No description available.

This study examined the home-based family literacy practices of one Hispanic family, especially focusing on the parents' memories of home-based and school-based literacy activities, current home-based literacy activities and functions, and the interface of home-based family literacy practices and school-based literacy expectations. Ethnographic data offered insight into the understanding that literacy acquisition begins in the home and is dependent and reflective of literacy experiences that are sociocultural based. These home-based family literacy activities and functions are broad in scope and are valuable forms of literacy. However, these activities of marginalized families are often regarded as unimportant and/or unrelated to school-based literacy expectations, and therefore inferior. In response to this perceived mismatch between home-based family literacy activities and school-based literacy expectations, educators approached families from a deficit perspective. This deficit assumption created a sense of devalue on the part of the parents, who assisted their children by culturally and socially relevant means. To meet the school-based literacy expectations familial relationships were jeopardized as the pressure, frustration, and guilt from educators can result in emotional and physical abuse from mother to her children.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / F. Todd Goodson / By the end of March 2011, 2.3 million active-duty military personnel and reservists had deployed to combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (Golding, 2011). Many of them had experienced multiple deployments in which they served in war zones for 12 to 15 months, returned to the US for 12 months, and then deployed again to another war zone (Huebner & Mancini, 2008; Morse, 2006). Adolescents in military families whose service members are deployed repeatedly, and for longer durations, experience circumstances unique to current conflicts. Documents such as the Educator’s Guide to the Military Child During Deployment (retrieved 2008) recommend various literacy practices as a means of coping with the circumstances of deployment. This qualitative phenomenological inquiry seeks to extend the body of research in the area of adolescent literacy by examining the perceptions of adolescents regarding their out-of-school literacy practices within the experience of deployment. In this study, the perspectives of five adolescents were examined regarding their literacy practices as they shaped their identities, enacted agency, and navigated structures of power during deployment. Phenomenological analysis, critical discourse analysis, and sociocultural theory were applied to data gathered from initial interviews, literacy logs, and follow-up interviews. During the phenomenological analysis, descriptions of each participant’s experiences were developed, replete with the words and expressions of the adolescents themselves. Horizontalization of significant statements from these descriptions yielded a composite description offering an understanding of what it is like to engage in out-of-school literacy practices within the circumstances of military deployment. Three themes emerged; ambiguity, responses, and roles. A theoretical analysis utilizing critical discourse analysis and sociocultural theory examined the discourses of the participants and interpreted relationships between the adolescents’ literacy practices and their experiences with deployment. This examination offered insight to the ways these adolescents established identity and enacted agency within power circulations as their families experienced deployment. This study places the voices of adolescents at the foreground of consideration. Listening to their words and reading their texts offers true insight into their literacy practices as they navigate the lived experience of deployment.

No description available.

Parenting education is a process of providing information to parents on the challenges of parenting, services available for families, and ideas on how to interact with children. The federal Even Start family literacy program, designed to increase the educational opportunities of parents and children, has a strong parenting education component. Parenting information is offered through formal classes, support groups, home visits and by involving parents in their child's classroom. Using the life course and family system's perspective, this study examined the impact of participation in the Even Start program on parents' knowledge of parenting and their parenting practices. The study employed a pretest-posttest design and utilized quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. In all, 74 Even Start and 26 comparison group parents participated. Four hypotheses were tested: (a) Even Start parents would make greater gains in parenting knowledge and practices than would comparison group parents; (b) parents who made gains in parenting knowledge and practices would have different demographic characteristics than those who did not make gains; (c) parents with lower depression, higher self-esteem, and greater social support would make greater gains in parenting knowledge and practices; and (d) programs offering more hours of parenting education would have parents making greater gains in parenting knowledge and practices. Quantitative results indicate that there are demographic differences at pretest and posttest in parents' scores on parenting knowledge and practices although there is no significant difference in score gains as the result of program participation. More positive parenting practices were associated at pretest and posttest with lower levels of depression. Qualitative results found increases in parenting knowledge, parenting practices, and self-esteem. No differences were found in programs who offered greater number of hours of parenting education than those that did not. / Graduation date: 1997

