Intergenerational Literacy Research Articles

Towards a reconceptualisation of family literacy: exploring religious literacy learning and practices in two communities in Nepal

ABSTRACT For many centuries, intergenerational literacy learning outside formal educational institutions has been an important part of everyday family life in Nepal. Yet, educational policy continues to focus on promoting ‘schooled’ approaches to literacy for both adults and children, overlooking informal learning and indigenous literacy practices in many communities today. Through exploring intergenerational religious literacy learning in Nepal, this paper develops new understandings of ‘family literacy’ and proposes how these could be integrated into current educational policy. Ethnographic-style research was conducted with families in a Muslim community, where teenage girls were teaching Urdu literacy to siblings, and in a Gurung community where intergenerational learning had become central to the development of Tibetan Buddhist texts. In these two communities, literacy was viewed as collaborative as well as individual, helping to shape shared identities, languages and values, and challenging instrumental notions of functional literacy that underlie much national and international policy.

At the "Ends of Kinship": Women Re(kin)figuring Literacy Practices in Protracted Displacement

In this article, I develop a conceptual framework, informed by “circles of kinship and friendship,” that contributes to my understanding of how close-knit ties to family, friends, and community in the context of disruptive migratory processes influence the selection, ebb and flow of women’s investments in language and literacy acquisition later in life. I pay close attention to the role of kinscripts in women’s literacy development. As a familiar concept within sociological studies of the family (Stack and Burton) and intergenerational literacy research (Gadsen), kinscripts is helpful in examining how family members navigate the life course across multiple generations, especially as their interactions are shaped by value systems and related behaviors patterned over their lifetime. Put to use as a verb, I consider how literacies kinscripted in earlier stages of life are in tension with resettlement imperatives experienced later in life, as social roles within the family are called into question by migration processes. Over the course of lives spanning refugee migrations, I illustrate how scripted family relationships that influenced women’s literacy investments earlier in life, shift toward non-biologically linked, intergenerational friendships later in life, rearticulating literate lives in critical solidarities around literacies that had not been made possible prior to resettlement. &nbsp

“Our Community Is Filled with Experts”: The Critical Intergenerational Literacies of Latinx Immigrants that Facilitate a Communal Pedagogy of Resistance

Anti-immigrant legal violence and grassroots organizing against it have fundamentally shaped the lives of immigrant children and families in the US. This article inquires into the intergenerational literacy, teaching, and learning practices of Latinx immigrants’ political mobilization, drawing on qualitative data from a larger yearlong practitioner inquiry study that involved observant participant field notes, artifacts, photographs, and in-depth interviews with 11 undocumented and documented Latinx immigrants with whom I, a Latina immigrant, shared an organizing practice. Through analysis grounded on literacy as critical sociocultural practice, intergenerational learning, and Chicana/Latina education in everyday life, I argue that Latinx immigrants mobilize against oppression through critical literacy practices that facilitate what I theorize as a “communal pedagogy of resistance.” This is an intergenerational pedagogy enacted in communal spaces that grows from Latinx immigrants’ facultad, meaning the critical consciousness and epistemic privilege that results from living in the liminal space of the borderlands. This pedagogy views our community’s cultural, literacy, and linguistic practices as strengths and tools of resilience and resistance, and expands our definition of family and our sense of interdependence to fellow oppressed communities, teaching us to enact inclusive justice. A key takeaway is that Latinx immigrant students’ educational and literacy practices cannot be separated from those of their wider family/community, nor from their intergenerational sociopolitical struggles and expertise. Another is that intergenerational literacy and learning are bi/multidirectional. Implications include the need for educational institutions to learn from this pedagogy, and for additional literacy research into communal sociopolitical mobilization.

Family literacy programmes in South Africa: Should we take note?

