Exploring the Literacy Practices of Refugee Families Enrolled in a Book Distribution Program and an Intergenerational Family Literacy Program

The Imagination Library Program and Kindergarten Readiness

“…One qualitative study that we conducted of refugee families exposed to DPIL used participant observations and interviews with parents. This research (Singh et al 2015) found that participation in DPIL and supportive programming led to familiarity with and use of print-based forms of literacy (i.e., parents reported that they were using the books with their children). In a related study, we surveyed families after 10 months of implementation and learned that longer enrollment in DPIL was associated with more child-directed reading and story discussion; this remained the case even when analyses controlled for child age, gender, income, parental education, race, parental nation of birth, and primary language spoken at home (Ridzi et al 2014).…”

“…The provision of age-appropriate books is intended to catalyze family reading events in which adult caregivers read to a child from the book that arrived with the child’s name on it. Together, the arrival of the book and the ensuing reading experience are intended to create a positive social and emotional culture around reading and the written text that might, in turn, lead to the educational gains noted in educational and psychological literature (Ridzi, Sylvia, and Singh 2014; Singh 2015; Singh, Sylvia, and Ridzi 2015; Yeager and Walton 2011).…”

Community Leadership through Conversations and Coordination: the Role of Local Surveys in Community Foundation Run Community Indicators Projects

“…The foundation had been frustrated in the past by making investments using publicly available national data only to be thwarted in its efforts to measure and monitor progress using the same data sets (Ridzi 2012 ). Following investments in new staffing skilled in data analysis and program evaluation, the foundation was able to pilot more rigorous program evaluation of its literacy efforts and furthermore able to document its progress in changing not only the outcomes of program participants, but also neighborhood and community level data improvements (Ridzi et al 2014 ; Singh et al 2015 ; Ridzi et al 2016 ). Emboldened by this success the foundation sought to build a similar infrastructure that could be used for other future programming and that could both reliably measure the efficacy of foundation grantmaking and empower local grant recipient partners and collective impact peers to achieve a data driven norm for decision-making, collaboration and ongoing refinement of efforts.…”

Negotiating Complexity: A Bioecological Systems Perspective on Literacy Development

“…Five studies [Hettinger & Knapp, 2001;Jordan, 2005;Justice & Kaderavek, 2003;Norris, 2014;Sullivan, Hegde, Ballard, & Ticknor, 2015] addressed the interaction between individual characteristics and process or between context variables and process, but did not involve longitudinal data collection. Four groups of researchers [Galindo & Sheldon, 2012;Koury & Votruba-Drzal, 2013;Niklas & Schneider, 2015;Singh, Sylvia, & Ridzi, 2015] collected longitudinal data but did not explore person-process or context-process interactions; in other words, they focused on linking a range of factors to pre/post achievement measures. The first two of these studies consisted of an analysis of large, previously-collected data sets with the intent to link a range of factors-including proximal processes-to achievement gains.…”

“…This is due, in part to the fact that he repeatedly referred to his theory in terms of circles [Bronfenbrenner, 1977] or as a series of nested systems, comparing them to the ubiquitous Russian dolls, the smaller of which fit within the larger ones [Bronfenbrenner, 1979]. This metaphor has been interpreted by some researchers [e.g., Singh, Sylvia, & Ridzi, 2015] as meaning that the developing child "sits" within microsystem which sits within mesosystem which sits within exosystem and so on. With a careful reading of Bronfenbrenner's descriptions, however, this interpretation quickly breaks down.…”