ABSTRACT
In the second edition of the Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts, we argued that strengthening the state of family literacy research required three fundamental steps: (a) increasing the methodological complexity of research, (b) changing the fi eld’s defi cit-oriented research terminology to recognize families as capable partners rather than victims, and (c) broadening the theoretical framework of literacy to refl ect a bio-ecological stance (cf. Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 2005) that recognizes societal, cultural, political, and institutional (e.g., workplace) infl uences upon parents’ and children’s choices and behaviors (Yaden & Paratore, 2002, pp. 537-541).
