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An ethnographic study of the Pima County Adult Education Family Literacy Program in Tucson, Arizona, reveals ideological and pedagogical tensions and contradictions within it. Some elements of the Program are "accommodationist," aimed at helping students fit into an unjust status quo as they find it. Other elements are "liberatory," aimed at empowering students to transform the status quo. Recommendations are made aimed at steering the Program in more liberatory directions without sacrificing its crucial role in preparing students for further education and work. The Program during 1994-95 was a collaboration among Pima County Adult Education, Head Start, Sunnyside and Tucson Unified School Districts, and the National Center for Family Literacy. It involved nearly a hundred families, mostly young mothers with preschool children, at five elementary school sites. Students were predominantly Hispanic, many recent immigrants from Mexico, with low income and minimal levels of education. Adult students received ESL and/or GED education while their children were enrolled in Head Start at the same sites. Other features of the Program included parenting skills education, vocational education, and volunteer work by the adult students at school sites. A review of literature places the Program in the complex environment of adult literacy education generally and, more specifically, the national family literacy movement in the United States. Competing definitions of literacy (nominal, functional, cultural, critical) are examined, as well as two prevailing philosophies in family literacy programs: a "deficit model" of language use by disadvantaged people, and a "transmission model" of school literacy from parent to child. All theoretical principles are related to the PCAE Family Literacy Program. The research methodology is reflexive ethnography, in which the researcher tries to account for his personal interaction with the phenomena studied and incorporates it into every aspect of the ethnography, from collection to presentation to interpretation of data. The last chapter is a personal essay in the form of a literacy narrative that attempts to relate the autobiography of the ethnographer to the lives of the ethnographic subjects.

This retrospective ethnographic study, conducted in a small community on the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona, investigates the sociocultural environments of fifth grade Navajo children who have become successful readers. The purpose of this research study is to begin the process of identifying and describing in detail the characteristics of the home environments leading to this success. The study also investigates social and cultural factors beyond the homes and families, and includes a brief look at the role of the schools and the community in reading development for these identified students. Successful readers were identified by classroom teachers and each was given an individual reading evaluation based upon miscue analysis, to verify their reading proficiency. Data on the sociocultural environment was gathered through open-ended interviews with fifteen selected students, their parents, their teachers, and the school principal, as well as through searches of the students' school records. Data from this study suggests a much higher success rate for Navajo children than is commonly reported with standardized achievement tests. This study exposes some of the myths of Navajo and other minority failure by identifying instances of Navajo success. Social conditions, such as single parent families, low income, alcoholism, and unemployment did not prevent the development of literacy for these children nor did linguistic differences and limited amounts of written material in the homes. Teachers, parents, the principal, and the students themselves identified the home, rather than the school, as the most important factor in these children becoming successful readers. Within the home, the development of literacy was assisted through child initiated activities and questioning, and supportive adults' responses, rather than through direct instruction. Literacy, for each child in the study, was achieved in different ways. In addition to general findings, four case studies are presented, providing a detailed view of some of the multiple ways of becoming literate in this Navajo community.