Bridges to Literacy: Children, Families, and Schools

In increasingly technological economies around the world, workers need to be able to read and write complex material. Yet demographic changes - resulting in minority languages and cultures, some without family traditions of literacy, and poverty persisting from generation to generation - present serious impediments to full literacy. Bridges to Literacy reviews the progress that has been made in developing school and community-based programs to help beginning students surmount these difficulties. The authors, leading researchers and practitioners, describe and analyze the effectiveness of programs that have been in operation for a number of years. They offer sufficient detail to enable a broad audience to understand how each project has been implemented and how it has solved the problems of program delivery, communication, and collaboration with parents and teachers. An introduction sets the programs in broad context; two concluding chapters and an epilogue draw together the main lessons they teach us and outline the challenges for future program developers. People from a number of different backgrounds have been involved in studying and promoting the acquisition of literacy, but there has been little dialog across disciplinary boundaries. This book chronicles the construction of new bridges not only among schools, communities and families, but also among developmental and cognitive psychologists, educational researchers, early childhood educators and library scientists. It will be thought-provoking reading for all those concerned with helping children to learn to read and write.