DECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STRENGTHS IN FAMILY LITERACY
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Journal of Reading Behavior
1995, Volume 27, Number 4
DECONSTRUCTING THE DISCOURSE OF STRENGTHS IN
FAMILY LITERACY
Elsa Auerbach
University of Massachusetts at Boston
The family literacy movement in the United States has come of age: since the
publication of Denny Taylor's seminal book in 1983 (Taylor, 1983), countless schol-
arly articles, research studies, and media reports on family literacy have appeared. In
the past 12 months alone, three major edited volumes have been devoted exclusively
to this topic (Holt, 1994; Weinstein-Shr & Quintero, 1995; Morrow, 1995). The Na-
tional Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) estimates that there are now over 1,000
family literacy programs across the United States and argues that it is the best long-
term solution to America's poverty problem, better even than school reform for "tack-
ling undereducation and all the related social and economic problems" (Darling,
1992, p. 1). According to representatives of the U.S. Department of Education, Even
Start, the largest family literacy initiative in the United States is not only an important
part of the U.S. education agenda for the 1990s "but perhaps the key to reaching U.S.
educational goals" (McKee & Rhett, 1995, p. 166). Other English-speaking countries,
influenced by the U.S. movement, have begun family literacy initiatives of their own
(RaPAL Bulletin, 1994; Harrison, 1995, Fine Print, 1994; Morrow &Paratore, 1993).
Not only has family literacy come to be seen as a state of the art approach to educa-
tional reform, but, according to Street (1995), it can be said to have gained the status
of a "literacy campaign." As such, I think we have come to a point where we need to
do some stock-taking—to look at where we have been and where we want to go.
Shortly after the appearance of Taylor's book, the first family literacy programs
were established, many of which focused on transmitting school literacy practices
into the home. At that time, I raised concerns about the dangers of a deficit perspec-
tive on family literacy (Auerbach, 1989). In the past 5 years, I think a second genera-
tion of family literacy programs has emerged, one in which virtually all of the
proponents of family literacy claim to oppose deficit perspectives and to embrace
643
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family strengths. In fact, adopting an antideficit stance has come to be seen as a sine
qua non for gaining legitimacy within the field. The discourse of family literacy is
permeated with calls for cultural sensitivity, celebration of diversity, and empower-
ment of parents. Quite simply, the rhetoric of deficit has been replaced with a rhetoric
of "strengths."
It is this new generation of family literacy programs and approaches that I want
to focus on in this article. My sense is that the very success of the family literacy
movement and its widespread adoption of the discourse of strengths contains new
dangers. I hope to show that the antideficit rhetoric has become so pervasive that it
masks fundamental underlying differences in values, goals, ideological orientations,
and pedagogical approaches. Despite apparent agreement on the need to combat
deficit frameworks, the postdeficit generation of family literacy approaches is by no
means monolithic. In fact, I will argue that, disclaimers notwithstanding, a significant
tendency within the current generation of family literacy approaches may, in fact,
represent a neodeficit ideology and that the discourse of strengths may, wittingly or
unwittingly, serve the function of legitimating that ideology. An important task as
family literacy gains ascendancy within the educational reform movement is to
deconstruct this discourse and to get beyond surface dichotomies.
Thus, the purpose of this paper is to take a critical look at various tendencies
within the current generation of approaches—at what characterizes each, and what
differentiates them from each other. I will broadly group these tendencies into three
categories: the intervention prevention approach to family literacy, the multiple-
literacies approach, and the social change approach. In doing so, my intention is
not to present solutions or prescriptions, but rather to ask questions and to compli-
cate the discussion.
THE INTERVENTION PREVENTION APPROACH
The intervention prevention model for family literacy posits that America's lit-
eracy problems are rooted in undereducated parents' inability to promote positive
literacy attitudes and interactions in the home. Since parents are seen as children's
first teachers, they are said to bear primary responsibility for children's literacy de-
velopment. According to this view, when parents themselves do not adequately use
or value literacy, they perpetuate a cycle of undereducation which is at the root of
America's social and economic problems. Since literacy problems are seen to origi-
nate in families, the remedy must be located there; as one advocate puts it, "the
seeds of school failure are planted in the home, and we cannot hope to uproot the
problem by working only within the schools. We must approach it through the fam-
ily" (Darling, 1992, p. 5). As such, proponents of this view support intervention
programs aimed at changing parents' beliefs about literacy and literacy interactions
with their children (Nickse, Speicher, & Buchek, 1988). Such programs are seen as the
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best means to ensure that patterns of undereducation and illiteracy will be prevented
from passing from generation to generation. The objectives of intervention are framed
in terms of "[breaking] the intergenerational cycle of under-education and poverty,
one family at a time, by changing the 'messages' communicated in the home" (NCFL,
1994, p. 3). This model is said to hold promise not only for individual families, but for
the nation as a whole, in terms of addressing pervasive economic and educational
problems which get in the way of meeting the challenges of a global economy.
