Intervention programs to improve the educational outcomes of young children have become increasingly popular. Studies suggest that family literacy programs involving parents can result in positive effects on children's language and literacy development. Issues continue to arise, however, regarding the recruitment and retention of families. One component of program designparticipation structure-focuses on who is intended to be the direct or indirect recipient of programming. The relationships between participation structure and the recruitment/retention of families, however, has not been well understood. In this study, parents participated in one of two family literacy program models with varying participation structures-one in which parents attended with their children, the other in which parents attended alone. The purpose of this study was to identify parents' motivations for participating the program, their expectations of what the program would entail, and their reasons for remaining in the program. Focus groups and written questionnaires were used to gather the data. The findings of the study and implications for practice are discussed.

The goal of this paper was to examine promising effects of a bilingual family literacy program: to track the changes of families' literacy activities through a bilingual family literacy intervention, and to examine the children literacy gains in both Chinese and English across socioeconomic sub-groups. The intervention was an eight-week, two hours per week, literacy program in three Chinese communities in Toronto. Parents, with their children, participated in the program. The extremely high attendance rate provided evidence that families enjoyed the family literacy intervention and felt that the sessions were worthwhile. For their families' literacy activities, the three sites followed the same trend: reaching the peak of activity at week four, slightly dropping down at weeks five and six, and then increasing to a second peak at week seven or week eight. Results also showed that across the three groups, children of mothers with lower education levels made fewer gains in their English expressive vocabularies and their Chinese expressive vocabularies, than children whose mothers had a higher level of education.

Family literacy programs in North America and the United Kingdom have enjoyed widespread public and political support. Thousands of initiatives following a variety of models currently operate under the spectrum of family literacy programs. In this paper, the influence of learning theories, the research on children's early literacy development, and the sociopolitical context with gave rise to the intervention movement, will be reviewed with respect to their impact on current models of family literacy programs. The research on program evaluation is also considered, and is related to current practice and future directions in family literacy programming. Keywords family literacy, early literacy, parent involvement, early intervention Theoretical Perspectives on Human DevelopmentCognitive and social constructive theories of intelligence and learning that emerged in the 1950s challenged the maturational and behavioral perspectives of learning theory advanced in earlier decades. These new theories would, in the emerging sociopolitical context, prove to have potent effects on the practice of educating young children. Teale and Sulzby (1986) argue that the impetus for this "cognitive revolution" was the research on the cognitive development of children by Jerome Bruner and his colleagues at the newly established Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University. Bruner (1960) advanced the view of the child as both active and capable in advancing their own learning. The work of other researchers at this time complemented the constructivist emphasis of Bruner's work, and highlighted the importance of early experiences. Hunt (1961) rejected the maturationists' notion of the immutability of intelligence and called for a consideration of environmental factors in children's developmental trajectories. Bloom's (1964) work bolstered Hunt's position that the environment

Family-focused early learning programs aim to assist parents in supporting their young children language and literacy development. This study examined program access and learning opportunities for diverse families across a wide range of community-based settings in one eastern Canadian province. As well, the study examined practitioners’ perspectives on issues related to program development and implementation. Primarily through surveys, practitioners provided data on more half of all community-based programs in the province. The findings of the study showed that most programs offered a form of parent and child focused drop-in play as the core of their programing. Few programs offered a more formalized parent-facilitator learning component as is sometimes found in other jurisdictions. The issues and challenges in programing identified by practitioners included attracting participants, maintaining funding and expanding program activities, and staff training to expand and enhance programing to meet the needs of families. These issues are discussed in light of current public policy and practice.

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This study explored the issues around parental support for newcomer children’s transition to school in a smaller urban centre in Atlantic Canada where newcomer support is relatively limited. Data were drawn from semi-structured interviews with 11 newcomer parents, five children, and one settlement worker. The findings revealed newcomer parents’ difficulties in understanding the school system, limited engagement with the school community, isolation from other parents, and barriers to understanding and connecting with other parents. Among these newcomers, refugee parents are particularly challenged. We conclude that newcomer children’s parental involvement need to be viewed multi-dimensionally, and that the creation of a commonly comfortable “mediated space” may be hampered by both cultural miscommunication and inadequate support provided to newcomer parents and children as well as the teaching staff.

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The home literacy environment (HLE) refers to the physical, interpersonal, and emotional/motivational factors in the home that have been found to be important for children's literacy development. In this paper, the emergence of HLE research, its conceptualizations, and the effects of HLE factors are reviewed with an emphasis on the relations between HLE and children's early literacy skills. Challenges faced by HLE researchers are also discussed with particular reference to three issues: privacy sensitivity, measure validity, and intervention fidelity. This paper also identifies directions for future research.