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“You Guys Should Offer the Program more Often!”: Some Perspectives from Working Alongside Immigrant and Refugee Families in a Bilingual Family Literacy Program

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Literacy in the Early Years

Abstract

In this chapter, we report on a bilingual family literacy program with 500 immigrant and refugee families of 3 to 5-year old preschool children from four different linguistic groups in the Greater Vancouver Area of British Columbia, Canada. We situate the work in socio-historical theory and draw on notions of intersubjectivity or shared understanding and additive bilingualism - the concept that there are benefits in maintaining one’s first or home language while acquiring a second or additional languages. Drawing on an analysis of focus group sessions, the Parents’ Perceptions of Literacy Learning Interview Schedule (Anderson, 1995), and field notes, we report on families’ perceptions of the benefits of the program, concerns and issues they raised, and changes in their perspectives of literacy learning over the course of the project.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Significant other adults such as older siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles and others who spend time with children and are at least partly responsible for the children’s care often accompany them to sessions. “Parent” is thus a placeholder for a significant other adult accompanying a child.

  2. 2.

    For example, “A child benefits from hearing her favorite book read over and over again.”

  3. 3.

    Pre and post comparisons of children’s mean Normal Curve Equivalent scores on the Test of Early Reading Ability-2 (Reid, Hresko, & Hammill, 1989)., a widely used standardized measure of children’s foundational knowledge of print in English revealed that the children made statistically significant gains with a large effect size. For details, please see the Final Technical Report at: http://decoda.ca/wp-content/files_flutter/1314987684PALSinImmigrantCommunitiesResearchReport-Feb2011.pdf.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, 2125 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Jim Anderson, Nicola Friedrich & Laura Teichert

  2. Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia, 125 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Ann Anderson

Authors
  1. Jim Anderson
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  2. Ann Anderson
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  3. Nicola Friedrich
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  4. Laura Teichert
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Correspondence to Jim Anderson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Waikato, Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand

    Claire J. McLachlan

  2. Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

    Alison W. Arrow

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Anderson, J., Anderson, A., Friedrich, N., Teichert, L. (2017). “You Guys Should Offer the Program more Often!”: Some Perspectives from Working Alongside Immigrant and Refugee Families in a Bilingual Family Literacy Program. In: McLachlan, C., Arrow, A. (eds) Literacy in the Early Years. International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development, vol 17. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2075-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2075-9_4

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-2075-9

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