01/17/2012
In the Beginning: Building the
Foundations for Literacy Learning
Patricia A. Edwards, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor & Literacy Achievement Research Center
Principal Investigator, Michigan State University
2010-2011 President, International Reading Association
Featured Address
2012 National Reading Recovery & K-6 Classroom Literacy Conference
February 6, 2012
Richer Than Gold
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You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be—
I had a mother to read to me.
--Strickland Gillilan (1869-1954)
Quotes My Mother Shared with Me
• “Literature nourishes the mind and
spirit, shapes character and
prepares the child for a full life.”—
Author Unknown
• “That is a good book which is
opened with expectation and
closed with profit.” –A. Bronson
Alcott
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Quotes My Mother Shared with Me
• “ The book to read is not the one which
thinks for you, but the one which makes
you think.” McCosh
• “The things you read will fashion you by
slowly conditioning your mind
mind.’—A
A. W
W.
Tozer
• “A book is like a garden carried in the
pocket.”—Chinese proverb
Quotes My Mother Shared with Me
• “Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting
for one at the end of a long day makes that day
happier.”—Author Unknown
• “Every book makes a difference.”—Author
Unknown
• “There
There is more treasure in books than in all the
pirates’ loot on Treasure Island—and best of all,
you can enjoy these riches every day of your
life.”—Walt Disney
• When I am reading a book, whether wise of silly, it
seems to me to be alive and talking to me.”—
Jonathan Swift
Quotes My Mother Shared with Me
• “Reading—A gift that lasts a
lifetime.”—Author Unknown
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Interesting Fact
• By one estimate the typical
middle-class child enters first
grade with 1,000 to 1,700
hours of one-on-one
one on one picture
book reading, whereas a child
from a low-income family
averages just 25 hours.
•
Source: Every Child Ready to Read, Association for Library
Service to Children
“ The book to read is not the one which
thinks for you, but the one which makes
you think.”
McCosh
Fathers Interacting with their Children
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Mothers Engaging Their Children
Children Playing
Children Playing and
Reading
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Children Reading and Playing
Children Reading
Children Playing and Reading
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Children Playing and Playing
Religious Activities
Literacy Activities—Daily Living
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Language
Hart and Risley (1995) conducted
a longitudinal study of children and
families from three groups:
• Professional families
• Working-class families
• Families on welfare
Twin Boys Having A Conversation
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Baby Laughing
Pledge of Allegiance
Mother Playing With
Her Baby
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Twin Babies Selecting Books
Baby Playing with Book
and Listening to Music
Twin Boys Reading
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Home Literacy Practices:
Some Sample Texts
Family Literacy: Young Children
Learning to Read and Write (1983)
Family Literacy documents Taylor’s threeyear study of six families, each of which
included a child who was considered by his
or her parents to be successfully learning to
read and write. Taylor offers an engaging
story
y of the often complex
p
interaction within
each family and how that interaction
contributed to the children’s literacy
development.
Growing Up Literate: Learning From
Inner-City Families (1988)
Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines aim in
Growing Up Literate was to study the
familial contexts in which young Black
children living in urban poverty are
growing up literate. Through their
focus on children who were
successfully learning to read and write
despite the extraordinary economic
hardships of their lives, they present
new images of the strengths of the
family as educator and the ways in
which the personal biographies and
educative styles of families shape the
literate experiences of children.
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Reading Families: The Literate Lives of Urban
Children (Compton-Lilly, 2003)
This dynamic text offers a rare glimpse into the
literacy development of urban children and
their families’ role in it. Based on the author’s
candid interviews with her first-grade students,
their parents and grandparents, this book
challenges the stereotypical view that urban
parents don’t
don t care about their children’s
children s
education .
Re-Reading Families: The Literate Lives of Urban
Children Four Years Later, Compton-Lilly, 2007)
Four years after publishing her provocative study,
Reading Families: The Literate Lives of Urban
Children, Compton-Lilly revisits the same group
of urban students (then first graders, now fourth
and fifth graders) and their families. Armed with
rare longitudinal data from follow-up
follow up interviews
and reading assessments, she once again
upsets widespread misconceptions about
reading and urban families. This eye-opening
sequel uses case studies to explore important
issues, such as students’ feelings of connection
to their school; gender and schooling; parents’
experiences dealing with “the system”; highstakes testing; and technology use at home.
Ways With Words: Language, Life, and Work in
Communities and Classrooms (1983)
Heath’s groundbreaking research
focuses on literacy language learning
in three different communities:
Trackton, Roadville, and Maintown.
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The Invisible Culture: Communication in Classroom
and Community on the Warm Springs Indian
Reservation (1983)
The Invisible Culture, refers to those beneath-thesurface features of cultural systems that
unconsciously influence the ways in which people
interact and communicate with one another and thus
unintentionally affect the outcomes of those
interactions. Particular attention is given to the
differences in emphasis on visual (nonverbal) versus
auditory (verbal) channels of communication in
community and school settings at Warm Springs and
to how these differences affect children’s responses
to the school curriculum. As Phillips states, “Warm
Springs Indian children begin school with a
background that is culturally somewhat different from
the background presumed by and built upon in
school curricula” (p. 39).
