The purpose of this study was to examine Hispanic families' perspectives on using a prepared kit to enhance their preschoolers' vocabulary development at home. Families enrolled in a public prekindergarten program were provided with a bilingual (English/Spanish) home literacy kit that included ways in which to engage their children in activities…

Emergent literacy programs for young children are significantly more effective when caregivers are integral components of program delivery. This is particularly important when designing programs for vulnerable children such as those with lower academic achievement due to learning and language disabilities, lower socioeconomic environments, or…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain a greater understanding of English language learner (ELL) family involvement in school environments through the lens of family literacy. This study was informed by literature from two fields: early childhood writing and ELL family involvement. While some schools have focused on at-home reading…

This qualitative study used a post-structural feminist framework to examine how the literacy and mothering discourses women encountered in a family literacy program assisted or constrained them in enacting agency. Employing a narrative approach, combined with other methodological strategies (ethnographic observations, discourse analysis of program…

The goal of this paper was to examine promising effects of a bilingual family literacy program: to track the changes of families' literacy activities through a bilingual family literacy intervention, and to examine the children literacy gains in both Chinese and English across socioeconomic sub-groups. The intervention was an eight-week, two hours…

This article reviews the relationship between poverty and reading achievement in America's schools. It then discusses how to advance the reading proficiencies of students from economically impoverished homes. It gives particular emphasis to school-home partnerships and sociocultural literacy practices.

Drawing on literature in participatory adult education, this article reports the findings from a collaborative research project exploring family literacy participants' experiences in their program's parent advisory council. The findings reveal that involvement in the council enhanced program effectiveness, increased learners' investment in the…

The Campaign for Learning supported the lead-up to the "Learning Revolution" White Paper and is delighted to be part of the Learning Revolution Festival of Learning, which runs throughout October. It has been heartening to identify, alongside organisations from outside the learning sector and the departments that sponsor them, the value…

Although the Head Start program places great emphasis on family involvement, educators do not currently have a brief but comprehensive measure to collect information from families about the kinds of learning experiences they provide for children at home. The current study explored the utility of the Family Literacy Survey, a parent-report survey…

Family literacy studies have shown that the role of parental storybook reading has an impact on children's success in school-based literacy instruction. Storybook reading is when adults read an appropriate text to their children. This review describes studies in which parents and children engage in storybook reading. It specifically reports…

The purpose of this article is to examine developments in the area of family literacy over the last decade. Acknowledging the bifurcation that has occurred in the field of family literacy, as well as changing conceptions of literacy and of families, we review naturalistic studies of literacy embedded and enacted in communities and families across…

This article examines the relationships among the literacy practices engaged in by first-grade children and parents at home and the ways in which these practices are communicated, shaped, and fostered by teachers and administrators in two different sociocultural environments in urban Mexico. The differences observed between the home literacy…

The Movement for Canadian Literacy (MCL) has created this Compendium to capture a snapshot of the variety of projects currently taking place across the country. The information about each project has been supplied by the lead organization. The projects have been grouped under "themes" rather than by location, timelines or start dates. It…

This ethnographic study examined literacy brokering among Sudanese refugee families in Michigan. Literacy brokering occurs as individuals seek informal help with unfamiliar texts and literacy practices. Data collection involved participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and collection of artifacts over 18 months. Researcher analysis of…

Background/Context: Educational reform has emphasized the importance of parent involvement. Perhaps the most common instantiations of parent involvement are various efforts to encourage particular reading practices in the home. Although there is some research supporting the efficacy of "family literacy" initiatives, these efforts have been…