Understanding Family Literacy: Conceptual Issues Facing the Field

Abstract

This article identifies issues in the development of family literacy as an area of research and practice. While the relative absence of theoretical frameworks in the field presents problems in developing long-term agendas, it creates opportunities for literacy specialists to examine conceptual issues for developing a field and determining its scope. The discussion here explores these issues within the context of recent child/adult literacy, family development, and family-support efforts, summarizing research and program factors that contribute to popular conceptions of family literacy. To examine the relationship between family development and literacy, five conceptual issues derived from the literature and from field observations are presented. In discussing these issues, the article suggests that two related questions be examined: (1) what constitutes literacy support to families with varied cultural, social, and political histories and (2) how the concept of family support is defined and interpreted by literacy specialists who have vastly different notions about the purposes of literacy within families and about who decides what the purposes should be. The article concludes by providing conceptual considerations for the development of a framework and suggesting an integrative, interdisciplinary approach, distinctive but based in the larger family-support movement. Such an approach brings together the common issues in K-12 and adult literacy and should provide for intensive instructional and human support to families. As this is done, literacy efforts at the level of research, practice, and policy focus on historical, social, and cultural issues facing families, including changing family forms, poverty, and reciprocal relationships in families as they occur in shared and nonshared home environments.