Reviews literature on family influence on children's acquisition of literacy. Discusses the ambivalence regarding family literacy theories and the lack of family literacy theoretical frameworks. Identifies types of family involvement and effective literacy strategies for families. Finds that most studies suggest that family literacy contributes to…

Describes Focus on Teenage Parents, a project with an integrated approach that incorporates material on child development, personal identity, and parenting issues to immerse high school students, many of them parents, in children's literature and process writing. (SR)

Describes a school-based family-literacy program initiated by a first-grade teacher in an inner-city school. Describes how joint parent/child classroom activities and parent/teacher discussion sessions (1) provided opportunities for parents to explore their own and their children's uses of literacy; (2) increased their knowledge of literacy…

Examines reasons behind very low attendance of fathers at primary level family literacy events in Great Britain. Discusses rapid social and demographic changes, the sex- segregated power structure in education, the gendered nature of parental involvement in education, and the nature of family literacy events. Concludes that the environment of…

Describes a teacher education program at the New College of California as an example of efforts to empower new teachers to meet the challenges of educating diverse students. Discusses the candidate intake process, the preprogram reading effort, community building, instructional strategies, and the family literacy program, which is integral to…

Twenty urban Canadian community health and social workers received six hours of training in family-literacy development-strategies As a result, participants demonstrated a shift in attitudes about literacy, from skills-achievement to sociocultural perspectives on literacy-achievement, and included literacy events more frequently in their own…

Describes the Support at Home for Early Language and Literacies (SHELLS) project, an early literacy intervention for families of children between birth and age 3 in rural Australia. Findings from monitoring suggest that this collaborative, flexible model has the potential to assist families from a range of social, cultural, economic, and…

Toronto's highly successful, school-based parenting centers provide poor parents, many of them recent immigrants, with parenting support and education; access to community resource information; information on how to support their young children's learning; and classes in literacy, numeracy, and English as a second language, as needed. (SV)

It would be easy to forget at this point, given that Adult Literacy has attained a status and respectability within the Adult Education sector previously undreamt of, that it was once a movement, campaigning on a platform of human rights. This article discusses adult literacy's past and present from the perspective of the Adult Literacy…

The Dorchester County Even Start Program follows the model for the National Even Start Program and provides an interdisciplinary approach planned to develop a supportive environment conducive to the improved literacy of parents and their children. Participant families of the Even Start Program must consist of at least one parent who is 16 years of…

Educators have known for years that children who come from homes where storybooks are read have an advantage over those children who are not read to. Research has shown that shared reading, reading aloud, making a variety of print materials available, and promoting positive attitudes toward literacy have a significant impact on children's literacy…

Compiled from information contained in the Program Year 1994-95 Annual Narrative Performance Reports submitted by states to the U.S. Department of Education, this update shares selected information on recent developments in family literacy programs. Section 1 provides information on new or existing collaborations in these states: Colorado,…

This learning package on parents as tutors in reading and writing is designed for implementation either in a workshop atmosphere or through individual study. The package includes a bibliography consisting of 42 selected document resumes from the ERIC database; a lecture/overview on the topic by Carl B. Smith, seven articles on the topic, most of…

Designed for use by persons interested in simultaneously initiating a child-care and parent literacy instructional program, this handbook presents a model for the literacy education of families with young children. The handbook begins with definitions of family literacy and discusses the rationale and purpose of a family literacy program. Part 1…

To help states learn from each other's experiences, this report focuses on what three states--Arizona, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania--are doing to improve and expand family literacy services. It also includes background information on family literacy, resources, and names and addresses of state directors of family literacy. The case studies show…