It is essential for literacy programs to go back to the beginning and review what constitutes practitioner concepts of family literacy. It's all too easy to lose sight of the family literacy focus, as programs struggle to accommodate the varied demands of stakeholders who support the program. At the same time, because family literacy is a relatively new approach to literacy intervention, it is common for practitioners to have misconceptions about what constitutes family literacy. For the purposes of our evaluation project criteria for good practice in family literacy programming included addressing literacy needs by drawing on the family experiences of adult learners.

While the literacy programs in Ontario are encouraged to use the 18 core program standards (previously mentioned in the Clarifying Terms section) as the basis for initial discussions on where to begin thinking about evaluation, we suggest that family literacy practitioners begin their sessions with discussion of standards for family literacy, based on the policy statement of the Commission on Family Literacy (International Reading Association, 1994). Using the family literacy discussion guide described in the next section, at least 14 of the 18 OTAB program standards can be identified in this initial stage of the evaluation process.

The IRA statement of characteristics of successful family literacy programs brings criteria for effective family literacy programs into sharper focus, by identifying those aspects which represent strengths in or obstacles to achieving success.

During our project, a family literacy discussion guide was developed for initial discussion with four participating projects, and practitioners were encouraged to use the guide in pairs for part of the time to facilitate familiarity with other programs. Based on its success, we recommend adapting the following guide for your own initial discussions. It was our experience that using the guide will engage practitioners for at least two sessions lasting about two hours each.