Individual differences in early literacy skills can be attributed to children’s previous history of emergent literacy experiences during their preschool years. The purpose of this qualitative study was to learn about the emergent literacy experiences of one Libyan American preschooler and one Syrian American preschooler and how their families support these experiences in their bilingual homes. Through the lens of social theory of learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and sociocultural theory (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978), this multi-case study was designed to explore family literacy practices with a preschooler in a naturalistic setting. The questions guiding this study were: (1) How did the texts, tools, and technologies available in two bilingual home settings impact the emergent literacy practices of a Libyan American child and a Syrian American child? (2) What support did family members provide for these two children as they developed emergent literacy practices in their bilingual home settings? Data sources included a demographic questionnaire, digital-recordings of family literacy practices with a preschooler, audio-recorded in-depth interviews with the parents, home visits, the preschoolers’ writing samples, and photographs of literacy activities, materials, and the home environment. The recorded family literacy practices and interviews were transcribed and analyzed to identify emerging themes. Both within-case analysis and cross-case analysis were conducted. Findings revealed that the preschoolers in both families use a multimodal process such as talking, drawing, singing, chanting, recitation, technologies, and sociodramatic play in their daily literacy experiences. The parents are not concerned with teaching their children specific literacy skills; but they naturally use techniques for keeping them on task and questioning skills to enhance oral language and comprehension development. These families’ home literacy practices are Americanized by living in the mainstream social group, and English is frequently used among the family members. However, their bilingualism and religious literacy practices enrich and vary their children’s emergent literacy experiences and their family literacy practices. The significance of this study resides in the importance of getting to know individual families’ backgrounds to better understand and respect the cultural practices of family literacy.

Recent and ongoing research has demonstrated the alarming likelihood of children from low-income homes and from ethnic minorities to read at much lower reading levels than their peers. Additionally, reading ability is related to the earliest of emergent literacy skills, which can be measured in young children before they enter formal schooling. The home environment, including the available resources, support for literacy and school, and the parent-child relationship, plays an important role in promoting the development of emergent literacy skills. More research is needed, however, to inform programs and researchers about the specific relationship between the home environment and emergent literacy development. The current study was conducted using a sample of 122 preschool children enrolled in ERF enriched preschool classrooms in one school located in a Southwestern state. The study investigated the power of three variables of the home literacy environment (HLE) (i.e., Family Reading and Writing, External Resources, and Daily Activities) to predict three emergent literacy outcomes (i.e., receptive oral language, alphabet knowledge, and name writing) using canonical correlation analysis (CCA). The study also used commonality regression analysis to examine the shared and unique variance in these emergent literacy outcomes accounted for by the variables of the HLE and the parent-child relationship. The results of the CCA did not find the variables of the HLE to have a statistically significant relationship with the emergent literacy outcomes. Missing data techniques were used to account for incomplete data, and he results were closer to obtaining statistical significance when the more advanced method of multiple imputation was used to account for missing data, with the p-value decreasing from .751 with listwise deletion to between .094 and .504 with multiple imputation. The second analysis of the study, the commonality regression analysis, did find home variables to account for unique and shared variance in the emergent literacy outcomes, particularly in preschool name writing. Specifically, the External Resources scale of the Familia Inventory (Taylor, 2000) uniquely accounted for the smallest amount of variance (i.e., .1 percent) in name writing, while the scores of the PCRI uniquely accounted for the largest amount of variance (i.e., 3.4 percent). When combined together, however, the predictor variables accounted for larger amounts of variance in name writing ability. The Familia Inventory scale of External Resources accounted for the smallest amount of variance when combined with the other predictor variables (i.e., 21.5 percent) while the scores on the PCRI accounted for the largest combined amount of variance, accounting for 31.4 percent of the variance in name writing ability. These results complement and extend on existing research. The findings, limitations, and implications of the results of this study are discussed.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2002. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-98). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Individual differences in early literacy skills can be attributed to children’s previous history of emergent literacy experiences during their preschool years. The purpose of this qualitative study was to learn about the emergent literacy experiences of one Libyan American preschooler and one Syrian American preschooler and how their families support these experiences in their bilingual homes. Through the lens of social theory of learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and sociocultural theory (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978), this multi-case study was designed to explore family literacy practices with a preschooler in a naturalistic setting. The questions guiding this study were: (1) How did the texts, tools, and technologies available in two bilingual home settings impact the emergent literacy practices of a Libyan American child and a Syrian American child? (2) What support did family members provide for these two children as they developed emergent literacy practices in their bilingual home settings? Data sources included a demographic questionnaire, digital-recordings of family literacy practices with a preschooler, audio-recorded in-depth interviews with the parents, home visits, the preschoolers’ writing samples, and photographs of literacy activities, materials, and the home environment. The recorded family literacy practices and interviews were transcribed and analyzed to identify emerging themes. Both within-case analysis and cross-case analysis were conducted. Findings revealed that the preschoolers in both families use a multimodal process such as talking, drawing, singing, chanting, recitation, technologies, and sociodramatic play in their daily literacy experiences. The parents are not concerned with teaching their children specific literacy skills; but they naturally use techniques for keeping them on task and questioning skills to enhance oral language and comprehension development. These families’ home literacy practices are Americanized by living in the mainstream social group, and English is frequently used among the family members. However, their bilingualism and religious literacy practices enrich and vary their children’s emergent literacy experiences and their family literacy practices. The significance of this study resides in the importance of getting to know individual families’ backgrounds to better understand and respect the cultural practices of family literacy.