc-tion from family and community experience to tradi-tional classroom teaching of schooled texts and goessome way towards supporting the creation of a‘permeable curriculum’ (Dyson, 1993, p. 217) with atwo-way flow of family and community experience,children’s developing understanding of text construc-tion, and school expertise in the teaching of academicknowledge.

Researching the model

The model described above is one that has beendeveloped by myself and teachers from a number ofMerseyside primary schools over the last six years, andused and researched by approximately twelve of theteachers. This research has been variously reported atlocal, national and international conferences and inseveral publications (Cook 2000, 2002, 2004a). Two ofthe schools involved are currently implementing themodel throughout the primary age range, and one ofthese schools is including the approach in theirplanning for a more creative curriculum. Individualteachers have applied the model to the development ofspeaking and listening, the assessment of gifted andtalented children, and the identification of children’slearning styles in order to customise writing tasks for anational test for seven-year-olds.

The performance of children across a number offeatures of text construction and their progress inthese are evaluated by the use of a commonly agreedassessment framework before and after a period ofapproximately eight weeks. The effectiveness of themodel in developing children’s attitudes to writing,their understanding and use of text forms, and theeffects of group or teacher support on their attitudesand achievements, has been researched by all theteachers involved in the project. Evidence for judge-ments is mainly from teacher observation of children’suse of spoken and written text forms in and out ofgroup role play, their attitudes to writing, speaking andlistening and/or problem solving and, if the focus is

writing, a written text. To these qualitative judgementsis added a selection of quantitative data such asbaseline and national test results.

Outcomes

In terms of children’s involvement and enjoyment andparents’ understanding of what happens in the class-room, the model has worked exceptionally wellthroughout the primary age range. Teachers’ com-ments have stressed children’s keen enjoyment of theactivity throughout the primary school, and how therole-play model has revealed to them children’sunexpected range of knowledge and skills, especiallytheir ability to use appropriate vocabulary, and toidentify and solve problems. Some nine-year-olds, forexample, faced with the sudden departure of the cheffrom a classroom restaurant, first organised waitingcustomers into a queue (one fainted!), then improviseda meal for them by bringing in a Chinese takeaway,told them to sit on the floor ‘‘because that’s what youdo in China’’ and later advertised for and intervieweda new chef for whom they prepared a training manual.The forms of the job description, advertisement andinterview questions were modelled by the teacher, butthe children’s construction of these was very obviouslyinformed by their shared experiences in the recreatedrestaurant.

Parents have shown great interest in the role-play area,particularly in the provision of resources but also byactual intervention. One father in the police force, forexample, came into class to interview the childrenabout their sightings of the Gingerbread Man. Inanother school, almost 100% of parents previouslythought to have little interest in the school curriculum,knew what the role-play topic was and initiatedconversations with teachers about how it had invadedthe home through the children’s imaginative play.

In terms of school achievements, the model alsoappears to work well. Positive outcomes teachers haveparticularly identified have been children’s improvedconfidence in general and in their attitudes to writing,ability to write in detail and at length, work in a group,take risks, tolerate failure, and understand and use oraland written text forms. The model is not designed tosupport word-level work but progress in this, too, hassometimes been noted, perhaps because the childrenfelt that what they were doing was ‘real’ and theytherefore wanted to make a good impression. Groupsparticularly benefiting from the role play have beenchildren with special needs, reluctant speakers andwriters, especially boys and quiet girls, and normallyhyperactive or withdrawn children. The project hasalso sometimes helped teachers to reassess previousjudgements. This has particularly been the case withsome reluctant boy writers, with the assessment ofchildren’s spoken performance in different group

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sizes; and with the (downward) reassessment ofapparently able children, especially as regards speak-ing and listening and the ability to work co-operatively.

