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

Abstract

The study analyzed the conversational exchanges through which child tutors mediated literacy abilities and knowledge with young children in the framework of the project "From Child to Child: A Tutor-Child Literacy Program", that is being conducted in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The analysis considered the conversational moves deployed by both participants in the dyad, as well as the relationship between the tutor and the tutee. Likewise, it examined longitudinal variations in the interactions 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 conversational moves deployed by the tutor and tutee were analyzed using an especially developed system of categories. Subsequently, the distribution of the categories of the tutee and tutor´s interactional moves in the corpus was analyzed quantitatively. Results showed significant longitudinal differences in the quantity of conversational moves: the tutors and the tutees increased their participation in the performance of the activities. The results demonstrated an increase in all the conversational moves the tutors utilized to promote the learning of the younger child tutee and a decrease in those conversational moves that do not promote learning.