Family literacy programs can be effective for supporting the literacy learning of both parents and children. Educators and community members can be constructive in establishing family literacy programs in their school and in the community. Having knowledge of successful family literacy programs is important for both initiating and continuing with…

In response to rising parental incarceration rates, some correctional facilities now offer family literacy and read-aloud programmes to strengthen parent-child bonds. However, the technologies used in these programmes -- including older technologies such as audio and video recordings -- have received little attention. Parents in the Read to Your…

In response to rising parental incarceration, some correctional facilities and outside organizations offer family literacy programs for parents in prison. However, research on these correctional education initiatives is scant. This paper uses qualitative data to analyze how 11 fathers in a rural Pennsylvania prison were involved in their…

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to extraordinary changes in family literacy instruction, forcing face-to-face programmes to shift rapidly (or "on the fly") to online, remote instruction. This study is one of the few on online teaching and learning in family literacy and, to the knowledge of the authors, the first on emergency remote…

This practitioner's guide discusses what digital storytelling (DST) is and reasons for using it in family literacy (FL) programs. Examples of FL programs using DST effectively are provided, along with concrete steps for implementation. The guide concludes with important considerations for educators and a list of resources.

This chapter explores the relationship between literacy and health disparities, focusing on the concept of health literacy. Recommendations are provided for ways to bridge the health literacy gap for learners in adult basic education and family literacy programs.

Previous research on digital storytelling (DST) has focused chiefly on children and youth, but we know little about how it is used in non-formal adult education. This article analyzes a DST class in rural Ireland, which was organized by a family literacy program and offered for parents at an elementary school. Data sources included fieldnotes,…

The purpose of this guide is to provide recommendations for educators working with preliterate and beginning literacy level parents in family literacy and parent involvement programs. This guide is motivated by the growing presence of immigrant learners in schools and family literacy programs. Over 20% of public school children have immigrant…

The purpose of this guide is to inform practitioners about the current descriptions of health literacy and the relevance of this topic to adult education and family literacy practices. The adult education and family literacy educators play a key role in teaching and enhancing health literacy in the classroom.

This article examines the consequences of two concurrent policy changes for family literacy programs in Pennsylvania: (1) the transition from federal (Even Start) to state funding and (2) the elimination of adult education as a work activity for welfare recipients over 22 years of age. Using qualitative data from 10 family literacy programs, the…

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 purpose of this article is to analyze interpersonal problems among adult learners in three family literacy programs and to identify how these tensions were connected to place or distinctive community contexts. Drawing on the critical geography literature, the article argues that interpersonal problems must be understood in light of…

Interactive Literacy Activities, or ILAs, broadly refer to activities that facilitate interaction between adults and children for the purpose of promoting literacy and language development. It is essential to make ILAs developmentally and culturally appropriate for children and to use an approach that integrates various activities in order to…

Supportive social relationships are an important dimension of marginalized women's participation in community-based adult education programs. However, policy makers and researchers often consider these social dimensions to be tangential or secondary to instrumental outcomes such as obtaining employment or increasing standardized test scores.…

Background/Context: Educational researchers have long sought to understand the factors that enable or constrain persistence in non-formal family literacy and adult education programs. Scholars typically posit three sets of factors influencing persistence: situational (learners' life circumstances), institutional (programmatic factors), and…