Background: South Africa has one of the lowest-performing education systems in the world. By the fourth grade, many learners are already 2 or more years behind their peers, especially in mathematics and literacy. Family literacy programmes as a form of home-school partnership are often proposed as an early intervention to support early literacy learning. Family literacy programmes remain a new concept in South Africa and little formal research has been undertaken on the nature, availability and implications of such programmes in this country. Aim: The aim of this article is to investigate family literacy programmes currently running in South Africa by means of a theoretical framework. Setting: The data presented here are the result of an electronic search comprising books and journal articles for the period 1990–2019. Methods: For this article, a qualitative analysis was undertaken, using concept analysis as the main data collection technique. Key words such as ‘family literacy’, ‘family literacy programmes’, ‘intergenerational literacy’ and ‘home-school partnerships’ were used to produce a sample obtained by simple random sampling. Results: An inductive data analysis approach was followed to identify and discuss programmes that fit the attributes and criteria of family literacy programmes and to make recommendations towards partnership attributes, resource and activity attributes, and future research to clarify implications. Conclusion: If family literacy programmes are to gain momentum, researchers must continue to unpack what this concept holds to ensure such programmes yield optimal results, not only for participating families, but also for the South African schooling system in general.

Literacy skills gaps: A cross-level analysis on international and intergenerational variations

The global agenda for sustainable development has centred lifelong learning on UNESCO’s Education 2030 Framework for Action. The study described in this article aimed to examine international and intergenerational variations in literacy skills gaps within the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For this purpose, the author examined the trend of literacy gaps in different countries using multilevel and multisource data from the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning survey data from the third edition of the Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE III). In this article, particular attention is paid to exploring the specific effects of education systems on literacy skills gaps among different age groups. Key findings of this study indicate substantial intergenerational literacy gaps within countries as well as different patterns of literacy gaps across countries. Young generations generally outscore older adults in literacy skills, but feature bigger gaps when examined by gender and social origin. In addition, this study finds an interesting tendency for young generations to benefit from a system of Recognition, Validation and Accreditation (RVA) in closing literacy gaps by formal schooling at country level. This implies the potential of an RVA system for tackling educational inequality in initial schooling. The article concludes with suggestions for integrating literacy skills as a foundation of lifelong learning into national RVA frameworks and mechanisms at system level.

Dangerous sadness: nervoza among first and second generation Macedonian immigrants to Australia

ABSTRACTObjective: Nervoza is a commonly-used illness category among Macedonian Australians. Although nervoza belongs broadly to the category of ‘nerve illnesses’ little is known of its meaning among Macedonian immigrants, and whether there is intergenerational attrition in its meaning and use. We aimed to explore how nervoza and its treatment are perceived by members of the Macedonian community in Australia.Design: In-depth interviews in Macedonian with 18 participants from the Macedonian community in Melbourne, Australia.Results: Nervoza is a layered concept relating shame, emotional experience and nerves, used as an idiom of distress and sadness in the presence of acute and chronic stressors. Nervoza develops in both the social world (through poverty, grief or the loss of war), and in the psyche of distressed and isolated people. It is viewed as dangerous on many levels: to physical health, as a ‘gateway condition’ to long-term psychological illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia, and to the person’s social well-being. The normalised treatment for nervoza in Macedonia – benzodiazepines – is the subject of significant medical control in Australia.Conclusion: For sufferers of nervoza, the social self is both medicalized and stigmatised. Health services in Australia are often considered marginal in the management of nervoza. Second generation Macedonians viewed the concept as unhelpful, and possibly increasing the stigmatisation of mental illnesses. The lack of knowledge about, and underutilisation of, mental health services and support groups in the Macedonian Australian community should be the focus of community-based inter-generational health literacy initiatives.

