Analyzing Epistemological Considerations Related to Diversity: An Integrative Critical Literature Review of Family Literacy Scholarship

The purpose of this review of family literacy scholarship was to examine the epistemologies underlying both family studies and reviews of family literacy studies. We were especially concerned with those epistemological issues related to the cultural, class, racial, gender, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of people served by family literacy programs. Our rationale for focusing on epistemology and diversity was that research on family literacy has often been framed in ways reflective of epistemological views of diversity, including such binaries as strengths and deficits, literate and illiterate, and home-school match and mismatch, among others. We searched major electronic databases for reviews of family literacy research and then employed bibliographic branching to identify other reviews yielding 273 reviews of which 213 were substantive. We subjected the 213 substantive reviews to an analytic review template to identify the degree to which diversity was addressed and how it was addressed. We conducted citation coding to identify major citations in each review. We then identified a set of comprehensive edited volumes and subjected the introductions, tables of contents, list of contributors, and references to diversity to a critical discourse analysis emphasizing underlying epistemologies. Findings included the dominance of White women scholars in family literacy research, the incorporation of both modernist and postmodernist epistemologies, and the absence of substantive concern with diversity in a majority of family literacy studies. Findings also showed that more recent reviews were less focused on modernist visions of family literacy as a means to address social problems and more focused on relationships between home and school literacies and the diversity of literacy practices found in homes. In addition, we found that recent reviews showed an increased focus on international and transnational contexts as well as literacy within specific local communities. We discuss these findings as reflecting the complex and diverse environments in which family literacy takes place with their multiple goals. We also discuss the importance of making underlying epistemological assumptions visible so that complexities and contradictions can be acknowledged and addressed.