Proponents of the intervention prevention model often explicitly oppose deficit
perspectives on family literacy and embrace so-called "wealth" or "strengths" mod-
els of family literacy. They posit that all learners possess strengths and prior knowl-
edge which can become the basis for learning; they emphasize building on the wealth
of resources that participants already possess, arguing, for example, that where "a
deficit model reinforces [parents'] fears, a strengths model honors their capabilities"
(Potts, 1992, p. 3). Advocates of the strengths model often use terms such as critical
thinking, problem-solving, student inquiry, cooperative learning, culturally rel-
evant lessons, a whole language orientation, and student participation. Quality
family literacy programs are said to promote "critical and creative thinking" and
"build upon strengths, empower families... incorporate goal setting facilitate active
learning..., utilize whole language strategies, and celebrate diversity" (NCFL, 1994,
p. 4).
Despite claims to the contrary, I would argue that the intervention prevention
paradigm rests on a deficit perspective both in terms of its analysis of "the problem"
and in terms of its proposed "solutions." Classic deficit views blame marginalized
people for their own marginalization (locating the source of their problems with ge-
netic, cultural, or linguistic deficiencies); inherent inadequacies are said to account
for the underachievement and exclusion of particular populations from the various
domains of mainstream society. The intervention prevention paradigm shifts the
burden from genetic or linguistic factors to social or educational factors, locating the
source of literacy, economic, and educational problems with deficiencies in family
literacy practices and attitudes. Children's skills deficiencies are attributed to the
inadequacies of parents' skills and beliefs about literacy; blanket claims such as the
following continue to permeate the family literacy literature: "millions of parents with
poor reading skills cannot engage in [reading to their children] because of their own
reading deficiencies, and millions of others have neither the knowledge of its impor-
tance nor the skills to read to their children" with the result that there is an ongoing
"lack of parental reading models, in-school reading problems, and poor attitudes
toward reading and education in general" (Nickse et al., 1988, p. 635). Advocates of
intervention often paint bleak pictures of the home life of children of poor,
undereducated families with statements like the following: "No one at home would
read books, newspapers, or magazines. There were no library visits or books given as
presents. No one even checked on whether the children had done their homework for
school I discovered an intergenerational disease—parents who passed illiteracy
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and poverty along to their children" (Mansbach, 1993, p. 37). Others say, "excellence
in public school education is an empty dream for youth who go home each afternoon
to families where literacy is neither practiced nor valued" and, where "educational
attainment is actively discouraged by family and friends" (Darling, 1992, p. 1, 3).
Further, these home conditions and parental attitudes are said to account not just for
children's skills deficits, but for poverty itself. Because teenage mothers, for example,
are said to be "trapped in the same environment which limited their childhood achieve-
ments, most of these young women never manage to pull themselves out of poverty"
with the result that "A family heritage of undereducation often perpetuates a cycle of
unemployment or under-employment" (Darling, 1992, p. 3).
The discourse surrounding this perspective is permeated with metaphors that
suggest pathology; the most common is one of disease, with statements like, "We
can cure the disease of illiteracy, but only if we dispense large doses of family lit-
eracy" (Mansbach, 1993, p. 3). Other commonly used terms like "uproot," "trapped,"
and "break the cycle" suggest images of weeds and prisons; terms like "at risk" and
"disadvantaged" invoke stereotypes of cultural deprivation.
Clearly this discourse stands in stark contrast to that invoked by a "wealth"
model (despite the fact that, in some cases, both discourses emanate from the same
organizations). It is particularly noteworthy that these claims persist into the 1990s
even though in the last decade there has been significant research challenging the
generalization that the homes of poor people are literacy impoverished. Five years
ago, I summarized a good deal of this research indicating that (a) there is enormous
diversity in home literacy practices among and within cultural groups; (b) rather than
being literacy impoverished, the home environments of poor, undereducated and
language minority children often are rich with literacy practices and artifacts; (c)
although beliefs about literacy and its payoffs vary, marginalized families generally
not only value literacy, but see it as the single most powerful hope for their children;
(d) even parents who themselves have limited literacy proficiency support their
children's literacy acquisition in many ways (Auerbach, 1989). Without belaboring
the point, I would like to mention several recent studies which further challenge
claims that poor, undereducated and language minority families fail to support their
children's literacy development.
The first set of studies indicates that often low-income or low-literate parents are
highly supportive of their children's literacy acquisition. Reviewing the literature
about home environments conducive to literacy acquisition, Fitzgerald, Spiegel, and
Cunningham contend that "there is as much (or more) variation in home literacy
patterns within selected socioeconomic levels and/or cultural/ethnic groups as among
them" (1991, p. 192). They found that both low- and high-literacy-level parents viewed
literacy artifacts and events, in particular, interacting with books, as important in the
preschool years; the primary difference between low- and high-literacy-level parents
was that the low-literacy-level parents "tend to value the importance of early literacy
artifacts and events even more [italics in original] than parents with higher literacy
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levels" (1991, p. 208). Likewise, an ethnographic study comparing literacy events in
low- and middle-income families found that both groups promoted a wide range of
activities and experiences (Baker, Serpell, & Sonnenschein, 1995). Interestingly, this
study found that "low-income parents reported more frequent literacy activities un-
dertaken for the purpose of learning literacy than did middle-income parents" (Baker
etal.,1995,p.l2).
