Partners in Print, a family literacy program, was brought to the urban elementary school in this study to educate and empower kindergarten and first grade parents to promote literacy development at home. This research aimed to explore the impact of participation in this program after consistent participation by utilizing a one-group pre-test, post-test research design. The Parent Empowerment and Home Literacy Environment Survey, which included both structured and unstructured questions, was administered before and after participation in the program to elicit notions of parent empowerment and growth in the home literacy environment. Parent participants also completed a document review of program handouts to triangulate the data. The data suggested that parents feel more empowered after consistently participating in Partners in Print. There was also evidence that the home literacy environment was of higher quality after participation. This study validated the practice of implementing family literacy programs as a strategy for empowering parents and enriching the home literacy environments of children.

The purpose of this study is to provide a community with the resources necessary to help children become proficient readers. This qualitative study explored the literature on attributes of successful Community Family Literacy Centers and before and after school tutoring programs. Community Family Literacy Centers are localized places where families can build literacy skills in a supportive and safe environment.

The purpose of this project is to assist parents, through the development of a school-based Family Literacy Institute, to learn to actively help their children when they read at home. The study will teach parents how to pick appropriate books for and with their children and use them as a read aloud. It is, also, to get parents involved with their children's literacy development and to support their educational experiences from elementary school through high school.

The purpose of the study was to describe a family literacy program attempting to teach adult English language learners (ELL) the knowledge and skills that would allow them to support their children's learning at home. The methodology employed was a multi-case study. Fourteen adult participants were interviewed to gather information regarding the factors that influenced the adult participant's ability to support their child's learning prior to participation in the family literacy program. The study focused on the knowledge, skills and attitudes acquired in the literacy program and used to support their child's learning at home and the curriculum and instruction that the participants used to influence their child's learning. The methodology used to gather information included adult English language learner interviews, field observations, and contact analysis of lesson plans. The following conclusions were derived based on analysis of the data: 1. In the family literacy program that was studied, the only prior factor that appeared to influence the parent's ability to support their child's learning was the education level of the participant. 2. Pronunciation, conversation, listening, grammar and writing are are essential skills that ELL parents use to support their child's learning. Attitudes were directly affected by the participants' ability to master the English language in order to be able to guide their children through the U.S. educational system. 3. The curriculum supported the learning; however the instruction was vital to modeling the procedures for learning that the participants used to support their children's success in school. 4. Regardless of other factors such as marital status, occupation, and other variations in family background, all participants based their ability to support their child's learning on their own ability to master the English language.

Literacy is a basic fundamental skill for academic, professional, and social success in our culture. Children with low exposure to reading can experience reading difficulties, diminished cognitive development, and poor academic outcomes. Inconsistency in the conceptualization of early literacy has hampered research and development of successful, translational early literacy interventions, particularly for children from low-income households. Preschoolers from low-income, urban backgrounds (n = 426), including 221 females and 205 males aged 35 - 60 months (M = 47.46, SD = 6.44) participated in an investigation of the latent factorial structure of early literacy. The study also explored whether children’s psychological strengths and their family’s literacy-related behaviors support improvement of early literacy skills following completion of a literacy development intervention. Results support a three-factor model of early literacy proposed by Sénéchal, LeFevre, Smith-Chant, and Colton (2001). This study also found that, despite the influence of age, sex, and family income, children’s psychological strengths and family literacy behaviors are predictive of early literacy skills comprised of this three-factor structure. However, only children’s psychological strengths predicted improvements in early literacy scores at post-test. Implications for preschool interventions and measurement of early and family literacy constructs are discussed.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate how parents’ in multilingual families perceive language learning and reading for young children, and how their practice of this can be understood in relation to their language situation and cultural background.This study focuses on the interaction between parents’ and young children in the light of the literacy practice. Important concepts such as early childhood literacy and family literacy have been used to study language, culture and literacy practice as phenomena that interact. The theoretical framework is a sociocultural perspective. Through qualitative interviews with seven parents’, it was found that multilingual families have a strong ambition for their children to learn all the languages spoken in the family. They also have a high ambition to read to their children. The ability to do so is not proportional the circumstances to give children a good start at an early age by consciously practicing language and reading to the child in the mother tongue. Lack of access to books in the mother tongue is one of the reasons. Some also prefer reading Swedish books in order to practice Swedish. Another reason is an ambivalent attitude to which order the languages in the family should be prioritized. Considering cultural aspects, the parents’ childhood memories of literacy practices from their background is linked to factors such as parents’ who are illiterate, lack of reading, but also rich oral storytelling traditions. / Program: Masterprogram: Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap, Digitala bibliotek och informationstjänster

<p>Detta examensarbete belyser vikten av att barn kommer i kontakt med val av böcker inom förskolan. Syftet med studien är att studera hur barn reflekterar kring böcker, vilka faktorer som påverkar deras bokval samt belysa <em>om</em> och <em>hur</em> läsaren och hemmets läsvanor påverkar barns sätt i att uttrycka sig kring böcker. Idag innebär förskolan stora barngrupper för både förskollärare, föräldrar och barn. Detta medför att det blir allt svårare att tillgodose det enskilda barnet i en allt mer växande verksamhet. Idag finns det liten möjlighet för förskollärare att tillgodose samtliga barns intressen även om kraven finns enligt nationella styrdokument. Därför finns det ett intresse i att erhålla kunskaper om hur förskollärare kan anpassa delar av verksamheten i den mån det går efter det individuella barnet när möjligheten väl dyker upp. Ett sätt att anpassa verksamheten till det enskilda barnet är genom att läsa för barnen samt låta dem göra valet av böcker.</p><p>Studien har genomförts genom intervjuer med barn i femårsåldern, två pojkar och tre flickor. Resultatet visar att tydliga könsskillnader finns gällande val av bokgenre, samt att barn i stor utsträckning har en djup förståelse kring böcker. Det framgår även att barn redan vid denna ålder uttrycker en förståelse för hur beroende de är av att vuxna läser för dem. Studien belyser ett tydligt mönster av hur läsvanorna i hemmet ser ut samt visar skillnader gällande vem som barnet helst ser läser för honom/henne.</p>

