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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.