Additional research suggests that even parents who are themselves not literate
in English can and do support their children's literacy acquisition in multiple ways. A
study of the literacy activities and values of Mexican Americans (Ortiz, 1992) found
that parents were not only very concerned with their children's academic achieve-
ment, but spent a great deal of time reading and writing with their children. Goldenberg
and Gallimore (1991), in examining the relative importance of school versus home
factors in the literacy acquisition of Spanish-speaking children, concluded that, de-
spite the school staff's assumptions about a lack of home academic support, in
reality, parents were eager to help their children succeed in school and did so in
numerous ways. Caplan, Choy, and Whitmore's (1992) study of Indochinese refugee
families found that the parents' lack of English proficiency had little effect on their
children's school performance, and, interestingly, that parental support for cultural
maintenance seemed to enhance academic achievement. They concluded, "Rather
than adopting American ways and assimilating into the melting pot, the most suc-
cessful Indochinese families appear to retain their own traditions and values" (Caplan
et al., 1992, p. 41). Taken together, these studies suggest that blanket assertions
about a disregard for the value of literacy or an absence of literacy practices in poor
homes ignore significant research evidence.
A second aspect of the intervention prevention model that I would like to
problematize relates to proposed solutions or program objectives—the content of
family literacy programming. When "the problem" is framed in terms of inadequate
family literacy practices, beliefs and values, the remedy is framed in terms of chang-
ing family behaviors and attitudes within families. In some cases, program objec-
tives focus on changing behaviors and attitudes related to specific literacy practices
(most commonly story-reading), and in others, they focus on altering the broad
patterns of family interaction in which literacy is embedded.
One of the most common intervention prevention models is what I would call the
"bullet" program model in which programs offer single practice solutions like training
parents to read stories or sending books home in backpacks; in their most extreme
form, these single practice models suggest that schooling problems would be solved
if only parents read to their children everyday. Many are premised on the notion that
it is necessary to find ways of extending school reading experiences into the home
and teaching parents to support classroom instruction.
The most common program objective of these "bullet" programs is teaching
parents the value of story-reading and the behaviors associated with it. Such pro-
grams are often based on the premise that parents themselves were reared in homes
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where positive experiences with print were sparse, and thus need to be taught the
value of reading to their own children; often participants are taught that the single
most important thing they can do to help a child succeed in school is read stories to
them (e.g., Enz & Searfoss, 1995). The focus on teaching parents the value of reading
stories to their children, however, must itself be problematized. No one would argue
that story-reading is unimportant; yet, numerous studies bring into question the
view that story reading is the single best practice because it is based on flawed
assumptions. First, giving instruction in the value of story-reading assumes that
low-income parents don't already feel that it is important, an assumption which may
be unfounded according to several of the studies I have already mentioned (e.g.,
Baker et al., 1995; Goldenberg & Gallimore, 1991). Second, the focus on story-reading
may promote one kind of literacy event at the expense of others, thus undermining
the integration of a range of literacy activities in ongoing family life and ignoring the
value of other positive culture-specific practices (like storytelling or reading from
religious texts). The nurturing of these cultural traditions, in fact, may be a critical
basis, not only for enhancing cultural identity, but for supporting academic achieve-
ment (Ferdman, 1990; Caplan et al., 1992). As Baker et al. say, "Although storybook
reading is widely regarded by educators as an important means by which parents
prepare their children for school, an absence of storybook reading does not neces-
sarily mean that children are growing up without exposure to literacy practices" (p.
2). Further, the single practice solution directly contradicts a key finding of family
literacy research—that it is a range of literacy practices integrated in a meaningful
way into the fabric of daily life that promotes literacy acquisition (Taylor, 1983). Baker
et al. argue that, "One of the recurrent themes of recent crosscultural research is that
there are many different routes to successful developmental outcomes. Teachers
may be more helpful to parents by suggesting multiple resources and techniques
than by seeking to define a single, ideal pattern of parenting" (1995, p. 14). Finally,
missing from this model is any notion of how the children's home experiences might
inform classroom instruction.
Other programs focus more broadly on patterns of interaction within families,
aiming to change the parenting practices in which literacy is embedded. Often these
programs are framed in terms of family strengths; they emphasize identifying existing
"healthy" family traits, acknowledging the culture-specificity of norms for family
strengths, and involving participants in setting their own goals (Potts, 1992; Potts &
Paull, 1995). I certainly see each of these as important principles in their own right
and significant steps forward from programs which only emphasize family inadequa-
cies. Even these programs, however, may unwittingly fall into the trap of ignoring
research about cultural variability in discourse styles and literacy practices, promot-
ing culture-specific norms and values, and decontextualizing family life, thus ulti-
mately putting responsibility for social problems on family shoulders.
