The Power is in the Partnership: Families as Partners in Bilingual Bicultural Family Literacy Programs

Abstract

This paper presents a research project that involved Mexican and Honduran families in a family literacy program through a service-learning course of cross-cultural education for teacher education candidates The study exam- ined how the families in the program articulated their purposes for participating in the program and how they changed their attitudes toward education and toward the program, moving from a stance of participant to stake- holder in the program. The paper also describes the dissonance that occurred when the program incorporated an online language learning program. Despite the dissonance, however, the instructor posits that a family literacy program that regards the families as partners offers numerous possibilities for strengthening children’s educa- tion.