VISION
From Family Literacy to Earth System Science.
The concept of “family literacy” originated in the doctoral research of Denny Taylor. Recently colleagues and students have nominated her for several research awards in recognition of her lifetime commitment to transdisciplinary family literacy scholarship and fieldwork with families living in urban and rural poverty in the U.S., and in regions of armed conflict and catastrophic events around the world.
Every study Denny Taylor has undertaken in the past forty years is interconnected and reflects her deep commitment to culturally relevant research grounded in the everyday lives of families and communities. Her research encourages local contextualized changes that are historically and politically situated, and she has had a global impact in raising awareness of the systemic complexity of language, literacy and
Dr. Denny Taylor
Professor Emeritus Literacy Studies
learning in diverse family and community settings throughout the world.
There are family literacy centers and coalitions across the United States, and many governments around the world have adopted the concept of family literacy. UNESCO uses family literacy as an organizing principle for the support of vulnerable populations and in 2012 published A Handbook of Family Literacy. There are family literacy programs in China, and among the countries that have family literacy programs for refugee women and their children are Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and The Democratic Republic of Congo. The remarkable fact is that there are now family literacy initiatives in every Member State of the United Nations.
Denny Taylor, NYC 2018