Implications for schools

Exploring the model in terms of third space theorysuggests that it is possible to design school-basedprogrammes that successfully support a continuum oftext construction from home to school by providinghome-type experiences and instructional methodswithin an area of the classroom and linking these tothe school curriculum and methods of instruction.Making provision in this way for the explicit transfer toschool of home funds of knowledge is clearly beneficialto a number of children in terms of their attitudes totext construction. It also seems to provide favourableconditions for more accurate assessment of children’sreal potential. The most common remark made to meby teachers during classroom visits is that they areamazed at how much the children know and howresourceful they are. This is frequently said of childrenwith special needs, but teachers also indicate surpriseat the limitations of the apparently academically giftedin the ‘real life’ situations of group role play.

Evidence from teachers and headteachers emphasisesthe kind of changes schools may have to undertake inproviding this kind of third space: at the personal level,teachers have to cope with uncertainty and risk, be ableto switch roles, sometimes ‘act dumb’, tolerate delay inthe direct teaching of objectives, and plan flexibly butto strict medium-term objectives. At the school level,headteachers need to be committed to learning from anexperientially based curriculum, understand that thisinvolves a relatively long time-scale and be preparedfor the sometimes disruptive consequences of theschool as a whole being involved in a shared ‘imaginedexperience’.

Implications for family learningprogrammes

Families already create a third space at home toaccommodate a school curriculum that arrives in theform of homework and other tasks. However, this isoften a one-way traffic. Sometimes it is encouraged bythose family learning programmes that concentrate onfeatures of language learning (such as book readingand the writing of ‘schooled’ texts) that parentsrecognise as ‘proper’ school learning from their ownexperience of education. The home ‘funds of knowl-edge’ which children create at home from theirpersonal and shared experiences may not be recog-nised by parents as of value to children’s learning –they may not see these experiences as important for, orconsonant with, a school-type curriculum and peda-gogy, however much they may wonder at the worldly

knowledge that children exhibit in their playful re-constructions (see Cook, 2004b, pp. 114–15). The firststep towards creating a pedagogical space shared byhomes and schools may well be simply to makeparents aware of the value of what they and theirchildren already do, and its relevance to schoollearning.

Second, family learning programmes need to seize theopportunity afforded by home-based experientiallearning, to establish a curriculum and pedagogycharacteristic of home and independent of thatprovided by schools, rather than giving settings thefreedom to choose their own pedagogy (Basic SkillsAgency, 1999). This would remove the pedagogicalvacuum that often exists, and which is then filled byschool-type learning. It would also encourage parentsand carers to communicate to schools what theirchildren already know (in this case, text construction),which schools can then build into their assessment forlearning data.

Conclusion

Using third space concepts to examine a model ofclassroom practice designed to support a continuum oftext construction between home and school suggeststhat certain features are particularly helpful to thisprocess. These include recreating some of the sharingand collective remembering of experience character-istic of home life; recreating the experience in visibleform in the classroom in ways which children woulddo at home; encouraging children and adults to createa new discourse in this area; adults acting in therecreated area in the open-ended ways that parentsand carers do in home imaginative play; and introdu-cing challenge and new learning in the context ofpreviously recreated and played-out experiences.What seems to be happening here is just such a trans-fer of funds of knowledge, via a specially creatednavigational space and a shared discourse, which thirdspace theorists advocate – if new learning is to be pro-duced integrating the meanings of home and school.

Acknowledgements

Figure 1 was initially presented in a slightly differentform by Bentley, A., Cook, M. and Pahl, K. at the WorldCongress of the International Reading Association,Edinburgh 2002. It appears in the form given here inthe December 2004 issue of Caracteres, the journal of theBelgian Reading Association, with the kind permissionof the editor (citation below).

With many thanks to all the teachers and schoolswhose practice and reflection informed this paper, andespecially to Anne Bentley for her insights into howfamily learning can be informed by home role play; PatO’Brien, headteacher of English Martyrs School,

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Sefton, for her inspired suggestion about linkingproblems and text forms in role play; and to EmmaNaisbett, also originally of English Martyrs, whohelped me identify the stages of the classroom modelin practice.

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