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FAMILY LITERACY IN ENGLAND

Peter Hannon and Greg Brooks

University of Sheffield, England

Viv Bird

National Literacy Trust, England

Introduction

This chapter provides an account of developments in family literacy in England since the mid 1970s. It concentrates on family literacy programmes. These are ways of teaching literacy that recognise the family dimension in individuals’ learning. We describe the theoretical context for family literacy in England and how practice has developed out of the linking of two strands of work: one in early childhood education and the other in adult literacy education. A number of programmes are briefly described, in particular the model that predominated in England in the late 1990s, and then the increasingly diverse pattern of provision in this decade.

The research base for programmes, particularly evaluations of effectiveness, is reviewed. There are several research issues in the field. Six key ones will be reviewed: deficit approaches, targeting of programmes, evidence of effectiveness, gender, bilingualism, and policy research. Some of these have attracted considerable research interest and activity; others remain underresearched or underconceptualised.

The chapter makes suggestions about what we know about family literacy programmes and what we still need to know.

The theoretical context of family literacy

The English term family literacy was coined by Taylor (1983), who used it to refer to interrelated literacy practices within families. Though Taylor was the first to use the term, it is clear that such practices were occurring centuries, if not millennia, before that. For example, Clanchy (1984, p.36) demonstrated the role of what used to be called (in English) ‘learning at mother’s knee’ with reference to images from the fourteenth century onwards of ‘Mary nursing Jesus on her knee while she shows him, or he fingers, a primer or Book of Hours’. However, as Hannon (1995a) pointed out, in industrialised countries, mass compulsory schooling, since its beginnings in the late nineteenth century and throughout most of the twentieth, was characterised more by parental exclusion than involvement. Since the mid- 1970s (in England) the pendulum has swung the other way, and parents are now routinely expected to be involved.

Taylor’s original research, which involved qualitative case studies of middleclass white families in the United States, showed how young children’s initiation into literacy practices was shaped by parents’ and other family members’ interests, attitudes, abilities and uses for written language. The use of family literacy to mean literacy practices within families pioneered by Taylor did gain limited currency in the 1980s amongst researchers and some practitioners in England. They were also influenced by related US studies in the 1980s (Heath, 1983: Teale, 1986; Taylor & DorseyGaines, 1988). But there was research in England that, even if it did not at first use the term family literacy, wholly or partly investigated literacy practices within families (Hannon & James, 1990; Weinberger, 1996; Gregory, 1996; Barton & Hamilton, 1998: Hirst, 1998).

All these studies (and many others – for comprehensive lists of studies from Britain and the United States see Hannon, 2003 and the volume edited by Wasik, 2004, especially the chapter by Hannon and Bird on family literacy in England) described and analysed existing family literacy practices in order to understand them, sometimes in relation to school literacy, but did not research efforts to change family practices – as Desforges and Abouchaar (2003) pointed out, there is far more research describing what goes on than into changing it.However, this body of descriptive research constitutes a rich archive which opens our minds to the variety of language and literacy practices that can be found in families, and therefore the many ways in which children can be drawn into literacy without the direct agency of schools. Not much more will be said about family literacy in this sense in this chapter.

The second meaning of family literacy refers to certain kinds of literacy programmesinvolving families. The idea of programmes or interventions to extend or change family literacy originated in the USA in the late 1980s, one of the earliest documented instances being the University of Massachusetts English Family Literacy Project (Nash, 1987), but it was not until the 1990s that interest in interventions named family literacy became widespread in England. How that happened will be discussed later. There had, however, been such programmes in England from at least the 1980s, even if they were not all called family literacy (Hannon, 1995a). Hannon (2000a) pointed out that the second meaning of family literacy has effectively supplanted the first in England and suggested this is unfortunate, in so far as it has deprived educators of a term that refers to literacy practices that occur independently of any programme. Without such a term, programme designers and practitioners can easily overlook valuable language and literacy activities in which family members engage independently of any programme.

This chapter is mainly concerned with family literacy programmes in England, that is, with the second meaning of family literacy. We define these as programmes to teach literacy that acknowledge and make use of learners’ family relationships and engagement in family literacy practices. This definition is fairly broad and it must be recognised that some in England (e.g. ALBSU, 1993a, 1993b) and in the USA (e.g. Darling, 1993) have promoted a narrower definition including only those programmes that combine literacy teaching for parents with literacy teaching for children from the same families. Focusing only on such programmes would, however, lead to a restricted view of current activity and its historical roots.

An obvious example of a family literacy programme fitting the broad definition just given would be a school involving parents in the teaching of reading to their children. This acknowledges that many parents do, to some degree, assist their children’s reading development, and parental involvement schemes make use of their motivation to do more, their opportunities at home to do so and the likelihood that, because of their relationship to their parents, children will enjoy and benefit from the experience. Another example would be an adult literacy programme for parents that made use of their desire to help their children learn to write and which created shared writing activities to enable both parent and child to learn together.

