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Citation:

Caspe, M. (2003). Family literacy: A review of programs and critical perspectives. Cambridge, MA: Fine Involvement Network of Educators (FINE); Harvard Family Research Project; Harvard Graduate School of Education. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/projects/fine/resources/research/literacy.html

Annotation:
The purpose of this research review is to define family literacy, illustrate important perspectives on problems of family literacy programs, provide some guiding principles to address these problems, and describe how the guiding principles can be used. In order to accomplish these goals. The report focuses on intergenerational family literacy programs that work with the family as a whole. For the purposes of this study family literacy was defined as "a set of interventions related to literacy development of young children" and "a set of programs designed to enhance the literacy skills of more than one family member." Four perspectives on the problems that exist in family literacy programs were described and discussed: the deficit model, the research vacuum, the silent gendered discourse, and the missing social-constructivist perspective. A strong theme in the perspectives is the failure of the programs to recognize and account for some important sociocultural elements within families. In response to these problems, the paper provides several guiding principles for developing family literacy programs; three programs focusing on immigrant families were presented in order to illustrate how these guiding principles have been put into practice. These programs include the Pajaro Valley Experience, the Intergenerational Literacy Project, and the Jane Addams School for Democracy. In summary, this report presents a review of how family literacy is defined, some problems that exist in family literacy programs, and three cases that demonstrate how solutions have addressed those problems. Future research should focus on testing these strategies in randomized controlled trials on a diverse sample of schools.