Rowe, Deborah Wells. (2008). Social contracts for writing: Negotiating shared understanding about text in the preschool years. Reading Research Quarterly,43(1), 66-95.
Fascinating study of how a group of 2-year-olds developed understanding about writing. Most studies have looked at children age 3 and above; this study proposes that writing development can begin much earlier than that. This resonated with me because I’ve long been a believer in lifelong literacy development. We develop as readers, writers, communicators and meaning-makers at least from the point of birth onward, and probably even before birth. Of course, how far children’s abilities develop, and how early, may depend on how well the environment scaffolds opportunities and on what a community’s expectations are for young children.
The most useful piece here was Rowe’s delineation and definition of the nine “social contracts” related to writing. These tell of various understandings that young children are scaffolded toward as they become participants in the literate community.
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