Abstract
Can struggling and marginalised students be more effectively brought into school literacy by teaching a 'significant other' (parent or carer) how to more successfully work with them on literacy tasks? This article looks at this question by drawing on a study of parents and carers who took part in the Parents as Tutors Program, a university-based literacy intervention that takes parents and carers through a series of eight two-hour parent/carer seminars and twelve one-hour one-on-one tutorials in which each adult + child work with a trained tutor who models the strategies taught in the seminars. This paper describes the program offered to parents/carers and their children, and draws on the results of an evaluation of parents' perceptions of the value of the program for their families carried out in 2005. The paper argues that such interventions can be effective, but only when they provide both the adult and child with a new set of practices that emphasise the purposefulness and human intent of literacy engagement, and provide the adult and child with a new way to work on reading and writing tasks together
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 21-39 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Australian Journal of Language and Literacy |
Volume | 30 |
Issue number | 1 |
Publication status | Published - 2007 |