Children Interactions in Literacy Tutoring Situations. A Study with Urban Marginalized Populations in Argentina.

Abstract

The study analyzes the conversational exchanges through which child tutors mediate literacy abilities and knowledge to young children, in the framework of the project ΓÇ£From Child to Child: a Tutor-Child Literacy Program,ΓÇ¥ that is being carrying out in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The analysis considers the conversational moves deployed by both participants in the dyad, as well as the relationship between the tutor and the tutee. Likewise, it takes into account longitudinal variations in the interactions that were registered between the first tutoring sessions and the tutoring sessions that occurred after one year of the program. The tutoring sessions were video-taped and the different types of conversational moves deployed by the tutor and tutee were analyzed using a system of categories especially developed. Subsequently, the distribution of the categories of the tutee and tutorΓÇÖs interactional moves in the corpus was analyzed quantitatively. Results show significant longitudinal differences in the quantity of conversational moves: the tutors and the tutees increased their participation in the performance of the activities. Indeed, the results demonstrate an increase in all of the conversational moves that the tutors utilize to promote the learning of the younger children.