A young child's intergenerational practices through the use of visual screen-based multimodal communication to acquire Qur'anic literacy

ABSTRACTThis paper is derived from a wider small-scale study of digital literacy practice that explores the ways in which a multilingual seven-year-old child, Bablu, interacts with his grandmother during Internet activities connected to Qur'anic literacy. The study aims to reveal how intergenerational learning support was given to Bablu by his grandmother. The paper draws attention to how digital technology and the medium of the Internet contribute to children's literacy learning, and the family's contribution to children's literacy acquisition connected to intergenerational practices. Video recording was the main method of collecting data together with ethnographic observation. The video was analysed as visual screen-based multimodal communication that reveals the exchange of teaching and learning taking place between the generations. The study provides further exemplification of the term ‘syncretic’ literacy practices from within multilingual families. In this case, Bablu's intergenerational literacy practices in a multicultural setting were seen as trans-languaging, both syncretic and hybrid. This trans-languaging practice reveals how Bablu uses his bilingual skills in order to construct new hybrid sentences for the purpose of accommodating communication with his grandmother who has very limited ability in the use of English.

A Mother-Daughter Book Club: A Search for Intimacy

This study examines the nature of group interaction and response to texts in an African American, mother-daughter literature discussion group in a predominately White, Midwestern college town. The implications of this research for teachers and librarians include a discussion about the value of community and intergenerational literacy and adolescents’ need to share literacy events with adults from their own racialized group.

The Jones Family's Culture of Literacy

This article considers the uses of literacy within the Jones family (all names are pseudonyms), an African American family who lives in the rural South of the United States. Drawing on life history data with three women in the Jones family—Harriet Jones (grandmother), Sally Harris (mother), and Lola Harris (granddaughter)—the author traces how literacy has been practiced intergenerationally within the family. As such, the Joneses' intergenerational literacy practices comprise a culture of literacy within the family. Such a culture of literacy serves as a potential pedagogical resource for supporting the education of the family's youngest member, KiKi Reynolds (great‐granddaughter), who has just completed her kindergarten year. Through this exploration of literacy within the Jones family, the author argues that family must be considered a cultural context for literacy learning. In asking literacy educators and researchers to widen their lenses on the cultural contexts in which children engage in literacy practice, intergenerational literacy can offer teachers more complex, asset‐oriented interpretations of their students and their families.

Parent Involvement AS Education: Activist Research in Multilingual and Multicultural Urban Schools

This paper discusses an intergenerational literacy initiative for linguistically diverse parents/caregivers and their children who attend two primaryjunior and one senior-middle school in an urban setting in Ontario. We begin by outlining the conceptual bases for this activist research initiative, identifying a participatory, situated approach, where participants are themselves actors in the processes leading to educational change, as a preferred response to unprecedented multilingual and multicultural diversity in systems of formal schooling. After establishing the broad pedagogic framework for the interventionist component of the project by critically examining the notion of parent involvement in education, we provide a project overview, including objectives, program components, and pedagogical approaches. We then outline some findings from the project, elucidating the perspectives of participating parents, teachers, and students. In conclusion, we critically assess such community-referenced initiatives' potential for creating social, cultural, and economic opportunities for non-mainstream students in light of current definitions of cultural capital.

Approaches to Family Literacy: Exploring the Possibilities

Family literacy has been defined in many ways. To some, family literacy is an explanatory concept—a way to describe how parents and children read and write together and alone during everyday activities. To others, family literacy is a program or a curriculum—a construct for teaching parents how to prepare their children for success in school. In the context of most preschool and elementary school settings, both of these meanings are important. In this column, the author introduces the Intergenerational Literacy Project (ILP), a program in the northeastern United States that is dedicated to accomplishing family literacy in both senses of the term. Parents involved in the program attend classes to develop and extend their own English literacy and to support their children's literacy. Findings from the ILP have demonstrated rates of attendance and retention that exceed those of traditional adult basic education, an increase in the parents' use of reading and writing outside of class to achieve personal goals, and an increase in the frequency with which the parents engage their children in the types of literacy events that have been found to prepare children for success in early reading.