First, the particular selection of "healthy traits" and programmatic suggestions
for enhancing or augmenting them may be culture specific. One formulation, for
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example, provides a "menu" of universal traits from which to choose in curriculum
development and goes on to identify good communication as the single most critical
trait (Potts, 1992, p. 6). Some characteristics of "healthy family communication" in
this model include: "[Family members] listen attentively and actively to what other[s]
say, possibly summarizing the message, rephrasing it, or asking for clarification; they
write notes to those in the household and letters to those in other places; they own
and express feelings, both positive and negative" (p. 8). Characteristics of the trait
"time together" include playing games as well as watching TV together. Suggestions
for enhancing the "time together" trait include basing lessons on McDonald's menus,
Little League brochures, scouting manuals, TV guides (Potts, 1992, p. 11).
My concern is that such characteristics do not take into account the cultural and
contextual variability of literacy practices and discourse styles which has been so
extensively documented in ethnographic research (e.g., Heath, 1983; Reder, 1987).
For example, expressing feelings openly may be entirely inappropriate in some cul-
tures; writing notes to household members presupposes particular literacy practices
and proficiency; summarizing and rephrasing messages is one narrowly culture-
specific discourse style. Likewise, playing games across generations may be neither
culturally familiar nor feasible for families (e.g., if parents work two jobs); watching
TV together assumes that families can afford a TV and have time to watch together.
The cultural specificity of the artifacts chosen as lesson materials requires little
comment. Further, goals or positive outcomes are often framed in terms of attaining
mainstream norms such as higher scores on standardized tests, viewing education
"differently," attending more school functions, and understanding teachers' and
administrators' problems better. My overall point here is that, despite aiming to be
culturally sensitive and descriptive, the traits and characteristics, as they are pre-
sented, may in fact be culture-specific and prescriptive, leading toward conformity to
particular values and expectations.
Further, for many programs, the process of identifying strengths seems to be a
pretext for intervening in the internal workings of family life to change behaviors and
values; programs often include instruction in "parenting skills" and behavior man-
agement techniques. Again we need to problematize the notions of changing values
and teaching parenting skills: Who gets to decide what values are adequate and
what "good parenting" entails? Are there universals of good parenting? Do middle
class academic "experts" know better than low-income African-American parents, or
Cambodian refugee parents how they should raise their children to deal with the
challenges of economic survival, racism, or cultural transition? I would argue that
any program which aims to change values, beliefs, messages or behaviors raises
significant ethical questions; as Shanahan and Rodriguez-Brown say, "Family lit-
eracy programs raise... ethical problems because of their attempt to change parent
values with regard to their children's education, and parent-child relations such as
the use and sharing of literacy among parents and children" (1994, p. 2). Minimally,
we need to proceed with caution and humility (rather than claiming to know what is
best for others).
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A final aspect of the intervention prevention model that I want to consider here
is the claim that family literacy offers a solution to both personal and national eco-
nomic problems; it is often argued that family literacy will enable both individual
families to find their way out of poverty as well as enabling the country as a whole to
meet the challenges of the next century. The argument that literacy training will, in
itself, lead to employment disregards macro economic factors like recession and
unemployment patterns, social factors like job discrimination, as well as the actual
dynamics of hiring and job retention. Census statistics, for example, indicate that
race and gender override education as determinants of income and job status: white
males with high school degrees have higher mean incomes than African-American
males with college degrees or than women of any race with graduate degrees; even
with gains in education over the past decade, African-Americans' overall poverty
levels have increased (Boston Globe, 1995). The danger of this aspect of the inter-
vention stance is that it serves the ideological function of scapegoating marginalized
people for problems that originate in the broader socioeconomic structure. As Aus-
tralian literacy theorist Alan Luke (1992-93) says, focusing on literacy as the curative
for an ailing economy ignores significant macroeconomic factors: "In a global divi-
sion of labor where transnational corporations far outstrip many national govern-
ments in influence and power, economic growth and decline are influenced by a
range of economic, political and social factors (e.g., labour costs; environmental law;
government/industry relations; multinational investment,...) of which worker skill
level is but one" (p. 20).
On a micro level, the work of Hull (1991) illustrates the problems with arguing
that literacy is the key determinant of employment opportunity. Her ethnographic
study of a group of African-American women participating in a training program in
order to get off welfare found that once the women got jobs, factors completely
unrelated to this training determined who did and did not keep their jobs. Low wages,
hours that conflicted with family responsibilities, intolerable working conditions,
and demeaning treatment by their bosses eventually forced many of the women out.
Broad contextual factors shaped by employer practices had more to do with employ-
ment possibilities than did individual employees' literacy proficiency.
Thus, for me, the most disturbing problem with the intervention prevention
model is that it justifies putting responsibility for societal problems on family shoul-
ders, implying that social change must be rooted in family change. The focus on the
unit of the family as the locus of change excludes consideration of social, economic,
or institutional forces which may constrain family life and impede literacy develop-
ment. Even the notion of empowerment is framed in individual terms: power means
the ability to transform one's own life through individual effort based on self-esteem;
a sense of self-worth will lead to a sense of responsibility which in turn will lead to
making a better life for one's family—a psychological version of pulling oneself up
by the bootstraps. Taken to its logical extreme, this argument suggests that if parents
change the messages that they send to children, the problems of education, poverty,
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unemployment, crime, drug abuse, and teen pregnancy will be solved. The flip side of
this argument is that social problems can be attributed to the failures of the family;
given the demographics and patterns of child-rearing, this analysis, in its most sim-
plistic version, could be said to imply that, once again, mothers are to blame (this
time for the problems of the nation)! Obviously, no one would actually claim these
absurdly reductionist statements as their position; yet my fear is that they represent
an ideological tendency implicit in the intervention model.
