Purposes of the Study

In my study, I sought to uncover how the values regarding literacy come to be acquired by individuals who are living in low-income circumstances. I attempted to further elucidate the role of literacy as a social construct (Street, 1995) and, following my pilot study, to fill in gaps in my understanding and perception of literacy agencies like the education system and greater society. It was my belief that both the education system and the greater society with its authoritarian hierarchical structure can be unwittingly unjust to certain groups of people, serving as a means of sustaining relations of domination. Initially, I chose the family as the starting point for analyzing the social context that facilitates literacy learning as one example of a societal structure that sustains relations of domination. While my primary focus was on the family, I went beyond family interactions in the home environment to also include a secondary focus on the larger context of the public school in the community.

This study has three main purposes. First, the study examines family literacy by providing a detailed description of the nature of family literacy in one selected low-income community. Second, the study contributes to the knowledge base regarding circumstances that facilitate or impede literacy. And third, I offer an organizing framework that I developed to help understand the complex nature of family literacy.