EL PROYECTO DE LOS LIBROS ABECEDARIOS: EARNING FROM THE INSIDE OUT.
| Author | McElvain, Cheryl Marie |
| Position | Forum on Public Policy |
Introduction
All families have a story to tell. Generational discourse nurtured by confianza, the implicit trust embedded in Latino interpersonal relationships that define identity and a place of belonging. Family stories frame a child's worldview and are fundamental to a child's notion of what it means to be literate.
Scholars now understand that literacy education involves more than conveying information to students. Literacy learning occurs through an in depth, critical understanding of the world (Freire 1983). Students are not the objects of learning to read and write, they possess knowledge and experiences that can be leveraged in the classroom as they become literate (Freire 1970).
Yet a recent review of family literacy research found that publications were less focused on analyzing family literacy as a means to understand the student within a community of social interactions and more focused on analyzing the structural differences between home-school literacies (Compton-Lilly, Rogers, and Lewis 2012).
Cairney's (2002) twenty year review of family literacy initiatives investigated programs in three categories: a) home/school programs involving parents in literacy activities that often exclude their children, b) intergenerational literacy programs designed to provide literacy instruction to adults while teaching parents how to develop literacy skills with their children c) partnership programs using home/school literacy initiatives to establish more effective partnerships between schools, families, and communities. He concluded that there has been little progress in addressing a number of significant doubts related to program effectiveness. Many of the programs failed to address questions related to the use of European English speaking cultural practices that met the diverse learning needs from minority groups and established a genuine partnership between home, school and community. Community-based literacy projects have failed to provide a clear purpose for the community they serve (Moje 2000).
Furthermore, many family literacy programs have exclusively applied to school based programs that only reinforce perceptions of privileged school literacy activities rather than richly varied family oriented literacy practices.
What is needed is a broader definition of family literacy. Very few programs address literacy as a social practice. Effective literacy programs focus on the people not just the practice. Researchers investigating culturally diverse family literacy practices need to engage the community from a sociocultural context. Moll (1993) recommends "a shift away from a view of individual learners to a view of learning as participation in a community of practice" (Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Conference). This shift changes the perspective of family literacy away from how the school can help parents develop literacy skills or school related partnerships and progresses toward an understanding of why and how people learn within their individual community groups. Educators would be able to see how families and children negotiate their world of multiliteracies within the broader context of community, one that investigates literacy from a social ecological stance (Cope and Kalantzis 2000).
Purpose of the Study
Sociologist Charles Wright Mills wrote "the powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live yet in these rounds of job, family, and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern" (1956, p. 3). This statement rings particularly true in regard to minority Mexican immigrant families living in Anglo-majority communities. Lack of economic mobility, obstacles faced in accumulating intergenerational wealth, and persistently low education levels appear to make it harder for Mexican immigrants to assimilate into the mainstream (Martin 2006; Telles and Ortiz 2008). Low-income Mexican immigrant parents often lack the cultural and social capital essential in supporting their children's educational achievement (Steinberg 1996). Deficient knowledge of how the system works, rudimentary English language skills, low educational background, and limited access to important social networks often cause impoverished parents from Mexico to refrain from interacting with teachers and school administrators, accepting the school's decisions at face value and continuing the cycle of isolation in the educational community (Clarkson 2008; Laureau 2003; Orfield and McArdle 2006; Ramirez 2003; Valenzuela 1999).
As educators and community members, we casually move in and around our spheres of influence rarely stopping to investigate the lives of those who exist on the outside. We need to look beyond the existing ideologies to create new spaces and new possibilities that utilize social semiotics to study how people use language to find meaningful existence within a community. This necessitates learning from the inside out. The purpose of this study is to:
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Utilize Bronfenbrenner' s Ecological Systems Theory model (1979) to understand how Mexican immigrant families situate themselves within a community.
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Utilize Halliday's (1973) seven functions of language model to understand the functional language patterns found in Mexican immigrant family literacy practices in order to develop an effective community based, after-school literacy program.
Diversity Lens
Worldview is influenced by what one knows, and what one knows is influenced deeply by one's worldview (Ladson-Billings 2003). Therefore, diversity needs to be placed at the center of family literacy programs. Traditional school approaches to literacy incorporating linear, sequential, and measureable progress remain modernistic in their assumptions about the family and traditional print medium (Carrington and Luke 2003; Gillborn 2005). Many literature anthologies and required reading in the K-12th grades predominantly feature white protagonists and Protestant, middle-class values. Similarly, some family literacy efforts promote white, middle-class literacy perspectives (e.g., systematic and skill based reading and writing tasks), while the literacy practices of diverse families that incorporate an emphasis on oral language and narrative story telling are neglected (Auerback 1995; Cairney 2009; Luke 1995). Moreover, the curriculum, activities, materials, and resources present in language arts classrooms convey cultural models (Gee, 2001) that provide tacit representations about what is regarded as normal and what is not.
Looking beyond the classroom walls creates an open space for investigating authentic notions of literacy within a community setting. Traditional funds of knowledge research gives teachers insight about home knowledge and literacies that students bring to school providing a platform for more effective instruction (Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti 2005). The role of the teacher changes to one of learner as she uses the diversity lens to re-envision the households of her students. Students are viewed as family ambassadors full of rich cultural and cognitive resources that can provide relevant content for culturally responsive lessons that directly link to students' life experiences.
The diversity lens informed by students' funds of knowledge transforms curricula by transforming teacher-student perceptions. Pedagogy that is culturally relevant creates a classroom community full of respect and a perspective that all students can succeed.
Strong connections are forged between the home, school, and outside of school community resources (Ladson-Billings 1992). Students' lived experiences are legitimized and the purpose of education evolves to transform individual lives so they can transform the world. Such pedagogies entailing negotiations between familial funds of knowledge and schools that serve as power brokers within a community are critical for family literacy scholars who actively engage in collaborative action with members of diverse communities to change attitudes and make strategic policy decisions.
Building Literacy Bridges With English Learners
Every child comes to school with a cultural identity that shapes and is shaped by their home literacy experiences. As children learning English as a second language enter early childhood school settings, they often face unfamiliar social practices that give mismatched messages related to their cultural definition and significance of literacy. The variety of English expected of students within a school context is drastically different than the interactional language they use for social purposes outside of school. School related literacy difficulties "may be related to inexperience with the linguistic demands of the tasks of schooling and unfamiliarity with the ways of structuring discourse that are expected in school" (Schleppegrell 2004 p. 16).
Literacy for English language learners can be greatly improved when teachers build bridges of learning, rather than walls of knowledge. This can only happen when the learning process is reciprocal, respectful, and inclusive. Teachers begin instruction by learning about their students' life experiences. This means the teacher must depart from standards based instruction long enough to assess whom the student is and what the student brings to the classroom community. The teacher must take on an ethnographic stance becoming a careful observer of students.
A Social Ecological Approach to Family Literacy
Researchers believe that successful community-based family literacy models are rooted in social constructivist learning theories where learners actively construct their own understandings within social contexts (Au 1993). This study utilizes Bronfenbrenner's (1979) Ecological Systems Theory to understand the transactional language processes that exist between low-income, minority Mexican immigrant families living in a middle class, majority Anglo community.
The...
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