Reimagining Family Literacy Programs: Immigrant Mothers and Practitioners in Partnership

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 11:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Culturally Relevant/Responsive and Critical Approaches to Reading and Literacy Education

Abstract

This paper examines how cultural brokering emerges in interactions between non-dominant parents and practitioners within a family literacy program. Using critical discourse studies (van Dijk, 2015; Mullet, 2018), community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), and equitable collaboration frameworks (Ishimaru et al., 2016), we analyze conversations between immigrant mothers and program practitioners to explore how knowledge is brokered between home and the program. Findings highlight how families use diverse forms of capital to assert their knowledge and push back on normative expectations. We argue cultural brokering operates within a boundary-spanning zone where institutional and familial practices intersect. These zones offer opportunities to reimagine family literacy programs by moving toward relational models where families’ cultural knowledge is treated as central to literacy development.

Authors

• Leigh Monistere, University of Pennsylvania

• Jancarlos Montoya Mejia, University of Pennsylvania