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Abstract:
Ongoing, customized professional development (PD) is critical to developing high-quality family literacy programs, meeting enrolled families’ needs, and promoting learning among staff and participating families. However, few program evaluations on family literacy have examined the role of PD. This article discusses the regular, intensive PD that the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy team provided to five family literacy programs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania over 5 years. The PD changed as program staff learned about and gained experience with the four-component family literacy model. PD began with understanding how to best serve families (e.g., culturally relevant lessons), continued with supporting parent education and interactive literacy activity (ILA) programming, and culminated with learning how to sustain programming. Findings from a multiyear, mixed- methods evaluation demonstrated statistically significant results from a self-reported pre/ post caregiver survey about daily literacy activities and engagement in various parent-child activities. These findings, along with prior research, support the possibility that ongoing, intentional, and customized PD helped improve program quality, which in turn created the conditions for enhanced parent-child language, literacy, and learning interactions. This study suggests that well-planned PD and regular, supportive interactions with program staff are crucial for developing and improving successful, high-quality family literacy programs.