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Family Literacy

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Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Introduction

There is little doubt that family literacy has emerged as an increasingly dominant area of language and literacy research over the past 30 years. Any search for studies on family literacy would yield countless citations in which researchers and practitioners outline a range of activities—from parent‐child book reading programs to family learning in home, school, and community settings. However, as a formal area of inquiry in language and literacy research, family literacy has a relatively recent history. A tension that has persisted in the field centers on disjunctures between research that emphasizes multiple literacies, sociocultural contexts, and social change in understanding families’ learning and the policy push for instructional programming for parents and children that assumes universality of interests, needs, and backgrounds of learners. This tension is linked to family literacy's historical focus on low‐income and minority families and to ideological and...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pennsylvania,  , USA

    Vivian Gadsden

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  1. Vivian Gadsden
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 19104-6216, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Nancy H. Hornberger

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Gadsden, V. (2008). Family Literacy. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_43

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