Using Family Literacy Cultures to Build Curriculum for Family Literacy Cultures

• In Event: A Place for Indigenous, Immigrant, and Refugee Cultural Contributions to Family Literacy

Abstract

Purpose: This paper will argue that the construct of family literacy must be reconsidered when working with families who wish to engage with family literacy programs. The paper will present data that demonstrates that programs that build family literacy curricula from the existing family literacy cultures of their students (i.e. recognizing that families do engage with literacy within the contexts of their lives) can help parents and young children increase their basic literacy abilities and stretch their literacy practices to include those that are reflected in formal contexts of schooling.

Framework: This action research project was framed by theories of literacy that view literacy as multiple and embedded within literacy practices that reflect social and cultural contexts of human activity, beliefs, histories, values, and power relations (Street, 1984; Vygotsky, 1978). Thus literacy practice is seen as cultural practice (Author, 1995) and family literacies as multiple and culturally bound (Taylor, 1997). Language and literacy theory that argues that literacy is best learned in contexts of real-life use (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1998) also frames this study.

Method:
Design: This study was designed as an action research project, formative experiment. We implemented a 12-month intergenerational literacy program for immigrants and refugees and their children ages 3-5. Formative experiments allows us to explore how educational interventions actually work in practice as they are developed, implemented, and modified in the context of different challenges and issues that arise in actual practice (Reinking & Bradley, 2004). Our goal was to raise the English literacy levels of the parents and the emergent literacy levels of the children. The “intervention” was a curriculum that was based around engaging the students in the reading and writing of real-life texts for real-life purposes, sometimes referred to as authentic literacy instruction (Author, et al., 2007). Thus the instruction was embedded in the lives and cultures of the students.
Participants. The families came from Southern Sudan, Syria, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia. The parents wished to learn to read and write (some for the first time in any language) in English and for their children to prepare for Canadian kindergartens.
Data Collection. Data was collected from reports the teachers wrote after each class, detailing all activities engaged in and who engaged with them. The parents’ English literacy was assessed pre- and post- with the Canadian Adult Assessment Test and the children’s with the Test of Early Reading Ability-2.
Results. Using the normal curve equivalent scores as the control group, the analysis showed significant growth in both the parents’ and children’s literacy scores. An Exposure to Authentic Literacy Activity measure, developed by us, indicated that the growth was related to the degree to which the activities engaged in were embedded in the lives of the students.

Discussion. This study adds empirical weight to the assertion that new literacies are best learned in contexts of use that are culturally congruent with the lives of the students.

Authors

• Victoria Purcell-Gates, The University of British Columbia

• Kristy Younjung Jang, The University of British Columbia

• Kimberly Lenters, University of Calgary

• Marianne McTavish, The University of British Columbia