Multicultural Families, Home Literacies, and Mainstream Schooling (PB)

A volume in Literacy, Language, and LearningSeries Editor Patricia Ruggiano Schmidt, Le Moyne CollegeLack of knowledge about immigrant and minority students' learning outside school has contributedto the difficulties educators encounter when trying to embrace cultural diversity. Many educators do not havethe knowledge base about immigrant and minority children's culturally-specific ways of learning in nonschoolsettings. Given the changing cultural landscapes in today's schools, we have an imperative to developmore situated understandings of immigrant and minority children's literacy learning experiences embedded inthe social and cultural fabrics of their everyday lives outside school. This volume of research meets thisimportant need in the field. It not only focuses on the complexity of literacy learning in diverse home contexts,but also examines how literacy is practiced and lived in multiple ways within families of various backgroundsincluding those of Asian, African and African-American, Hispanic, White European and mixed heritages. Inaddition, it explores how these various culturally embedded home practices will inform school education andpolicy making in a larger socio-political context. The book makes an original and significant contribution tothe fields of literacy education and school, home, and community partnerships.Since immigrant and minority families' literacy activities and the cultural contexts of their practices at home are not readily accessible toschool personnel, program developers, policy makers or even researchers and educators, this book will serve as an important resource for teachers,practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students, teacher educators, and university researchers who are in the fields of literacy education, familyliteracy and new literacy studies, minority and/or immigrant education, and second language education.