Thus, my concern is that the current intervention prevention perspective shares
an underlying rationale with the classic deficit model for family literacy (Street, 1995)
with the key difference that it explicitly attacks deficit perspectives using the dis-
course of strengths. My own feeling is that within a political climate all too ready to
blame families for social problems, couching an intervention prevention model in a
rhetoric of strengths is particularly problematic. Precisely because deficit perspec-
tives have been widely discredited, an overt antideficit stance may serve a rational-
izing function, masking underlying deficit views with an aura of credibility. If it has
this effect, regardless of the intention, the intervention rationale may be dangerous
not despite the strengths rhetoric, but rather because of it.
THE MULTIPLE-LITERACIES PERSPECTIVE
A second perspective, what I am calling the multiple-literacies perspective, uses
terminology which, at times, is similar to that of the intervention prevention model
(e.g., wealth, cultural sensitivity, whole language, empowerment), but is based on
a different set of assumptions and goals. Where the intervention model defines the
problem as flawed home literacy practices and the solution as changing patterns of
family interaction, the multiple-literacies perspective defines the problem as a mis-
match between culturally variable home literacy practices and school literacies; it
sees the solution as investigating and validating students' multiple literacies and
cultural resources in order to inform schooling (Moll, 1992; Street, 1995). Where the
intervention model advocates cultural sensitivity as a respectful stance, the mul-
tiple-literacies model sees an understanding of cultural practices as the centerpiece
of curriculum development. Where the intervention model advocates individual em-
powerment through self-esteem and personal responsibility, the multiple-literacies
perspective promotes empowerment through affirmation of cultural identity and com-
munity building. Much of the work that has been done to develop this model for
family literacy is informed by ethnographic research and focuses on immigrant or
refugee families. Rather than focusing on specific programs, my discussion of this
perspective will focus on its principles and practices.
The starting point of the multiple-literacies perspective is that, whatever their
literacy proficiency, participants bring with them culture-specific literacy practices
and ways of knowing; it posits that "people with literacy difficulties in some parts of
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their lives already have some knowledge of literacy and live in cultural settings
where various kinds of literacy are valued" (Street, 1995, p. ii). Regardless of educa-
tional background, the households of poor and language-minority families are rich
with "funds of knowledge" which often are unrecognized and untapped by educa-
tors (Moll, 1992).
Thus, according to this perspective, the starting point for programming must be
a stance of inquiry which recognizes that "our own ways of knowing are no longer
the ultimate authority" (Weinstein-Shr & Quintero, 1995, p. 112). The task, then, is to
listen to students, to find out about their lives and cultural contexts, and to make
room for their literacy practices in teaching; the premise here is that "The best teach-
ers are those who can listen and learn, not just impart what they know to others"
(Street, 1995, p. iii). Weinstein-Shr (1995) promotes this stance of inquiry as the
single most important aspect of a culturally sensitive model, urging teachers to learn
about the educational resources that language-minority families bring with them as
well as the sociolinguistic rules and parenting practices of their cultures.
As teachers are repositioned as learners, parents and community members be-
come the experts. There are a number of ways that programs implement this principle.
In some cases, teachers are trained to investigate home and community literacy
practices for the purpose of informing instruction; Moll (1992) and colleagues have
developed a framework in which teachers research the households of their students
in order to uncover the funds of knowledge which can then inform their own curricu-
lum development. In other cases, community resources are brought directly into the
classroom. In Madigan's (1995) work, for example, family and community members
were invited in as "outside experts" to share the ways that they had used literacy in
their lives to support social change. A third approach is to involve learners in the
research process as coinvestigators of literacy practices, values and beliefs. Neuman
and her colleagues, for example, set up peer discussion groups of the teen mothers in
their program to investigate their beliefs about learning and early literacy, arguing
that "a critical part of the empowerment process... may be to learn from the parents
themselves, their beliefs, values and practices within their home and community"
(Neuman, Hagedorn, Celano, & Daly, in press). Gadsden, likewise, reports that par-
ents in Philadelphia's Parent-Child Learning Project (PCLP) explored literacy activi-
ties, purposes, questions, and issues that arose in their families (1995).
The multiple-literacies view posits that not only should programs be informed
by participants' beliefs and practices, but they should incorporate culturally famil-
iar and relevant content. In such programs, curriculum materials often include genres
(e.g., folktales, fables) and stories from the home culture or language (Ada, 1988).
Themes related to the home culture may also be incorporated; a project for Mexican
American parents, for example, included units on plants (eg. herbal medicines) and
cotton (e.g., harvesting, uses) which drew on their agricultural background (Huerta-
Macfas, 1995). Curricula often focus on sharing stories, an approach in which partici-
pants read, write and talk about their lived histories—their own childhood memories
as well as their experiences, traumas and triumphs (Arrastia, 1995; McGrail, 1995).