The view of family taken here is broad and pragmatic. There is widespread recognition that families vary greatly in structure and that parents can be all kinds of carers – including biological parents, step-parents, grandparents, foster parents, siblings, other caregivers – in a variety of different relationships and living arrangements. However, family literacy programmes may sometimes be based on a narrow concept of family and unexamined assumptions about its structure, e.g. the assumption that children in programmes have fathers at home, or that only programmes which involve parents and their own children are ‘really’ family literacy.

A wide variety of family literacy programmes over the last two decades have been documented (see again Hannon, 2003 and the volume edited by Wasik, 2004). A fundamental way in which programmes vary is in whose literacy they aim to change. Some focus on children, some on adults, some on both. Programmes vary in aiming for outcomes in individuals’ literacy in homes, schools, other educational institutions, communities or workplaces. Then there are variations in whether programme input is to children, adults or both. If both, there may be separate inputs to each or they may be combined in shared activities, or there may be both separate and joint inputs. Inputs may be to one family member with outcomes sought in another (e.g. work with parents to affect children’s literacy).

The location of work with families can vary. In some programmes it is carried out in families’ homes; in others it is in centres/schools, libraries, workplaces, football clubs or elsewhere in the community. The workers can be early childhood educators, adult educators, paraprofessionals or volunteers, or some mixture of these. There are variations in the target populations for programmes, e.g. bilingual or ethnic minority groups, fathers, adolescent mothers, prison inmates. The underlying concept of literacy can vary from an emphasis on conventional activities within written language to broader conceptions involving media texts, oral language and additional language learning. Some programmes extend literacy to health awareness, parenting and life skills. Some make critical awareness of literacy itself the object of learning.

Rationale for family literacy programmes

What is the justification for taking seriously the concept of a family literacy programme? Studies in literacy, language, child development and education provide the basis for a rationale. The research of most relevance concerns children’s, rather than adults’, literacy and was carried out in the period leading up to the emergence of family literacy programmes in the late twentieth century. That emergence no doubt owed much to political and ideological factors but the ground for it had been well prepared by research.

The most influential research was that showing the importance of home (for which one can generally read ‘family’) factors in school literacy achievement – throughout all the years of schooling. Achievement in school literacy and in reading tests reflects proficiency in only one kind of literacy practice but it is one valued by many families. Compelling evidence comes from largescale surveys. In the USA, for example, studies within the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed the very strong association between the extent of literacy materials (newspapers, magazines, books, dictionaries) in homes and children’s reading test scores at ages 9, 13 and 17 (Applebee et al., 1988). By the end of schooling, children in families having many such materials enjoyed approximately four years’ superiority in reading achievement. In the UK the National Child Development Study showed that the likelihood of children being ‘poor’ readers or ‘nonreaders’ at age seven was very strongly related to social class (Davie et al., 1972). It can be argued from such evidence that efforts to reduce literacy inequalities are unlikely to be successful if they are confined to school learning; literacy education needs also to address learning at home – in families.

Research concerning parental involvement in children’s early literacy development also underpins family literacy programmes. In the UK, for example, studies have shown such involvement – not necessarily encouraged by specific programmes – to be very common (Newson and Newson, 1977; Hannon and James, 1990) across all social groups, and that within disadvantaged groups it is strongly associated with literacy achievement (Hewison and Tizard, 1980; Hannon, 1987). It should not be surprising that parents involve themselves in this way. For most parents, it is intrinsically motivating to be involved in their children’s development – this being one reason for becoming a parent in the first place – and literacy is a part of that development. That alone might be considered sufficient justification for family literacy programmes.

Parental motivation matters particularly in the case of parents who feel they have literacy difficulties. Adult literacy tutors are familiar with situations where adults decide to do something about their literacy at the point when their young children (or even grandchildren) are beginning to learn to read and write. The fact that parents’ motivation to help their children and to help themselves can peak at the same time, and reinforce each other, suggests that family literacy programmes that provide opportunities for both could be very effective.

Another line of research in the 1980s serving to justify family literacy programmes was that which showed the (previously overlooked) extent of young children’s knowledge of literacy before formal schooling. Some of this work was in the emergent literacy tradition (Goodman, 1980; Goelman, Oberg and Smith, 1984; Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1982; Teale and Sulzby, 1986; Hall, 1987). Knowing about literacy practices and skills valued by schools confers advantages on some children starting formal education, just as lack of it disadvantages others (Heath, 1983; Harste, Woodward and Burke, 1984). The relevant knowledge can include awareness of the purposes of literacy and of story, Shirley Brice Heath’s work in the USA being central in highlighting these factors (Heath, 1982, 1983). There was also significant research in England that pinpointed particular knowledge such as (again) awareness of story (Wells, 1987), knowledge of letters (Tizard et al., 1988) and phonological awareness (Bryant & Bradley, 1985; Maclean, Bryant & Bradley, 1987). Such research did not have an immediate impact on practice but created a climate favourable for the development of family literacy programmes in subsequent years. If children have this knowledge at school entry it seems reasonable to infer that they have acquired it in their families. If they do not have it (and it is desirable that they should) there is a case for family literacy programmes to help them acquire it.