This study used a mixed method approach (quantitative and qualitative) to examine the commonalities and differences between Hispanic and non-Hispanic participants of the Even Start Family Literacy Program. Using a life course perspective, this study examined the educational background and life history of Hispanic and non-Hispanic participants, their reasons and goals for program participation, and changes experienced due to Even Start participation. The sample for the qualitative analysis consisted of 32 Hispanic and 25 non-Hispanic female participants. Quantitative latent growth curve analysis was conducted on 96 (75 Hispanic and 21 Non-Hispanic) participants to measure change over time and to estimate the differences in rate of change between Hispanic and non-Hispanic participants. Results of this study indicate that wide commonalities yet vital differences exist between Hispanic and non-Hispanic participants. Poverty was the significant determinant factor in Hispanic as well as non-Hispanic participants' school failure. The experiences and implications of poverty, however, varied for Hispanic and non- Hispanic parents. The reasons and goals for Even Start participation were to achieve self-sufficiency for Hispanic and non-Hispanic parents. Achieving self-sufficiency involved acculturation to the American society for Hispanic participants. For non- Hispanic parents achieving self-sufficiency involved attaining GED and getting off of welfare. No effect of ethnicity was identified on the five outcome measures quantitatively examined in this study, which include knowledge of child development, parenting confidence and support, depression, self-esteem, and life skills. Initial differences existed between Hispanic and non-Hispanic participants in knowledge of child development and life skills, with non-Hispanic participants reporting higher knowledge of child development and greater life skills. Non-Hispanic participants, however, did not make greater gains than their Hispanic participants after being in the program. Qualitative results indicate that skills gained by Hispanic participants helped them acculturate in the American society, whereas for non-Hispanic participants the program helped achieve a sense of purpose and direction in life and create a better life for themselves and their family. / Graduation date: 2003

In recent years interorganizational collaboration has increasingly been emphasized as an important step for addressing inefficiencies in the delivery of human services. Among the many benefits of collaboration described by human service authors are the creation of a more consumer-friendly service system, more efficient use of available resources, and avoiding service duplication. During the Spring and Summer of 1996, six focus groups were conducted in Oregon to assess the quality of collaboration between local social service providers and Even Start, a federally funded family literacy program. The federal Even Start legislation required that all Even Start programs collaborate with social service providers in their local communities to improve services for families and avoid duplication of services. This study examined data from the Even Start focus groups using a three-level hierarchical model to determine the approximate level of collaboration that existed in each of six Even Start communities. Results of the analysis indicated that collaboration in three of the six Even Start communities was at or near coordination, the middle level of the three-level model. Collaboration in the other three communities appeared to be somewhere below the lowest level of the model, cooperation. Although agencies at such a minimal level of collaboration may consider each other partners, they are likely to have limited knowledge about each other's operations and clients. Because three of six Even Start communities fit below the lowest level of the model, the model had limited utility for this analysis. However, for interagency relationships at higher levels, the model was effective in helping to find the approximate intensity of collaboration. Although the primary focus of the model used in this analysis was on collaboration intensity, a comprehensive evaluation of collaboration would include numerous additional variables, especially outcomes related to the purposes of the interagency relationship. Several lessons learned during the course of this study have implications for future research. First, by creating data sets that are amenable to examination from multiple perspectives, qualitative methods offer unique flexibility for data collection in secondary circumstances such as the present study. Second, it is likely that collaboration in occurs in varied patterns, few of which resemble the highest levels of collaboration advocated by authors in the field. Finally, rather than broadly encouraging human service organizations to move toward the highest levels of collaboration, researchers need to provide answers to basic questions about what forms of collaboration are most helpful, in which circumstances, and why. / Graduation date: 1999

A quantitative and qualitative research study was conducted to discover what assistors promoted continuous enrollment of women in Texas Even Start Family Literacy programs. 270 women who were enrolled for a second program year or longer anonymously completed a questionnaire that was available in both Spanish and English. Statements regarding which assistors promoted their continuous participation along with demographic statements were included in the questionnaire; free response comments were requested as well. Statistical measurements of factor analysis, frequency response, Chi-Square, and Analysis of Variance were used. Compared to previous research (Quigley, 1997) that identified three categories of barriers, this research identified five categories of assistors: situational, institutional, dispositional, parental, and program specific. Parental assistors, as a group, were statistically significant more than any of the other assistors when measured according to the independent variables of participants' age, children's age, and enrollment level. Institutional and dispositional assistors were found statistically significant when measured according to the variable of participants' age. Post-hoc measures did not reveal statistical significance for any of the levels of the variables. However, free responses from the participants did provide insight as to why parental, institutional, and dispositional assistors were significant in both their lives and the lives of their children.