Literacy nooks' : geosemiotics and domains of literacy in home spaces

Conceptualizations of the home have changed, particularly in respect to children’s rearing and development. An increased awareness of early intervention in meeting a child’s learning needs has filtered down into the organization of space in homes. Maximizing learning opportunities by creating ‘literacy nooks’, which involves carving out interactive domains in the home, has become a way of asserting parental agency in their children’s development. The Parents’ Networks project is an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project that focuses on how specific locales, such as commercial retail outlets, playgroups, libraries, health services and home spaces, have become networks of information sourcing and learning. This paper refers to a sub-project derived from this larger study that focuses specifically on the home space. We suggest that within the home space, parents construct learning environments for preschool children based on concepts of ‘good’ parenting. Four case studies of family homes in the US town of Greystone (pseudonym) are presented, exploring how space is arranged to produce an environment conducive to learning and development. In this article, we locate interview and observational data within space theory to posit how learning is mobilized within and across home environments.