Multicultural Families, Home Literacies, and Mainstream Schooling

Edited by:
Guofang Li, Michigan State University

A volume in the series: Literacy, Language and Learning. Editor(s): Claudia Finkbeiner, Universitaet Kassel. Wen Ma, Le Moyne College.

Published 2009

Lack of knowledge about immigrant and minority students’ learning outside school has contributed to the difficulties educators encounter when trying to embrace cultural diversity. Many educators do not have the knowledge base about immigrant and minority children’s culturally-specific ways of learning in nonschool settings. Given the changing cultural landscapes in today’s schools, we have an imperative to develop more situated understandings of immigrant and minority children’s literacy learning experiences embedded in the social and cultural fabrics of their everyday lives outside school. This volume of research meets this important need in the field. It not only focuses on the complexity of literacy learning in diverse home contexts, but also examines how literacy is practiced and lived in multiple ways within families of various backgrounds including those of Asian, African and African-American, Hispanic, White European and mixed heritages. In addition, it explores how these various culturally embedded home practices will inform school education and policy making in a larger socio-political context. The book makes an original and significant contribution to the fields of literacy education and school, home, and community partnerships.

Since immigrant and minority families’ literacy activities and the cultural contexts of their practices at home are not readily accessible to school personnel, program developers, policy makers or even researchers and educators, this book will serve as an important resource for teachers, practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students, teacher educators, and university researchers who are in the fields of literacy education, family literacy and new literacy studies, minority and/or immigrant education, and second language education.

CONTENTS
Foreword, Patricia Ruggiano Schmidt. Introduction: Toward a Situated Perspective on Multicultural Families and their Home Literacy Practices, Guofang Li. PART I: THEORIZING RESEARCH ON HOME LITERACY PRACTICES AND MAINSTREAM SCHOOLING. Home Literacy Practices and Mainstream Schooling: A Theoretical Understanding of the Field, Trevor H. Cairney. PART II: MULTICULTURAL FAMILIES AND HOME LITERACY PRACTICES. African and African American Families. Literacy Practice in African American Homes: Looking Across Time and Space, Catherine Compton-Lilly. Family Matters: How One Somali Bantu Family Supported Themselves and an American Teacher in Literacy Learning, Patricia Millikin Lynch. Asian Families. Writing in Korean and English: Case Study of Parent-Child Interactions in a Korean Family, Hye-Young Park. Family Literacy: Learning From an Asian Immigrant Family, Guofang Li. Hispanic Families. Solamente libros importantes": Literacy Practices and Ideologies of Migrant Farmworking Families in North Central Florida, Maria Coady. Literacy Practices Among Immigrant Latino Families, Leslie Reese. European American Families. Sharing a Language and Literacy Legacy: A White Middle Class Family’s Experience, Billie J. Enz and Dawn Foley. The “Majority in the Minority”: Literacy Practices of Low-SES White Families in an Inner City Neighborhood, Guofang Li. Families of Mixed Heritages. Syncretic Home Literacies: Learning to Read in Two Languages and Three Worlds, Mariana Souto-Manning with Jamie Dice. PART III: SCHOOL-HOME LITERACY CONNECTIONS AND THE DIRECTIONS OF MINORITY LITERACY EDUCATION. Understanding English Language Learners’ Identities in Two Languages and Literacies in Two Contexts, Sarah J. McCarthey. Implications of Home Literacies for Teacher Education, School Learning, and Family Literacy Programs, Jennifer D. Turner and Patricia Edwards. PART IV: HOME LITERACIES AND MAINSTREAM SCHOOLING—A CONCLUSION. Say It Today Then Say It Differently Tomorrow: Connecting Home and School Literacies, Diane Lapp. Author Biographies.

REVIEWS
"...the book can provide teachers and other educators with insights for supporting culturally relevant pedagogies that incorporate family literacy practices into the classroom." McNally in Education Review (Read full review)