Abstract
Cross-sector, interprofessional partnerships and community collaborations offer promise for identifying and addressing the web-like factors that entangle both literacy achievement and negative public health outcomes for vulnerable populations. Literacy centers can be a conduit to promote justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as they exist to serve all community members. This is especially impactful when partnered with minority and disadvantaged populations. This university-based literacy center (LC) utilizes a community-driven design to attain and sustain their work. This chapter will illustrate the effort made by the LC to establish access, coordinated services, education of stakeholders, and support for students of all ages, and cultural engagement which are foundational to the work being done. Lastly, the chapter will describe the past, present, and future plans for improving community engagement.
“Imagine a place where students are motivated, intrigued, and eager to find what the teacher has planned for the day. This is not a fantasy; this place is known as a literacy center.” (Ortlieb, Grandstaff-Beckers, & Cheek Jr., 2012, p. 1)
TopLiteracy Centers
Beyond the traditional roles of a library and the services that are offered, there are opportunities to expand offerings that promote equitable access to literacy learning and engagement. For the purposes of this chapter, literacy center is used as the descriptor for these types of settings.
Laster (2013) provides a historical view of literacy centers that highlights their evolution from “medical-type clinics to instructional powerhouses for struggling readers.” (p 3). In the 1920s, Dr. Grace Fernald opened the first university-based clinic at University of California – Los Angeles, focusing on remedial readers and creating a template for literacy centers that is still used today. The 1960s and 1970s saw a sharp increase in the number of literacy centers nationwide while the mid to late 1980s saw the beginning of literacy center decline, due mostly to financial constraints. The last decade has seen another resurgence with many literacy centers, or literacy improvement efforts, established on university campuses with more funding and to support a more clinical focus on teacher preparation at all levels (Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, 2022). Since the 90s, literacy clinics have served as the intersection of research, theory, and praxis in literacy.
Orlieb, Grandstaff-Beckers & Cheek, Jr. (2012) argue that, at every level and in all content areas, literacy centers can serve as a critical mechanism for fostering reading excellence. To summarize, they offer seven components that must be present:
Key Terms in this Chapter
Literacy Achievement: A common term used to describe the levels of reading comprehension of the school population.
Digital Environments: The combined communication environment where digital devices are used to communicate and add to content and activities within it.
Stakeholders: A person or persons with an interest or concern in something.
Social Determinants of Health: Features and resources in the places where people live, learn, work, and play that affect various health and quality-of life outcomes.
Remedial Readers: Persons that have reading skills that are below average in reading comprehension.
Literacy: Having the skills to recognize and understand printed and written information
Literacy Theory: Describes how literacy changes as children gain the language and cognitive skills that underpin learning.