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These Related Readings offer research and information on family involvement in children's early literacy and family involvement in Latino families. The resources come from the HFRP website, most of them from the Family Involvement Network of Educators (FINE). We invite readers to join FINE, free of charge, to receive announcements about other family involvement resources.

Family Involvement in Children's Early Literacy

• Family Literacy: A Review of Programs and Critical Perspectives
  This report reviews and critiques family literacy research, including guiding program principles and examples of applying these principles to three different programs.
• Learning by Listening: A Longitudinal Study of Family Literacy
  This digest discusses research on the reading concepts held by urban families and how home reading practices intersect with school literacy practices.
• Parent Involvement and Early Literacy
  This digest describes a study that finds that parents' involvement at school is related to children's higher literacy, particularly for those from socially or economically disadvantaged families.
• Parents Write Their Worlds: A Parent Involvement Program Bridging Urban Schools and Families
  This digest describes a participatory research project that examines a school-based writing workshop in which parents write stories for a literary magazine that is circulated in the school and community.
• Story Time: Mothers' Reading Practices in Japan and the U.S.
  This digest describes a study that compares American and Japanese mothers' home reading practices with their preschool children to enrich our understanding of cross-cultural differences.
• Working With Families in the Rural South: Findings From the REA-Funded Promising Readers Program
  This digest describes a study of a program in an elementary school in the rural south, where parents, preservice teachers, and others come together to strengthen children's literacy and learn from their experiences with children and one another.

Family Involvement in Latino Families

• What's Going on With Tomasito?
  This teaching case focuses on child and cultural influences in parent–teacher communication. Though it uses different pseudonyms for the some of the individuals involved, the teaching case draws on the same research as the Tomasito storybook.
• Young Latino Infants and Families: Parental Involvement Implications From a Recent National Study
  This digest uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort to show that family engagement matters for all young children regardless of social, cultural, or ethnic group. It provides a deeper understanding of how cultural practices combine with other factors to shape parenting behaviors among families in the United States in the first year of children's lives
• Using Mothers' Core Values to Guide Teaching and School Involvement Practice
  In this article, teacher Nieves Torres reflects on engaging immigrant Latina mothers.
• Do Educational Programs Increase Parents' Practices At Home?: Factors Influencing Latino Parent Involvement
  This digest summarizes a study that presents models of factors influencing Latino parent involvement in elementary and secondary schools before and after they participated in a parent education program.
• Faith-Based Organizing for School Improvement in the Texas Borderlands: A Case Study of the Alliance School Initiative
  This digest describes a multisite case study that examined the relationships and interactions among educators, parents, and a faith-based institution striving to create a viable parental engagement initiative at a public elementary and middle school in the Texas borderlands.
• Incorporating Latino Parents' Perspectives into Teacher Preparation
  This digest encapsulates a study that sought to explore alternatives in teaching preservice teachers about diversity by using parent perspectives about the knowledge and attitudes teachers need to acquire.
• Latino Families: Getting Involved in Your Children's Education (also available in Spanish)
  This digest, produced by the National Institute on Early Childhood Development and Education of the Office of Educational Research and Development in the U.S. Department of Education, answers Latino parents questions about how they can get more involved in their childrend's education.
• Lessons From Latina Teachers' Childhoods
  This digest describes a study focused on six Latina teachers working with English Language Learners in elementary urban public schools within predominantly Latino communities that attempted to trace their early socialization experiences in order to understand their subsequent influence in present practices.
• Promoting Involvement of Recent Immigrant Families in Their Children's Education
  This report present a conceptual framework and promote promising practices for involving Hispanic, immigrant parents/caregivers of students in their children's education.
• Using Behavior Change Theory to Communicate Effectively: The Case of Latino Parent Involvement
  This Evaluation Exchange article reveals how to design communications that are more effective at changing behavior by keeping in mind the factors that influence behavior.