Susan Phillips
Other People’s Words: The
Cycle of Low Literacy (1995)
If asked to identify those children who
rank lowest in relation to national
educational norms, who have higher
school dropout and absence rates, and
who more commonly experience learning
problems, few of us would know the
answer: white,
white urban Appalachian
families who migrated to northern cities
in the 1950s to look for work. Literacy
researchers have rarely studied urban
Appalachians, yet, as Victoria PurcellGates demonstrates in Other People’s
Words, their often severe literary
problems provides a unique perspective
on literacy and the relationship between
print and culture.
Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices
in Households, Communities, and
Classrooms (2005)
The concept of “funds of knowledge” is based
on a simple premise: people are competent and
have knowledge, and their experiences have
given them that knowledge. The claim in this
books is that first-hand research experiences
with families allow one to document this
competence
p
and knowledge,
g , and that such
engagement provides many possibilities for
positive pedagogical actions.
Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti
In a time when national educational discourses
focus on system reform and wholesale
replicability across school sites, this book offers
a counter-perspective stating that instruction
must be linked to students’ lives, and that
details of effective pedagogy should be linked
to local histories and community context.
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“East is East, West is West’? Home Literacy
Culture and Schooling (2002)
“East is East, West is West”? Culture
and Schooling takes us into the homes
of four families and allows us to look
closely at four Chinese children as
they begin schooling in Canada.
Guofang Li does an excellent job of
describing the challenges facing both
academic both academic and
entrepreneurial families as they try to
make sense of an educational system
that is very different from the one they
experienced.
Parent Stories
A Path to Follow: Learning to Listen to
Parents (1999)
Pat Edwards and her
coauthors suggest in A
Path to Follow that parent
“stories” can be a highly
g y
effective, collaborative tool
for accessing knowledge
that may not be obvious,
but would obviously be of
benefit.
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What are Parent Stories?
•
According to Vandergrift and Greene
(1992) “every parent has his or her own
story to tell” (p. 57)
•
Coles (1989) further contends that “one’s
responses to a story is just as revealing as
the story itself” (p. 18).
What are Parent Stories?
Parent “stories” are the narratives gained from
open-ended conversations and/or interviews. In
these interviews, parents respond to questions
designed to provide information about traditional
and nontraditional early literacy activities and
experiences that have happened in the home.
(Edwards et al., 1999, pp.xxii-xxiii)
What are Parent Stories?
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Victoria Purcell-Gates (1995) states: “When we seek to understand
learners, we must seek to understand the cultural contexts within
which they have developed, learn to interpret who they are in
relations to others, and learn how to process, interpret, or decode,
their world” (p. 5).
Courtney Cazden (1989) states: “Teachers, like physicians and
social workers, are in the business of helping others. But as a
prerequisite to giving help, we have to take in and understand
understand” (p.
26).
Lauren Resnick (1990) contends that school is only one place
where literate activities occur: To understand the literacy crisis and
imagine possible solutions, it is essential to examine the nature of
literacy practice outside school
as well as within” (p. 170).
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Teacher and Parent Connections
The Face of a Child
Adapted from:
Annual Growth For All Students, Catch-up Growth For Those
Who Are Behind
- Lynn Fielding, Nancy Kerr, and Paul Rosier
“We never really leave our non-reading
children behind. We may forget about
them but we are chained to them socially
them,
and economically. Like a ship and its
anchor, we must either lift them up or
drag them along behind us. It is time we
teach our Tony’s to read. It’s the promise
of education.” (p. 145)
Catherine Baker
Kristyn Dehne
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Tony
Mindy
A
final
thought…
“America’s future
walks through
the doors of our
schools
everyday.” Mary
Jean LeTendre
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Children’s Academic Development--
Schools Can’t Do It Alone!
Educators Can’t Do It
Alone!
We Need Parental Support
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A Personal Definition
• For the purpose of today’s
conversation, “Parent” or “Family”
refers to anyone actively involved
in raising and educating a child
child.
REACH OUT AND TOUCH
Reach out and touch somebody’s hand, make this world a better place, if you can
Reach out and touch, somebody’s hand, make this world a better place
If you can (just try)
Take a little time out of your busy day
To give encouragement, to someone who’s lost the way (just try)
Or would I be talking to a stone
If I asked you, to share a problem that’s not your own
We can change things if we start giving
Why don
don’tt you
Reach out and touch, somebody’s hand, make this world a better place, if you can
Reach out and touch, somebody’s hand, make this world a better place
If you can (just try)
If you see an old friend on the street, and he’s down
Remember his shoes could fit your feet (just try)
Try a little kindness you’ll see
It’s something that comes very naturally
We can change things if we start giving
Why don’t you reach out and touch, why don’t you (why don’t you)
Reach out and touch somebody’s hand, reach out and touch somebody’s hand
Make this world a better place, if you can reach out and touch, somebody’s hand
Make this world a better place, if you can
• For More Information...
• Contact:
Patricia A. Edwards, Ph.D.
Michigan State University
Teacher Education Department
304 Erickson Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824-1034
Phone: 517 432-0858
E-mail: [email protected]
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Questions?
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