This volume explores and evaluates community-based literacy programs, examining how they bridge gaps in literacy development, promote dialogue, and connect families, communities, and schools. Highlighting the diversity of existing literary initiatives across populations, this book brings together innovative and emerging scholarship on the relationship between P20 schools and community-based literacy programming. This volume not only identifies trends in research and practice, but it also addresses the challenges affecting these community-based programs and presents the best practices that emerge from them. Collaborating with leading scholars to provide national and international perspectives, and offering a clear, birds-eye view of the state of community literacy praxis, chapters cover programming in a multitude of settings and for a wide range of learners, from early childhood to incarcerated youths and adults, and including immigrants, refugees, and indigenous communities. Topics include identity and empowerment, language and literacy development across the lifespan, rural and urban environments, and partnership programs. The breadth of community literacy programming gathered in a single volume represents a unique array of models and topics, and has relevance for researchers, scholars, graduate students, pre-service educators, and community educators in literacy.

This unique global perspective on multiple literacies crosses traditional boundaries between the study of family, community, and school literacies. It calls attention to the ideological nature of literacy education across a broad range of literacy contex

The underappreciation of the pivotal roles played by home, school, and community in shaping the literacy journey of individuals. While the mantra "Literacy begins at home" resonates, it often remains a mere platitude rather than a transformative force. The synergy between these three pillars is essential, yet gaps persist, hindering the development of a truly literate society. As children tread the academic path, the home lays the foundation, and schools amplify these efforts. However, the holistic nature of learning, encompassing life experiences, demands a collaborative approach from families, educators, and communities. This is the crux of the problem – a disjointed system that impedes the seamless development of literacy across diverse backgrounds. Improving Literacy Through Home, School, and Community Partnerships is a groundbreaking book that unravels the complexities of this challenge and illuminates the transformative potential within collaborative efforts. By delving into the dynamic interplay between home, school, and community, the book offers a roadmap to bridge existing gaps and forge a path toward a more literate society. Early-career researchers will find this a valuable resource to identify and address these gaps, while families, educators, community leaders, and policymakers will gain invaluable perspectives to inform their practices, policies, and research initiatives.

The goal of this book is to encourage educators and researchers to understand the complexities of adolescent gang members' lives in order to rethink their assumptions about these students in school. The particular objective is to situate four gang members as literate, caring students from loving families whose identities and literacy keep them on the margins of school. The research described in this book suggests that advocacy is a particularly effective form of critical ethnography. Smith and Whitmore argue that until schools, as communities of practice, enable children and adolescents to retain identities from the communities in which they are full community members, frightening numbers of students are destined to fail. The stories of four Mexican American male adolescents, who were active members of a gang and Smith's students in an alternative high school program, portray the complicated, multiple worlds in which these boys live. As sons and teenage parents they live in a family community; as CRIP members they live in a gang community; as "at risk" students, drop-outs, and graduates they live in a school community, and as a result of their illegal activities they live in the juvenile court community. The authors theorize about the boys' literacy in each of their communities. Literacy is viewed as ideological, related to power, and embedded in a sociocultural context. Vivid examples of conversation, art, tagging, rap, poetry, and other language and literacy events bring the narratives to life in figures and photographs in all the chapters. Readers will find this book engaging and readable, yet thought provoking and challenging. Audiences for Literacy and Advocacy in Adolescent Family, Gang, School, and Juvenile Court Communities include education researchers, professionals, and students in the areas of middle/high school education, at-risk adolescent psychology, and alternative community programs--specifically those interested in literacy education, sociocultural theory, and popular culture.

Offering a comparative analysis of “community-literacy studies," Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics traces common values in diverse accounts of “ordinary people going public.” Elenore Long offers a five-point theoretical framework. Used to review major community-literacy projects that have emerged in recent years, this local public framework uncovers profound differences, with significant consequence, within five formative perspectives: 1) the guiding metaphor behind such projects; 2) the context that defines a “local” public, shaping what is an effective, even possible performance, 3) the tenor and affective register of the discourse; 4) the literate practices that shape the discourse; and, most signficantly, 5) the nature of rhetorical invention or the generative process by which people in these accounts respond to exigencies, such as getting around gatekeepers, affirming identities, and speaking out with others across difference.

The capacity to understand and communicate health information is a major international health concern. Sponsored by the Health and Biosciences Section of International Federation of Library Associations, this book highlights the contribution that librarians are making to improving health literacy and enabling citizens to be active participants in the management of their own health. Knowledge is power and the World Health Organization recognizes that health literacy, involving effective access to and understanding of health information, is essential to health and well-being in society by empowering and enabling citizens to participate in their own healthcare. The book presents inspiring studies from an international group of authors showing how libraries and librarians are partnering with diverse sectors of society including universities, hospitals, public health clinics, community-based organisations, voluntary bodies and government agencies, to help citizens understand and manage their health. It provides guidance by example to suggest how libraries can help citizens participate in their healthcare and their communities by collaborating with others to increase health literacy in society.

This volume explores the unique sociocultural contexts of literacy development, values, and practices in African American communities. African Americans--young and old--are frequently the focus of public discourse about literacy. In a society that values a rather sophisticated level of literacy, they are among those who are most disadvantaged by low literacy achievement. Literacy in African American Communities contributes a fresh perspective by revealing how social history and cultural values converge to influence African Americans' literacy values and practices, acknowledging that literacy issues pertaining to this group are as unique and complex as this group's collective history. Existing literature on literacy in African American communities is typically segmented by age or academic discipline. This fragmentation obscures the cyclical, life-span effects of this population's legacy of low literacy. In contrast, this book brings together in a single-source volume personal, historical, developmental, and cross-disciplinary vantage points to look at both developmental and adult literacy from the perspectives of education, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and communication sciences and disorders. As a whole, it provides important evidence that the negative cycle of low literacy can be broken by drawing on the literacy experiences found within African American communities.