Culture and communication: revealing limits to literacy-learning communication in Saudi children's home and kindergarten communities

A good partnership between home and kindergarten environments can benefit parents and children (Bekman & Kocak, 2013; Ihmeideh & Oliemat, 2015); and allows teachers to get feedback on children’s home practices, resulting in a strong community for all. Contemporary literacy perspectives endorse the idea that literacy is broad and exists within communities. It includes reading and writing, speaking and listening, viewing, creating multimodal texts, and reading and writing electronic texts (New London Group ,1996; Jones Díaz &Makin, 2002). This research was driven by Vygotsky’s theories of learning.The relationship between home and kindergarten literacy environments in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, was investigated in relation to children’ emergent literacy practices using mixed methods design. Questionniares, interviews and case studies were conducted with families, teachers and domestic helpers. This new research reveals that parents and teachers in home and kindergarten settings were found to be disconnected and to undervalue each others’ roles. This was strongly influenced by gender segregation laws in Saudi Arabia. Literacy was evident as social practices through the ways children and adults interacted at home. Nearly one-third of parents indicated that their children have shown interest in adult reading materials in the home, including newspapers, TV guides, and smartphones. Domestic helpers’ roles in enagaging with young children’s literacy practices were found to be important, under-recognised and under-utilised. Parental level of education was found to have a positive impact on the children’s interest in using technological tools for literacy learning. These findings suggested that parents were scarcely aware of the positive and important role that early childhood teachers play in their children’s emergent literacy learning. There is room for strengthening of learning communities for parents and teachers in terms of opening communication channels between home and kindergarten settings.