Bilingual families as literacy eco‐systems

Mainstream educators tend to assume that families should follow a school‐prescribed pathway, centred on parent‐child storyreading sessions, to help their children become literate and achieve educational success. The research discussed here focuses on case studies of bilingual families with six‐year‐old children growing up in London, and shows that they function in more diverse and complex ways, to achieve the goal of children learning to read and write in English and in Chinese, Arabic or Spanish as well. The skills of different family members (including parents, siblings and grandparents) are harnessed so that they complement each other to foster children's learning. Each family thus operates as a 'literacy eco‐system', which is dynamic and open to change. The paper concludes by recommending that early years educators find out more about the systems used by pupils' families, in order to support the work that is already taking place at home.