Auerbach's Socio-Contextual Family Literacy Model

Auerbach's (1989) socio-contextual approach offers a practical framework for understanding the influence of contextual issues in the study of literacy. She recognizes families' complex social and economic realities, while considering the social issues from people's lives and connects the notion of personal empowerment to social change. Her model both acknowledges and uses parents' knowledge and experience socializing children to mainstream culture. She stresses the importance of cultural variability in discourse styles and literacy practices.

Auerbach (1995a) considers the social context with the complex interaction of political, social and economic factors. She problematizes notions of changing values and the teaching of parenting skills while she encourages collaboration with families to guide and inform instruction. Auerbach is very quick to knock any "bullet program models" (p. 647) aimed at raising literacy levels and school performance by implementing single practice solutions, such as book reading. She re-examines the notion of literacy and faulty assumptions that lead to a devaluation of home practices. In addition, she feels that conforming to mainstream practices ignores family strengths and is done at the expense of valuable culture-specific practices.

Similarly, Fagan's (1998) research emphasizes the importance of culture or "the categories, plans, and rules" (p. 16) that a group of people use to help them understand their world and plan their actions. Although he recognizes that there are variations in values within a cultural group, he notes that there are also some universal values that underlie the rules, norms and behaviour patterns. He explains how values relate to literacy, by pointing out that people will be involved in literacy acts if they value literacy. He adds that the role of literacy and the rating of an individual as literate or otherwise can only be understood when one takes a broad view and considers the social, political, economic and religious contexts.

Likewise, Capper (1994) stresses that schools do not exist in a vacuum, while Ewert (1993) also feels that literacy must be viewed in a sociocultural context. Literacy and poverty are then regarded as the products of economic, social, linguistic and cultural structures, rather than the result of one's own deficits and failures. Ewert (1993, ¶ 13) emphasizes that in a skill driven effort, individuals learn to accommodate to those structures that exploit them and therefore literacy combined with basic adult education is seen as an effective "vehicle for awakening the critical consciousness of the poor and oppressed."