Children's Voices Talk, Knowledge and Identity

Drawing on ethnographic research inside and outside the classroom, Janet Maybin investigates how 10-12 year-old children use talk and literacy to construct knowledge about their social worlds and about themselves, as they negotiate the transition from childhood into adolescence. Through the analysis of examples of talk, she shows how children use collaborative verbal strategies, stories of personal experience and the reworked voices of others to investigate the moral order and forge their own identities.

Janet Maybin is a Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication at the Open University.