ABSTRACT
Although there is converging evidence that family literacy programmes enhance young children’s language and literacy learning and benefit their parents, they have been criticized on the grounds that they privilege the dominant language and fail to capitalize on families’ funds of knowledge. Responding to this criticism, educators have developed bilingual family literacy programmes. In this chapter, we first review the empirical literature on bilingual family literacy, revealing that such programmes positively contribute to young children’s early literacy learning while promoting families’ maintaining their home languages. Then, we report on a collaboratively developed family literacy programme called Parents As Literacy Supporters in Immigrant Communities that was implemented with more than 500 families from four linguistic groups in five communities in a metropolitan area of Canada. We conclude by discussing the implications of the research and raise lingering concerns and issues that need ongoing attention.
