4.4 Training for practitioners

The third report of the Coalition francophone's research mentions that only two practitioners had been trained in family literacy. By contrast, all of the directors who were in charge of a centre had received this training. Since there was some turnover in personnel, the practitioners were given training and support from their director. As this report recommends, it would be ideal if all of the practitioners received training in family literacy as well as training on the particular model adopted by the program that they offer.

Hayden and Sanders (1998) and Fagan (2001) observed that the community practitioners in the programs they studied had received six hours of training as family literacy practitioners, in order to give them an incentive to include literacy activities for the families in their organization.

These researchers noticed that after receiving this training

Fagan (2001)suggests guidelines to become better practitioners. Practitioners must

4.5 Conclusion

The results of several studies support many of the results of the Coalition francophone's research. In addition, research shows that the more educated a person is, the more interested he will be in a family literacy program. Phillips et al. (2006) propose that family literacy programs become a means of encouraging more parents to seize the learning opportunities presented to them.

In general, documentation is lacking on parenting skills, the parent-child relationship, parent-child activities in relation to learning and the evaluation of family literacy programs.

Several researchers, including Hannon and Bird (2004), claim that enough evidence has been compiled from the evaluation of programs to conclude that family literacy programs that target parents of preschool children are effective. However, they note a lack of research on the development of literacies in parents and the participation of parents in the programs, as well as on the synergistic effects of programs that involve both parents and children.