This book brings together the newest research on parent involvement and family literacy--two strands of research that rarely exist in conversation with one another. The discussion highlights how race, class, gender, and history serve as potent factors that shape children's school experiences. Each chapter offers portraits of real families and…

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…

Young children who are born deaf or hard of hearing are at risk for language and emergent literacy challenges. Emergent literacy skills play a significant role in early reading abilities for typically developing children with hearing. The purpose of this article is to (a) provide an overview of the research relating to oral language and emerging…

This study investigated the home literacy environments (HLEs) of 4-year-old children attending an early childhood program prior to school entry and the association between the HLE and children's interests in and attitudes to literacy. One hundred and thirty-eight parents and 140 children participated in the study. Parents completed a questionnaire…

This article discusses the findings of an ethnographic research study exploring the experiences of Puerto Rican women attending a family literacy program in Chicago. In particular, the study investigated the repositories of knowledge and information available to participating women that figured into the development of their notions about…

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.

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…

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…

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center has conducted a national survey of more than 1500 parents of children ages 2-10 to find out how much of children's media time is devoted to educational content, platform by platform, age by age. "Learning at Home: Families' Educational Media Use in America" is the first comprehensive analysis of parents'…

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…