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A key principle for insuring the relevance and appropriateness of content is
learner participation in the curriculum development process: involving learners in
selecting curriculum goals and themes is a common practice in culturally sensitive
programs. This kind of involvement can go beyond the selection of thematic units to
fundamentally shaping the direction of programs. Programs which follow this ap-
proach often find that parents do not want to focus exclusively on child-related
matters, but rather want to develop literacy for their own purposes. Participants in a
project in which I was involved focused on topics ranging from the political situation
in Haiti to homelessness, workplace discrimination, and sexually transmitted dis-
eases (Auerbach, 1994). The Hmong Literacy Project in Fresno, California found that
parents' main reason for attending classes was to maintain their own history and
culture for the sake of their children (Kang, Kuehn, & Herrell, forthcoming).
The Hmong Literacy Project points to another key feature of this approach—the
emphasis on cultural maintenance and negotiation rather than cultural assimila-
tion. An important aspect of the Hmong project, for example, was preserving the first
language by learning to read and write in it, as well as teaching it to children; likewise,
the program focused on writing down oral histories before they were lost (Kang et
al., forthcoming). Many programs emphasize critically examining cross-cultural
parenting issues rather than training parents in parenting practices identified by
"experts"; participants in Project LEIF explored the changes in power relations be-
tween parents and children that often occur in immigrant families (Weinstein-Shr,
1995).
In addition to familiar content, culturally familiar contexts for learning are cen-
tral to this paradigm. One way of creating such contexts entails ensuring that the
communities and the languages of the learners are.represented on the staff. Classes
in the Chelsea project, for example, are taught by teams that include at least one
member who is fluent in the students' first language. The primary aim of a project that
I worked in (Auerbach, 1994) was to train people from the communities of the learners
as literacy instructors (in this case for ESL, Haitian Creole, and Spanish literacy
instruction). Some programs also incorporate culturally familiar pedagogical prac-
tices even when they are incongruent with educators' own pedagogical understand-
ings or preferences; for example, some classes in the project that I worked with
opened with a prayer and included dictation exercises at the students' insistence.
Clearly, when teachers come from the same cultural backgrounds as the learners,
they are more able to selectively draw on familiar pedagogical practices.
Another way to create this kind of a context is through the use and instruction
of the first language. In some cases, parents are invited to choose whether to do
writing activities in their first language or in English (McGrail, 1995; Paratore, 1995).
In the Chelsea project, since the participants come from many language groups, all
reading texts are in English, but parents break into small groups with others who
share the same language for prereading discussions; they discuss key concepts in
the first language, as well as connecting settings or experiences from the text to
those of their own countries and cultures (Paratore, 1995). Weinstein-Shr gives the
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example of "parent circles" where participants explore issues of parenting with each
other in their first language. Huerta-Macias (1995) reports that code-switching was
an accepted and integral part of Project FIEL classes. Kang et al. (forthcoming)
mention the strategy of opening every school-based meeting in the parents' first
languages before any English is spoken as another way to make parents feel at home.
Finally, many projects are now incorporating first-language literacy instruction as a
basis for parents' transition to ESL (Auerbach, 1993; Spener, 1994), for children's
literacy development and academic achievement (Cummins, 1981), for the enhance-
ment of identity and self-esteem (Ferdman, 1990), as well as for cultural maintenance
(Kang et al., forthcoming).
THESOCIAL CHANGE PERSPECTIVE
The final perspective that I want to discuss encompasses all of the principles of
the multiple-literacies tendency, but goes beyond them, placing its emphasis on
issues of power as well as culture. It too uses the discourse of strengths and empow-
erment, but differs from the other perspectives in terms of its assumptions and goals.
The central assumption of this social change perspective is that problems of
marginalized people originate in a complex interaction of political, social, and eco-
nomic factors in the broader society rather than in family inadequacies or differences
between home and school cultures; it is the conditions created by institutional and
structural forces which shape access to literacy acquisition. In this view, it is these
aspects of the social context, rather than individuals which must be the focus of
change, as the following analysis suggests:
Programs which define literacy as a set of skills or as the ability to use skills within
work, community, or cultural setting, face a danger of placing the whole burden for
change on the individual adult learner. The people with limited skills become the
focus of the needed change. A yet broader definition of literacy sees it in the context
of social realities. Illiteracy, like other disadvantages such as unemployment, pov-
erty and social discrimination, is also a result of social, political and economic
structures that perpetuate inequality. According to this model, literacy is not just
acquiring personal skills but also having access to knowledge and power to create
change in the structures that keep people illiterate and made it difficult for them to
achieve other human rights. (Gillespie, 1990, p. 18)
For family literacy programs, this view means seeing children's literacy acquisition
as shaped by many forces, only one of which is parental input; the Lutheran Settle-
ment House Women's Program Family Literacy Curriculum summarizes this position
as follows:
While the Women's Program's approach to intergenerational literacy acknowledges
the impact that parents have on their children's literacy skills, parents are not the
sole reason for a child's success or failure. School systems, teachers, poverty,
drugs, and institutional racism, sexism, and classism are all important factors which
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effect a child's progress in school.... It is critical that family literacy programs
recognize the many factors which effect a child's success or failure in school, rather
than giving the sole responsibility or blame to the parents. (Gordon, 1991, p. i)
This perspective may well correspond to many parents' own analyses, according to
Gadsden (1995): parents in the PCLP pointed both to neighborhood conditions and
peer pressure as barriers to their children's success, noting that "where a child lives
matters in what happens to [his or her] literacy and education" (Gadsden, 1995, p.