Intergenerational Literacy Programs as Potential Sites for Social Change

Based on findings from research with intergenerational literacy program participants, the author explores the consequences of participation in these programs for adult learners, namely: (1) increased self-confidence, (2) social-efficacy, and, to a lesser degree, (3) critical social involvement. Using a Freirean framework, she argues that these sort of impacts point toward the potential for positive social change from program participation. Policy makers, who drive federal and state funding for adult literacy programs, view education for adults from a deficit perspective, with the learners perceived as lacking in skills or abilities that would help them to contribute more fully to the economy. Many publicly funded adult education programs consequently find themselves driven more by workforce development and employability goals, than by social change or personal empowerment agendas. The intergenerational programs studied here aim not so much at merely conforming to policy-driven employability agenda, but primarily at empowering marginalized adults and their families. In this discussion, the author presents findings from surveys and interviews with adult learners from six intergenerational literacy programs in northern New England, with a focus on effects of participation for adults and key components of programming that supports these effects. The article concludes with implications for practitioners in the human service community and recommendations for further study.

Bridging Home and School Literacy: In Search of Transformative Approaches to Curriculum

A great challenge for early childhood educators today is how to cater for the needs of all students and acknowledge and build on the rich cultural diversity present within any early childhood setting. Children live in a world of diverse opportunities for learning, in which literacy is an important vehicle for this to occur. In this paper a review is provided of family literacy initiatives. The focus of much discussion about building effective relationships between home, school and community has centred around discussions of "Family Literacy". Family Literacy as a descriptive label, has emerged from a number of related, and at times overlapping terms, including parent literacy, parent involvement, intergenerational literacy, and community literacy. Taylor (1983) first used the term family literacy to describe the rich literacy practices that pervade home and community. Research in this area is reviewed in three broad categories: home/school programs (initiatives that attempt to strengthen the relationship between home and school); intergenerational programs (that attempt to bring about change in families by strengthening the literacy of adults and children); and, partnership initiatives (attempts to develop more effective partnerships between home and school). Drawing on a sociocultural definition of what it means to be literate, the review argues that many well intentioned initiatives are driven by poor assumptions and definitions of "family", "literacy", and "community". As well, many initiatives are limited in scope, have not been evaluated fully and fail to achieve any sense of partnership and genuine collaboration between home, school and community. As a result, this paper suggests that school initiatives need to consider more fully how they meet the needs of all students, and whether they acknowledge and build on the rich cultural diversity present within any early childhood or school setting. One of the imperatives for teachers is the need to understand the language and cultural diversity of the children who enter early childhood education. It is argued that children live in a world of diverse opportunities for learning, in which literacy is an important vehicle for this to occur. They experience language and literacy in many forms, and are enculturated into literacy practices, which may or may not match those of their teachers or care givers. Teachers need to understand their role in this cultural process as well as that of families and community members. As a result of this review, it is argued that there are a number of specific implications for researchers, policy makers and practitioners. These include: ” an urgent need for greater clarity about what educators and researchers mean by the terms literacy, family, community, and family literacy; ” a need for educational institutions to examine what they currently do in the name of family literacy or home/school initiatives; focussing on the assumptions that drive such initiatives and the extent to which a collaborative partnership between home, school and community is being fostered; ” a need to focus more fully on how initiatives of the type discussed in this paper meet the diverse needs of all students; ” closer self evaluation by teachers and researchers of the initiatives they implement, in order to consider the extent to which they reinforce existing power relationships between educational institutions and families; ” a closer examination of the differences between the literacy practices of early childhood centres and schools and those of families and communities, and consideration of the implications that such matches and mismatches have for children's educational success. The paper concludes that there are many unanswered questions about the initiatives planned and the research that has evaluated them. It argues for a close and critical self evaluation by teachers and researchers of all initiatives to ensure that the very practices that have been implemented to help children, do no inadvertently ensure a continuation of inequitable outcomes for specific students and their families.

