Illuminating Parent–Educator Alliances That Enhance Home Reading Practices: A Review of an Intervention Process

ABSTRACT

Existing literature acknowledges the potential variances between home and school in the values, priorities, aspirations, and practices surrounding literacy. Some researchers have approached this dilemma by offering programs to educate parents in ways of the school. Other researchers suggest that schools need to be more inclusive of home practices in their literacy programs. In contrast, this article proposes a new approach that allows both educators and parents to contribute as allies with equal but differing expertise, to the reading development of children. An exploration of an intervention process revealed ways the researcher and individual parents developed an alliance and the parents developed and implemented contextually relevant reading coaching strategies to support their child’s reading development.

KEYWORDS:

• Elementary schools
• family literacy
• struggling learners/readers
• qualitative research