297). She reports, "The parents valued the possibilities that literacy provided, but
their images were tied to issues of discrimination that affected the quality of their
neighborhood and their lives" (1995, p. 298).
Thus, goals in a social change view focus more on changing the institutions and
addressing the conditions which cause marginalization than on changing families.
This approach is informed by the work of Paulo Freire (1981) and others who argue
that literacy in itself does not lead to empowerment or solve economic problems;
rather it must be linked to a critical understanding of the social context and action to
change oppressive conditions. A key part of this analysis is that issues of power
permeate every aspect of literacy acquisition; literacy education must take into ac-
count power relationships within families (between parents and children, husbands
and wives), within classrooms (between students and teachers), within programs
(between participants and administrators), and within institutions (between parents
and schools or government agencies). Change is seen to come about through a
gradual process of struggling with inequities wherever they occur; the struggles in
the more immediate domains (family, classroom) are both a part of and a rehearsal for
struggles in the broader domains; the broader changes come about not just through
individual effort but through collective action. Personal empowerment, thus, cannot
be separated from social change: empowerment is defined not in individual terms
(i.e., in terms of gaining self-esteem and taking control of one's life), but in social
terms (in terms of challenging the institutional forces that impede access). Although
cultural affirmation is an essential component of this process, it is not the primary
goal. Not surprisingly, funding for programs that adhere to this model is sparse.
McCaleb's Building communities of learners (1994) is one of the few books which
presents an elaborated discussion of this perspective. Although many programs
incorporate aspects of this model, few would say they are premised on it. For this
reason, I will focus on its key principles and practices rather than on programs.
The first principle relates to the issue of participant control. This aspect of the
model is concerned with questions like: Who decides a program is necessary and
gets it going? Who gets to name the issues, choose the themes, determine the goals?
Who decides the research agenda and determines what counts as progress? Who
speaks for the project? How are the teachers chosen? Programs often go beyond
learner participation in setting individual goals or contributing to the selection of
learning themes. In some cases, programs are initiated by parents themselves in
response to needs that they have determined either in relation to themselves or in
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relation to their children's education. Plans for the Hmong project were initiated by
parents who approached the principal of their children's elementary school (Kang et
al., forthcoming). Delgado-Gaitan (1991) describes a project in California in which
parents came together to form a group called COPLA (Comite de Padres Latinos) in
order to pressure the schools to better meet the needs of their children. Some pro-
grams consult community members in an advisory capacity in designing programs
(or to do outreach). Likewise, participants may have decision-making roles in pro-
gram administration; the Worker Family Education Program of the International La-
dies' Garment Workers Union in New York, for example, has student councils which
participate in curriculum, hiring, and administrative decisions. The notion of commu-
nity control is certainly not uncomplicated: it is not always clear who the "commu-
nity" is or what the affiliations of community representatives are (as Lewis & Varbero,
1995, show). Yet, as Gadsden says, study after study shows that "when participants
are part of the decision-making process of a program that is intended 'to help them,'
the program becomes more effective and the effect more durable" (1995, p. 7).
A second aspect of the social change perspective is the notion of dialogue as a
key pedagogical process. In place of skills training or the transfer of information
from experts to learners, this model stresses an exchange among peers; participants
share their experiences to gain a critical understanding of their social nature as well
as to strategize for action. Going beyond cultural affirmation, dialogue becomes a
vehicle for making sense of one's reality, which, in turn is the basis for transforming
it. Delgado-Gaitain (1991) characterizes this critical reflection as, "a process that
engages people in careful examination of the assumptions that guide self, family and
institutional norms, values, and practices As a consequence, the group's aware-
ness of their shared experience (past and present) becomes the basis for collective
action" (1991, p. 34). In some cases, this dialogue takes the form of sharing experi-
ences through storytelling (Arrastfa, 1995). In others, it takes the form of reading
about critical social issues and discussing them (Gordon, 1991). McCaleb (1994)
describes a project in which critical themes in community life were identified through
dialogue among parents and were then used as the basis for books which were
coauthored by parents and children.
