Promising practices for engaging families in literacy

Abstract

This book is a volume in a series edited by Diana B. Hiatt-Michael called Family– School–Community Partnerships. The focus on the relationship among the school, the family and the community pervades this book. However, it is mainly addressed to educators who are charged with the responsibility of creating or sustaining those links. There is not so much here concerning community engagement or grass-roots community development led by anyone other than an educator in the formal school system. Most of these educators addressed seem to be of the majority culture in the USA, who are given tips on reaching out to the ‘‘diverse community’’, a proxy term for ethnocultural, minority language, immigrant, racialised, or economically disadvantaged groups. Since all the case studies are from the United States of America, the readers need to take what is given as advice and adapt it to their own culture or situation. The case studies cover a great variety of situations in which educators can improve a student’s level of literacy by reaching out to parents (mainly). Thus there are many possibilities here for adult education and the improvement of adult literacy and lifelong learning, even if the authors do not frame their studies in this way. The case studies are grouped into three parts, the first of which is entitled ‘‘Effective Interventions and Approaches for Engaging Families in Children’s Literacy’’. In the first study, by Joy Lorenzo Kennedy and Margaret Caspe, the opening sentence reveals a great truth: ‘‘Although literacy is often thought of as an individual achievement, it is acquired through social interaction’’ (p. 3). The authors go on to describe their programme involving more than one generation of a family in reading and interacting together and give excellent suggestions for enriching parent–child interaction. There is a hint of the deficit model, however, in the over-