Abstract
Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to report on how early years practitioners worked with the ORIM Framework to support work with parents to promote early literacy experiences.Design/methodology/approach– Co-produced Knowledge Exchange (KE) was used to develop and evaluate work with parents to facilitate their young children’s literacy. Information was gathered in discussion groups, interviews with parents and practitioners and feedback from all the parties involved.Findings– Practitioners and families engaged with each other in the further development of an established literacy programme, and families demonstrated “ownership” of the co-produced knowledge after the end of the project.Research limitations/implications– Project design in co-produced research and KE is necessarily flexible. The focus is on practitioners’ knowledge and ownership of the process, sharing knowledge with parents and enhancing children’s experiences.Practical implications– Practices that can enhance parental engagement in their children’s early literacy are varied and multiple and ORIM can be used flexibly to plan, develop and evaluate innovative and community – (and family –) specific practices.Social implications– Where parents have more knowledge of children’s early literacy development they are in a better position to support them; for learning communities there are implications in terms of future development of work with families to support early literacy development.Originality/value– This paper contributes an original approach to the co-production of research with early years practitioners. It also identifies specific issues around the ethics of ownership in co-produced research.
Highlights
This paper discusses how practitioner knowledge, skills and confidence around family literacy can be enhanced through a co-produced Knowledge Exchange (KE) project
The paper describes and discusses how a co-production model of KE was used to help practitioners to develop family literacy practices with parents of children under the age of five. It includes an overview of ORIM, an established family literacy framework (Hannon and Nutbrown, 1997), a discussion of a collaborative model of co-produced KE, and evaluation of the work done within the KE project by 20 practitioners in different parts of England, and concludes with a reflection on the usefulness of a co-production approach to KE work with practitioners and parents
Whilst we concur with Lowenstein’s (2011) argument that “efforts to support children’s long-term success must extend beyond the Early Childhood Education (ECE) setting into elementary school”, we suggest that it is work with parents to enhance what happens at home that is the real place of “intervention” for longer term gains in achievement
Summary
This paper discusses how practitioner knowledge, skills and confidence around family literacy can be enhanced through a co-produced Knowledge Exchange (KE) project. The paper describes and discusses how a co-production model of KE was used to help practitioners to develop family literacy practices with parents of children under the age of five. It includes an overview of ORIM, an established family literacy framework (Hannon and Nutbrown, 1997), a discussion of a collaborative model of co-produced KE, and evaluation of the work done within the KE project by 20 practitioners in different parts of England, and concludes with a reflection on the usefulness of a co-production approach to KE work with practitioners and parents. Taking a co-production approach to the methodology, the project developed and employed original approaches to method and methodology within a rigorous and collaborative evaluation design
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