Engaging parents and children in family learning generates collaborative partnerships and can increase children's attainment, but headteachers' (HTs) views affect the nature of these Home-School Partnership (HSPs). This study into family-learning programmes (FLPs) in socio-economically disadvantaged areas in one Scottish city investigates what…

This article provides evidence of the ways in which Family Learning (FL) has offered opportunities for the negotiation of a culturally responsive pedagogy that positions parents as experts. Although our study is small (ten parents and six FL practitioners) its significance lies in its longitudinal perspective and in-depth analysis, which…

Accessible forms of language, learning and literacy, as well as strategies that support intercultural communication are needed for the diverse population of refugee, asylum seeker and migrant children within schools. The research project "Journeys from Images to Words" explored the potential of visual texts to address these issues.…

Scotland provides an interesting context for studying adult literacy in that it is one of the few countries that explicitly acknowledge the idea of literacy as a social practice. By drawing on two initiatives we illustrate literacy learning derived from a mixture of social practice and critical literacy perspectives. Together they provide insights…

This article examines survey and focus group transcripts of a well-established early years literacy project in Scotland in light of contextual information about changing local authority policy in order to look at the gains in social capital identified by participants and the extent to which these indicate lasting durable change that will reap…

"Connect" is an approach to family literacy in Scotland that recognizes that people have different literacies used in different life domains. It values home and community literacies and challenges the deficit perspective and dominant cultural and ideological patterns. (SK)

Case studies of four Scottish schools with family literacy programs depicted collaboration among school staff, parents, and adult literacy educators. Programs that conceptualized parents as "people" rather than "problems" challenged the deficit perspective of family literacy and enabled parents' full participation in…

Assumptions about learner identity are often based on a deficit view of the working classes. This chapter illustrates an alternative discourse that shows how one family literacy program in Scotland generated useful knowledge.

Examines a family literacy program based in a disadvantaged area of Scotland, to show how deficit views of children and their parents (feeling that one's own ways of speaking and writing are "wrong") might be challenged and overcome so that real learning can take place, learning that focuses on people's strengths and different types of…

As the preschool and early years of schooling were becoming the focus of increasing attention, the Scottish Office Education and Industry Department commissioned a review of United Kingdom and international literature on the use of early intervention schemes for disadvantaged students. The resulting review presents evidence on the most appropriate…

This conference proceedings contains 65 presentations and 3 colloquiums from a conference that dealt with knowledge at work and knowledge that works and with how education can be successfully integrated into work and work into education. The papers are "Reading the Contexts of Complex Incidents of Adult Education Practice" (Apte);…