This qualitative arts-based research study explores family literacy experiences that occur in homes with adults and children through interviews, observations, and the visual analysis of photographs that document such experiences. I employ visual methodologies to examine how families view, experience, and talk about family literacy and literacy in their social and cultural lives. This study is guided by the following questions: 1) What social and cultural practices do families employ as they engage in literacy experiences in their homes? 2) How and where are social and cultural family literacy experiences visually represented? 3) How can visual representations of family literacy experiences be interpreted? The research that investigates sites of family literacy within the home, is limited in general, and even less research has used visual methodologies to examine literacy within the home. I chose to study family literacy sites, practices and experiences because I want to understand how society and culture influence literacy skills. The narration and photographic interpretations produced themes that included: 1)family literacy is seen and examined by the adults in the families as "reading and writing"; 2) family literacy is seen and examined by the children in the families as "singing, playing, games and bedtime"; 3) the major place within the home for literacy is the bedroom and the site where literacy experiences occur is often the bed; 4) limited time is a factor for both personal reading and family literacy experiences; and last 5) multimodal forms are used throughout the day by all participants, both child and adult. The recommendations invite all families, community educators, policy makers, and artists to explore literacy with enthusiasm at the possibilities and avenues in which it can be viewed, used and lived.

The purpose of this study was to document the literacy practices of three 5-7 year old boys who were in the formative stage of formal schooling. The study took place in the British Virgin Islands, a group of 60 or so islands, cays, and islets located in the Caribbean. I examined these boys’ literacy practices in three contexts — home, community and school. Through observations, interviews and samplings of conversations at home, I found that school literacy dominated all three contexts and was used similarly in all three contexts. Additionally, parents were consciously reinforcing school literacy in the home. The three boys were reading, writing, speaking and listening at their expected grade level and appeared to be steadily progressing. Religion appeared to play an important role in supporting the children’s literacy development, consistent with the country’s Christian heritage. As previous research in other contexts (e.g., Marsh, 2003) has shown, home and community literacy practices remain largely unrecognized and untapped at school.

The purpose of this study was to document the literacy practices of three 5-7 year old boys who were in the formative stage of formal schooling. The study took place in the British Virgin Islands, a group of 60 or so islands, cays, and islets located in the Caribbean. I examined these boys’ literacy practices in three contexts — home, community and school. Through observations, interviews and samplings of conversations at home, I found that school literacy dominated all three contexts and was used similarly in all three contexts. Additionally, parents were consciously reinforcing school literacy in the home. The three boys were reading, writing, speaking and listening at their expected grade level and appeared to be steadily progressing. Religion appeared to play an important role in supporting the children’s literacy development, consistent with the country’s Christian heritage. As previous research in other contexts (e.g., Marsh, 2003) has shown, home and community literacy practices remain largely unrecognized and untapped at school.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Louisville, 2004. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Western Kentucky University, 2004. / University of Louisville, Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Human Resource Education. Western Kentucky University, Department of Educational Administration, Leadership, and Research. Vita. "August 2004." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-216).

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 25, 2007). Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of this study was to document the literacy practices of three 5-7 year old boys who were in the formative stage of formal schooling. The study took place in the British Virgin Islands, a group of 60 or so islands, cays, and islets located in the Caribbean. I examined these boys’ literacy practices in three contexts — home, community and school. Through observations, interviews and samplings of conversations at home, I found that school literacy dominated all three contexts and was used similarly in all three contexts. Additionally, parents were consciously reinforcing school literacy in the home. The three boys were reading, writing, speaking and listening at their expected grade level and appeared to be steadily progressing. Religion appeared to play an important role in supporting the children’s literacy development, consistent with the country’s Christian heritage. As previous research in other contexts (e.g., Marsh, 2003) has shown, home and community literacy practices remain largely unrecognized and untapped at school. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

No description available.

This project describes the piloting of a family literacy curriculum developed for use in a community ESL course. The purpose of this curriculum was to teach family-literacy-oriented English to students in the community ESL courses that are part of Brigham Young University's TESOL Teacher Training Course (TTTC) held at the University Parkway Center on BYU's campus. Students in BYU's TESOL Graduate Certificate program are required to complete a one-semester teaching practicum in the TTTC program. This program regularly offers English courses that enroll approximately 100 ESL students from the local community who are non-native speakers of English. These ESL students have an oral proficiency interview before classes begin and are placed in an appropriate level according to their ability to communicate in English. Graduate students (hereafter referred to as teachers) design their own course and syllabus and teach classes in pairs. Classes last for approximately ten weeks. The TTTC administration allowed the author of this study, a student in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at BYU, to design a family literacy curriculum for the teachers to implement for two weeks of their classes. This report relates the preparation of the curriculum, the needs analysis of the students, the needs analysis of the teachers implementing the curriculum, the situational analysis of the TTTC program, the design of the curriculum, and its implementation and evaluation. In addition, this report describes the instruments used to evaluate the curriculum. Finally, it draws conclusions about the worth of the curriculum, and it gives suggestions for future work in family literacy curriculum development for speakers of other languages.