ABSTRACT

At a time when literacy is more important than ever to citizenship, professional employment, and future life pathways, we see persistent gaps in literacy achievement between various cultural groups in the United States. Throughout the years literacy research has progressed from defi cit explanations of the “literacy” crisis to more culturally and socially oriented research that revealed disconnects between home and school literacy practices. Linguists and literacy theorists have helped us to reconsider literacy as “literacies” that are multiple, socially situated cultural practices (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Hymes, 1974; New London Group, 1996; Street 1984). Through ethnographic case studies informed by the cross cultural and sociocultural traditions, we learned that valuable language and literacy practices in homes and communities have been largely unnoticed, ignored, or misunderstood by schools and formal institutions (Heath, 1983; Purcell-Gates, 1997; Scribner & Cole, 1981; Mahiri, 1998).