A literacy program in operation at Parkview School was founded on the assumption that action at the school level can reach beyond the school walls to have an impact in the children's homes. Staff at the school believe that their popular program extends opportunities for literacy development by recognizing the importance of literacy in the lives of both children and adults. Adults and other family members may become involved in a literacy project with their child; all participation in the program is valued. Thus, the program focuses attention on the need to promote literacy and demonstrates its commitment to supporting education and lifelong learning for all.

Data Collection Methods

A wide variety of data collection methods are typically used in case study research to provide a rich set of data to capture the complexity of the context. Data for my study were collected from the families and schools over a seven month period. The data were generated in a variety of ways: (a) audio recordings of interviews with parents; (b) parent questionnaire; (c) parent journal writing; (d) video recordings of parent-child interaction; (e) field notes from home visits with parents; and (f) field notes from school observations. These six rich data sources provided me with the views of the participants so that their reality could be better understood. In this section, I describe the data collected from the parents first, followed by the school data. A description of each instrument used and details on the data collection procedures involved are given. A summary of the data collection methods is contained in Figure 3.