Gendered readings: Refraining mothers in family literacy

Despite the centrality of mothers in their children’s education, mothers have, until relatively recently, been largely invisible in the research on family and intergenerational literacy. This paper develops a feminist analysis of family literacy programs and outlines a pedagogical framework for family literacy, that repositions mothers as researchers of literacy practices within their families. Data from a case study of an intergenerational literacy program are analysed to make visible the complexity of the mothers’ intergenerational literacy practices and to demonstrate the value of critical literacy as a pedagogical approach that acknowledges the gendered subjectivities of women in family literacy programs as mothers, learners and teachers of their children.

Intergenerational literacy: the use of story in family literacy instruction

Storytelling provides a valuable link between generations within a family. It also provides an innovative approach to literacy instruction for adults and children. Descriptions are given of two methods of using stories within an intergenerational family literacy programme for English-as-a-Second Language families in the United States. Folk tales and family stories are used to build the links between oral and written language, and to provide a transition from personal texts to published texts. These stories also provide a vehicle for cultural transmission between generations, and an opportunity for bilingual language and literacy development. Suggestions are developed for using this approach in Adult Basic Education (ABE) classes in other countries, including South Africa. Storytelling can also be an effective tool to foster adult basic literacy in English and/or the mother tongue.

All in the family? Problems of intergenerational literacy in West Belfast

All in the family? Problems of intergenerational literacy in West Belfast

Giving children an even break: Removing the barriers to literacy: Children and parents working together

This paper is about intergenerational family literacy (IGFL) programs which are designed to benefit the children of parents in need of literacy education as well as the parents themselves. The paper reports results from a Department of Employment, Education and Training national study of these programs. Of particular importance is the issue of parents' self-esteem and the use of a student-centred approach in adult literacy classes. The issues of recruitment, control, networking and resources are also addressed. Studies are reported which indicate the considerable potential of these programs to benefit children and parents.

Intergenerational Literacy Learning with Bilingual Families: A Context for the Analysis of Social Mediation of Thought

This research initiative was undertaken to examine the effects of an intergenerational literacy program, held weekly for 2 hours over a 6-month period, on the measured English proficiency of nine bilingual families (9 parents, 15 children). The research was also conducted to explore the relationships among changes in the participants' use of identified categories of discourse during literacy activities and changes in their second-language competency on tests of literacy. Program goals were to encourage the parents to read storybooks to their children in the home as well as to provide literacy-based activities to family members, including storybook reading, hands-on projects related to the stories read, formal English instruction for the parents, and free play for the children. Sixteen observations (24 hours) of participants' discourse were conducted by the researcher and an assistant using a format adapted from research of family-based literacy learning and classroom discourse; semi-structured interviews with parents and teachers were also held. Results of pre-post comparisons of children's scores on the PLS and parents' scores on the CTBS revealed significant improvements. Frequencies of identified categories of parent-and-child discourse between the third and fifteenth observations were also compared and revealed several significant differences. Significant correlations were also found between participant test scores and differences in their use of identified categories of discourse. These empirical results, as well as descriptive findings, are interpreted using Vygotsky's (1978, 1987) sociocultural theory of learning. It is proposed that teacher scaffolding strategies, as well as the parents' and children's efforts to linguistically mediate each other's learning, were integral to the gains in the families' second-language proficiency.

The Worker, Work, and Workplace Literacy: Missing Links

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Intergenerational Literacy Programs: Rationale, Description, and Effectiveness

Defined intergenerational literacy as the tendency to pass on literacy abilities or the lack of them from parent to child. A theoretical rationale for combining adult literacy programs with early childhood education is presented, based on the influence of the home environment, of parent-child shared reading activities, and of parents' attitudes toward education. Three intergenerational literacy programs are described, along with evidence for their effectiveness. Even Start, a new major source of federal funding for intergenerational literacy programs, will contribute to the development and evaluation of additional program models. Intergenerational literacy programs offer promise in empowering parents to improve the literacy of their families.