The social change perspective also incorporates content centering around criti-
cal social issues from participants' lives. Where an intervention program might
focus on parent-child interactions and a multiple literacies program on diverse cul-
tural practices or literacy uses, a program concerned with social change would em-
phasize the exploration of substantive problems that learners are encountering in
their everyday lives. For example, a family literacy program in Los Angeles, which
began the week after the "L.A. riots" used the classes to explore participants' fears
and concerns; they then chose to write about their experiences and share them by
publishing a book for local distribution QAqui Vivimos! Book Project, 1993). Like-
wise, students in the projects described by Gadsden (1995) and McCaleb (1994) used
reading and writing to explore important issues in their lives related to education,
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neighborhoods, childrearing and schools. Madigan's (1995) work centered on invit-
ing adults into classrooms to share their own experiences using reading and writing
to achieve social change in their communities. In the Family Involvement Project in
Washington, DC, parents wrote about topics like their jobs and immigration experi-
ences and then shared their stories with their children and other parents (Rankin,
1993).
Connected to the exploration of social issues as content for literacy curricula is
the critical notion of action for social change. Once participants have an increased
understanding of the social nature of problems they are confronting (e.g., that their
children's problems in schools may be the result of institutional practices), they may
work together to challenge institutions or change conditions which impede literacy
acquisition. Actions can take many forms, from advocating for a particular kind of
literacy program (as in the case of the Hmong project) to publishing a book for the
wider community (as in the case of the L.A. project). A logical outcome of action-
oriented family literacy programs is that they become parent involvement projects in
the sense that participants become engaged in advocacy related to children's school-
ing. Quintero (1995) describes an instance when several parents' concern about
negative encounters with their children's school resulted in a family literacy lesson
on advocacy; this, in turn, led to dialogue among parents who shared similar experi-
ences. They then organized a broader meeting to develop strategies for dealing with
"children's abuse by teachers" (Quintero, 1995, p. 154). The Right Question Project
(Backman, 1993) in Boston focuses on training to enable low-income people to advo-
cate for themselves and their children; their work centers on teaching parents to ask
questions of experts, to assert their rights regarding their children's education, and
ultimately to become involved in school reform efforts rather than leaving them in the
hands of teachers or professionals.
There is evidence to suggest that initiatives which take issues of power into
account are, in fact, effective in engaging underrepresented parents in their own and
their children's education. Delgado-Gaitan's (1991) study compared parental deci-
sion-making roles in three programs, and found that even when program content was
culturally relevant and meetings were conducted in the parents' home language,
parental participation was limited if they were not involved in decision-making. On
the other hand, participation and impact were significantly greater when parents
organized themselves into an autonomous group, setting their own agenda, and
making their own decisions. They learned from and provided support for each other,
analyzing individual experiences to find commonalities, as well as identifying the
knowledge they needed to take action; they then created an organization which
pressured the district to train teachers to work with parents and to address problems
in bilingual and ESL programs.
Street (1990) extends this argument about the centrality of issues of power to the
level of broad literacy campaigns (with obvious implicit messages for family literacy).
He contends that what differentiates literacy campaigns that fail from those that
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succeed is whether or not they take power relationships into account:
Literacy campaigns . . . always involve power relations: teachers, administrators,
learners and politicians are disputing the right to define what is knowledge and truth
and to spread their version of reality to the population at large.... The history of
literacy campaigns in the recent past suggests that it is not always the seemingly
more powerful outsiders who win these struggles. Indeed, it may be precisely
because these deeper aspects of literacy practices have not been considered that
many literacy campaigns have failed. (1990, p. 3)
The above examples suggest that factors like cultural relevance, content related
to critical issues, and dialogue are necessary, but not sufficient in themselves to
constitute a social change perspective; rather, the key issue is the locus of control.
What differentiates this perspective from others is the assumption that families and
communities have the right to determine for themselves the direction of family lit-
eracy and school involvement efforts, rather than assuming that outsiders know
what is best for them.
CONCLUSION
I started this paper by saying that although the U.S. family literacy movement
has explicitly rejected a deficit model, we need to look closely at the new generation
of programs and policies that are gaining ascendancy. I have posited that there are
several tendencies, all of which invoke the discourse of strengths and empowerment,
but which have different rationales, objectives, and practices. On one extreme are
those which seek to change families so they assimilate more successfully into the
social order as it exists; on the other are those that seek to empower families to
change those aspects of the social order that exclude them. I have tried to look
beyond surface commonalities to identify features that differentiate these views,
problematizing some of their claims and promises. Much of my paper has taken the
form of a warning about the potential dangers accompanying the newfound suc-
cesses of the family literacy movement. Having said this, I want to end by turning
this warning back on myself. Just as the new rhetoric poses a threat, there is an equal
threat in labeling perspectives. Although I have proposed conceptual categories, I
see a real danger in glibly assigning any given program to one category or another. I
hope that I have shown that each tendency has aspects of the others within it, and
that programs often incorporate features of different tendencies; incorporating one
of the practices that characterizes a particular perspective does not imply that a
program should be labeled as adhering to that perspective. My intention is not to
recreate dichotomies but rather to call for critical reflection on the direction of the
family literacy movement as a whole. I would say that our challenge as researchers
and practitioners (myself included) is to position ourselves as learners rather than
experts, to take a stance of humility rather than authority, and to problematize solu-
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tions rather than prescribe them. My hope is that this analysis will further the debate
about what family literacy can and cannot do, and what its legitimate role may be
within a broader movement for educational reform and social change.
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