The construct of at risk has permeated the lexicon of family literacy service providers. In fact, Swadner and Lubeck (1995, p. 1) point out that in the five year span between 1989 to 1994, an overwhelming total of 2,500 articles were published on the topic of children and families at risk. The at risk notion implies that the child suffers from a socially induced deficiency that will place him or her in a position at risk for school failure. Although the focus is on deficits in social, economic, and cultural conditions in the child's environment, political injustices perpetuated by powerful institutions like schools are dangerously overlooked. The blame is placed on students, families, and their communities for lacking important resources.

Pellegrini (1991) critiques the concept of at risk. He points out how the label reproduces racist and classist assumptions about the student's abilities, gives no explanation regarding who is responsible for the child being at risk, and has overall, negative consequences for the child. Pellegrini presents two models of at risk. The most popular model places blame on the child or family. They are judged to be genetically inferior or lack certain books at home or opportunities to participate in literacy events. In the second model, the blame is placed on the school for being inappropriate in content and organization, curriculum and interaction style of teachers. Instead, he advocates looking at the broader picture of social inequities and difficulties some families experience in accessing resources. Pellegrini argues that the reason that certain children fail with school-based literacy is simply that they lack familiarity with school contexts.

School and Community Context

Schools and other community contexts operate as sociocultural institutions that play a key role in socializing children to mainstream values, and therefore serve as a primary site for social reproduction and identity formation. The role of the teacher in this process becomes one of organizing and guiding students toward the acquisition and mastery of the required knowledge, skills, beliefs and values.

In selecting curriculum and pedagogy that may not be culturally relevant, teachers may effectively silence some student voices. Further, by dividing students into ability groups and altering the content of the curriculum to which they are exposed, this provides students with differential learning opportunities. That is, the curriculum for lower ability groups may be reduced in scope, content, and pace relative to the curriculum for higher ability groups and this may serve to discourage students in the lower group. Auerbach (1989) favours a progressive model of family literacy that acknowledges context. This will be discussed in the section that follows.