This paper presents findings from a study of family literacy provision in England and focuses on the effects of family literacy programmes on the home literacy environment. The fieldwork took place between September 2013 and December 2014 and involved 27 school-based programmes for pupils aged between 5 and 7, and their parents. The study used mixed methods, which involved observations of family literary sessions, a quantitative pre- and post-survey of 118 parents, and pre- and post-telephone qualitative interviews with a sub-sample of 24 parents. Building on previous theoretical work, the study conceptualises the home literacy environment into four areas (family resources; parental literacy behaviours and attitudes; parental beliefs and understandings; and family literacy activities and practices). The paper develops understandings of how parents translate and implement messages from family literacy into the home setting, and it shows how participation in these programmes leads to changes in family literacies across all four areas identified.

This paper reports findings from a mixed methods research project in 2011, which set out to examine the extent and nature of father and child shared home reading practices. There was a particular focus on exploring fathers' perceptions of their role in reading with their child, aged five years old. The research was commissioned by Booktrust and conducted by the National Research and Development Centre for adult literacy and numeracy. It involved 254 fathers and the results from the study are supplemented and enhanced by analysis of data on fathers' reading from the Millennium Cohort Study. One of the main findings from this study and the Millennium Cohort Study data is that significant numbers of fathers read to their children either every day or a few times a week. The other findings are presented under the headings of father's own reading practices, their motivation for reading with their child/children, the place and the time reading occurs, the strategies and practices that are employed, the types of text that are read, the models or influences fathers draw on and the barriers that they believe militate against them reading with their child/children.

This paper is based on a large study of family literacy provision in England, which was carried out between July 2013 and May 2015. It explored the impact of classes on parents' relations with the school and their children, and their ability to support their children's literacy development. The study involved 27 school-based programmes for pupils aged between 5 and 7, and their parents. It used mixed methods, which involved surveys of 118 parents and 20 family literacy tutors, telephone interviews with a sub-sample of 28 parents, analysis of teaching plans and observations of classes. Findings showed that parents wanted to learn the ways the school was teaching their child to read and write, and by demystifying school literacy pedagogies and processes, the programmes developed greater connectivity between home and the school, and parents felt more able to support their children's literacy development at home.

This study draws on ethnographic research conducted in a small village, Baltinava in Latvia, 2.5 kilometres from the border with Russia. The research examines how ethnic Russian women create a specific Latvian Russian identity by contrasting themselves from ethnic Latvians and Russians who live in Russia and identifying with both groups at the same time. To narrate their lives and to make them meaningful, real and/or perceived "attributes" are combined to draw boundaries between "us" and "them." Thus, the same thing such as language can be used not only both to distinguish themselves from Russians in Russia or Latvians but also to form coherent identities and to emphasize similarities. This study suggests that ethnicities cannot be reduced to a list of set ethnic groups that are very often used in official government statistics. Ethnic identities have to be viewed as fluid and situational. Moreover, this study shows the dialectic nature of ethnicity. On the one hand, external political, historical and social processes create and recreate ethnic categories and definitions. Yet, on the other hand, the women in this study are active agents creating meaningful and symbolic ethnic boundaries.

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