More generally, research into preschool language and literacy learning forced a reevaluation of the power of home learning. Building on this research, Hannon (1995a, 1998) sought to develop a conceptual framework for family literacy programmes, particularly those directed at children. On the basis of studies such as that by Tizard and Hughes (1984) comparing children’s early language experiences at home and in preschool classes, Hannon identified many ways in which home learning can be more powerful than school learning, e.g. in being shaped by immediate interest and need, in often seeming to be effortless, in spontaneity, in being a response to real rather than contrived problems, in being of flexible duration, in having a high adultchild ratio, in being influenced by adult models, and in allowing a ‘teaching’ role for younger family members. In relation to literacy, he further suggested that families can provide children with four requirements – summarised as ORIM – for early learning:

Oopportunities to read texts (including environmental print), to attempt writing, and to talk about literacy

Rrecognition of early literacy achievements, including the earliest signs of emergent literacy that can easily go unnoticed

Iinteraction with more proficient literacy users, usually through facilitation rather than instruction, and

Mmodels of what it is to use written language in everyday family social practices, in the community and at work.

Family literacy programmes can be understood – and designed – as attempts to extend what families provide for literacy learners in relation to the above. The ORIM framework has been shown by Nutbrown and Hannon (1997) and Hannon and Nutbrown (1997) to provide a practicable basis – valued by practitioners – for the design of family literacy programmes. A national review of early years language and literacy parent involvement programmes by the National Children’s Bureau Early Childhood Unit found that the ORIM framework was employed by several programmes (Pugh, 1996). Brooks et al. (1996a) also reported that it had been used in the ALBSU/BSA Demonstration Programmes (see below). ORIM is just as applicable to adults’ literacy learning as it is to children’s, but it has been taken up more widely within the early childhood education strand of family literacy work (in projects to be described in the next section) than it has in adult literacy education.

Finally, a strong research justification for family literacy programmes comes from those studies, cited at the beginning of this chapter, which have revealed the nature and extent of families’ uses for literacy and family members’ interrelated literacy practices. Once these practices are recognised, children’s literacy learning is deindividualised. It is seen as part of a larger system – a system moreover that from a social learning perspective has the capacity to scaffold and otherwise facilitate young children’s literacy development.

The development of family literacy programmes

The development of family literacy programmes in England can best be understood in terms of two strands of development – one within early childhood education and one within adult literacy education. These developed separately through the 1970s and 1980s but began to link together in family literacy in the mid1990s. Figure 1 summarises what happened.

Figure 1: Development of family literacy practice in England

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION / ADULT & COMMMUNITY EDUCATION
Parental involvement in nursery and infant classes / 1970s / Individual-focused adult literacy provision
 / 
Parental involvement in teaching of reading / 1980s / Community-focused adult literacy provision
 / Increasing central control / ------
Preschool literacy initiatives / 1990s / Two-generation model from USA via ALBSU/BSA
 / 
FAMILY LITERACY PRACTICE
2000s
Increasing diversity in rapidly changing context

______

In the 1970s there was very little that could be counted as family literacy programmes in England. Early childhood educators working in nursery (prekindergarten) and infant (kindergarten and grade 1) classes often had generally positive attitudes towards parental involvement, but these attitudes did not result in direct involvement in the teaching of literacy. Adult literacy education became a recognised field of activity in England in the 1970s (for a detailed history, see Hamilton and Merrifield, 2000) but teaching was generally focused on individual learners, often in onetoone situations. Many adult learners were known to be parents but, although some tutors must have thought to link parents’ literacy learning with that of their children, there were no systematic and well-documented approaches of that kind.

Early childhood educators have tended to see family literacy programmes as the latest form of parental involvement in early literacy education. That is true up to a point but fails to do justice to the contribution of adult educators who, not unreasonably, have tended to see such programmes as a new form of their practice. Government policy has swung between these perspectives. It is better to see the development of family literacy programmes as stemming from both these strands of education.

Parental involvement

In England, it was not generally until the last quarter of the twentieth century that the exclusion of parents from involvement in their children’s learning began to change and early literacy educators began to see parents differently. The change reflected interest in parental involvement as tool for reducing persistent educational inequalities, increased adult literacy in society, rethinking of professional knowledge concerning literacy development, more print in the environment (including children’s books), and a recognition of families as active users, rather than passive beneficiaries, of educational services.