Reading and Urban Parents

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Catherine Compton-Lilly's research challenges the popular stereotype that portrays urban parents as not caring much about their children's academic progress, which allows society to blame the difficulties of urban children on parents, while absolving politicians, schools and teachers of all responsibility. The author relates that Compton-Lilly, using ethnographic data from interviews she conducted with ten randomly selected parents of first grade students, suggests that poor urban families are often more literate than is generally assumed. The paper stresses that Compton-Lilly's research implies that (1) students' family relationships and other sociopolitical influences must be understood to comprehend the factors contributing to the process of learning and that (2) parents and teachers must find common ground to discuss the effects of their influence on the literacy of children because all of the learning environments, such as home, school and community come together to reinforce a child's ability to learn to read.

Table of Content
Introduction
Methodology and Background
Research and Results
Implications and Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The social relationships of mainstream and alternative discourses also helped the Compton-Lilly to make sense of the way in which students, families and teachers often support contradicting discourses. She found that many urban parents, for example, hold conflicting views about how learning to read is envisioned and understood in the homes of fellow urban parents. Parents reported that they "stayed on" their children, but neighbors "weren't helping" their children learn to read. In terms of poverty, most parents reported that poverty did not affect learning to read, though they weren't able to express an alternate explanation."

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