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| We believe that literacy is intimately
connected to community development when one accepts that community
development has to do with working to enable people to make informed
choices about how they live, to have an impact on the world of their
experience and a voice in their community. Such participation
includes voting, reading newspapers, letters, bills, notices from
schools and bureaucracies, and formulating responses verbally and/or
in writing. |
| Isserlis et al 1994b: 8 |
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Family literacy as community development
Family literacy does not just offer benefits to families, however. By
contributing to the development of healthier, stronger families,
family literacy programs assist in the formation of healthier,
stronger communities.
Literacy is much more than reading and writing. It is interwoven
with health, social welfare, and education. Family and
intergenerational literacy includes and encompasses "interactions
across generations and around literacy in its broadest sense. Literacy
is understood to be a vehicle for communication, learning and
community development, as well as a process through which people can
gain greater control over their lives" (Isserlis et al 1994a:10).
Summary of research
There has been a great deal of research done on emergent literacy,
and more recently, on family and intergenerational literacy. This
research can be summarized as follows:
- Children acquire their basic cognitive and linguistic skills
within the context of the family. (Sticht and McDonald 1989, Smith
1984, Heath 1983)
- Much literacy learning takes place in the years preceding formal
instruction in the context of family-based interactions and
activities. (Taylor 1982, Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines 1988, Teale and
Sulzby 1986)
- School achievement and test scores are higher for children whose
parents have more education and books in the home. (Applebee,
Langer, and Mullis 1988)
- Parents who are low-literate may not be able to support their
children's literacy learning nor pass on positive attitudes about
schooling and the importance of learning to read and write. (Newman
and Beverstock 1990, Smith 1984)
Research has also shown that children's literacy development largely
depends on their socialization in their early years (Taylor 1983,
Teale and Sulzby 1986, Morrow 1989, Nickse 1989, Smith 1984). "Children
learn about language by attaching themselves as apprentices to people
who are using language as a tool to accomplish particular and
self-evident ends…. Literacy develops because the child sees what
reading and writing can do and because it is relevant to the child's
own creative and constructive purpose" (Smith in Mom, Read, Read,
Read 1993: 3). |