Three families speak about their lives

Abstract

Family lives enable children to communicate their thoughts and feelings about themselves and the world around them. Schooling continues this process and develops it further. Supportive families advantage their children in their literacy development throughout the primary school years. Three children who were successful in school-based literacy are the central focus of the research. The purpose of the study was to explore whether or not some families possess a tradition of literacy that is passed from one generation to the next. A biographical method was used to analyse the literacy-related activities within three families using the narratives of children, parents and grandparents. Three questions are addressed; the first considers the extent and nature of family support for children in their learning of literacy. The second question considers the role of childhood remembrances and explores whether adults who were supported as children construct similar experiences for their own children. The final question considers the extent to which these supportive behaviours constitute a literacy tradition inasmuch as they occur in succeeding generations within families. The main conclusions were that remembrances of literacy support in childhood identified family members other than parents as significant figures. A variety of literacy related activities were used to support children's learning. Adults within each family, who had not received support in their learning of literacy as children, did not engage with their own children's literacy learning to the same extent as adults who had childhood remembrances of support. The literacy tradition was embedded in the lives of the three families through the complementary roles that different members fulfilled.

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