Over the past century in the U.S., stronger parental involvement in children's education has been encouraged and, more recently, codified into state teaching standards. Despite this, fully engaging parents as equal and respected partners has remained elusive. The quest seems particularly perplexing when attempting to enhance participation of…

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…

This compilation includes programmes which promote language and culture as resources and see them as an added value rather than a challenge for literacy teaching and learning. It also includes programmes designed to support migrants and refugees by equipping them for integration into mainstream society while strengthening their literacy skills in…

This paper examines a discussion among a teacher and four Latin-American women in a family literacy class who engage for the first time in the practice of peer-editing a learner's text. In the analysis, it becomes evident that they have different ideas of and responses to the text. Whereas the teacher's focus is on revising the textual elements,…

This document contains 10 commissioned papers presented at a research design symposium on family literacy. It also contains a summary of the symposium, which was structured around five themes: assumptions and perceptions about family literacy; what we know from research and practice and how we know it; defining the characteristics of family…

Teachers' and developers' descriptions of intergenerational literacy programs for immigrants are collected here. Topics addressed include appropriate program design, the quality of intergenerational collaboration, student journals, learner-centered curriculum design, traditional and personal storytelling as a literacy approach, education and…

The first phase of Book Bridges, an English-as-a-Second Language literacy project for immigrant women and their children, was evaluated. Fifteen clients completed the first 10-week, 60-hour program designed to increase English vocabularies, give clients opportunities to express ideas in English, and provide a framework for facilitating…

A 2-year national study by Aguirre International identified effective and innovative instructional approaches, methods, and technologies used to provide literacy instruction for adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) literacy students. Adult ESL literacy learners were found to be varied in terms of literacy backgrounds and experience. Adults who…

A study examined the literature to determine the veracity of the criticism of some educators who say that family literacy programs in the United States fail to take into account important cultural issues when dealing with certain target groups. Issues invoked included the need to take traditional cultural values and practices into account in…

This special issue of the newsletter "BEOutreach" focuses on the theme of family literacy program design and implementation. Articles address these topics: the influence of language and literacy on relationships within families and between families and schools; innovative approaches to family literacy that emphasize excellence; examples of…

The authors carefully followed for a year or more the inner experiences of learning and change of 41 ABE/ESOL (Adult Basic Education/English for Speakers of Other Languages) learners from all over the world. They were enrolled in three distinct U.S. programs (a community college, a family literacy site, and a workplace site), each oriented to…

This fact sheet explains that family literacy programs have been recognized as a way to help children succeed in school while adults develop literacy skills. The Even Start Family Literacy Program is the major family literacy initiative of the U.S. Department of Education. It uses an educational model with four components: adult education and…

How do ABE/ESOL (Adult Basic Education/English for Speakers of Other Languages) programs shape adult learners, and how do adult learners, in turn, shape their programs? Beyond the acquisition of important skills (such as greater fluency in the English language) what are the bigger internal meanings for adults of participating in ABE/ESOL…

Project CLASS, a collaborative family literacy demonstration research project designed to meet the language and literacy needs of limited English proficient families in Clayton County, Georgia, is described. Intergenerational and age-graded classes were provided for Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese, and Hispanic adult family members, their…

The first meeting of the National Literacy Summit 2000 convened 150 leaders from adult education and literacy and other related fields for a 2-day intensive working meeting to begin building a national consensus on how to move adult and family literacy forward in the 21st century. Comments and suggestions offered by summit participants were…