Ben and his army scenes: a consideration of one child’s out-of-school text production

In this paper, findings from a recent small-scale case study exploring children’s out-of-school text production are shared. It has been strongly argued that the standard literacy curriculum offered by schools is dislocated from the real interests and home literacy practices of children (Millard 2003). This argument is used as a starting point for considering the texts produced by Ben, a ten-year-old writer. Here, Ben’s texts are considered for the range of factors that can be seen to influence his out-of-school text production. These factors are wide-ranging and include social, material and agentive factors. To conclude, the factors that arise from the data are explored in relation to one another, and a framework for considering children’s text production that brings into balance the social, material and agentive factors is proposed.