CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
What comes from a book is knowledge.
What comes from the heart is
wisdom.
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to provide background information and justification
for the research undertaken. The literature review critically
analyzes a segment of the published body of knowledge, organized around the
subject of literacy-related practices in low-income homes. In this chapter,
I summarize prior research studies and theoretical articles in the
literature
to explain
and define the problem. The aim is also to discover gaps in the
literature and areas that need further research, as well as to provide
the theoretical
underpinnings of this thesis, offer a conceptual context and
propose a framework
for family literacy.
Background
As discussed in Chapter 1, western society places a high value
on the
attainment of literacy and a primary focus of traditional education
has been
to establish
literacy skills in children. It is generally agreed that
achieving a high level of literacy is a worthy goal, but there is no consensus
about how
to achieve this outcome. One of the obvious problems, as pointed
out by
Graff (1987) and more recently by Fagan (1998) and Casmier-Paz
(2000) is the ambiguity in the definition of literacy and what it means to be literate
(Ellsworth, 1989). |