OP‐ED ‘Many hands make light work’ but ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’: representing literacy teaching as a ‘job for experts’ undermines efforts to involve parents

Producing Storytime: A Collectivist Analysis of Work in a Complex Communicative Space

“…We talked about pacing and the fact that you can control the pacing if you stay in charge of the puppets/bells or whatever's being passed. (Green, R1 field notes/week 2) At other times, all participants are performers. Both librarians used large stuffed animals to be their "baby" and demonstrated the rhymes and bounces on them, either with or without additional verbal instruction, and caregivers responded by repeating the actions with their children.…”

“…Although storytimes serve diverse purposes for the library as well as for the families who attend them, professional literature for librarians tends to focus only on the ways that storytime supports early childhood literacy [1] and highlights the work of the program leader [2]. In this article, we take a somewhat different approach, to argue that storytime is not only the product of work carried out by librarians but also of work carried out by adult and child participants and, indeed, by other social actors who may be unknown to members of the local setting, but whose work in other settings affects the education and development of young children and the work of the adults who care for them.…”

Multiple Cultures, Multiple Literacies, and Collective Agencies: Chinese and Pakistani Immigrants’ Perceptions of Family Literacy Support

“…Studies also reveal that the deficit notion of literacy development as regards immigrant families prevails in existing family literacy programs, which has thwarted inclusion of immigrant families into these mainstream programs in North-America (Hannon, 2003;Wang, 2008). Measured against the norms of Euro-American middle-class parenting (Stooke, 2005) and school-like literacy activities (e.g., story telling & reading and writing), immigrant families from diverse backgrounds are regarded as having deficits in providing family literacy support (Hannon, 2003). Challenging the deficit view of immigrant families' roles in family literacy support, this study underscores culturally diverse modes of meaning making and celebrates marginalized literacy practices in immigrant families.…”

“…Based on her examination of texts on recommended parental activities, Stooke (2005) identified two major categories: the middle-class parenting model and the school-like literacy model. The first category is associated with Euro-American and middle-class parenting, while the other more closely resembles "activities routinely carried out in institutions such as schools and public libraries" (p. 7).…”

“…Instructors in these programs are assigned privileged roles as professionals who inform and train parents. To quote Stooke (2005), "there is a strong desire on the part of some professionals to guide and control parents' practices" (p. 7). Families might humbly give way to professionals because of an inferiority mentality toward their own literacy practices.…”