Webinar | Family and Intergenerational Literacy and Learning: International Perspectives

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Originating in the USA in the 1980s, family and intergenerational literacy and learning (FILL) programs have now spread across the globe. However, FILL practices, programs, models, and policies in low- or middle-income, non-Anglophone nations have received little attention. We also need a better understanding of how families around the world use print, oral, and digital literacies informally in their everyday lives. A new book – Family and intergenerational literacy and learning: International perspectives (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2025) – addresses these issues. Join the book’s editors, Dr. Esther Prins and Ms. Rakhat Zholdoshalieva, as they discuss this free new resource, alongside selected chapter authors, highlighting how family literacy programs have been implemented in geographically, linguistically, and culturally diverse international settings.

Speakers:

Dr. Esther Prins (Ph.D., Adult Education, Cornell University) is a Professor in the Lifelong Learning and Adult Education Program at Penn State, where she also serves as the Co-Director of the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy and the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy. She has over 30 years’ experience in adult basic education, adult literacy, and family literacy in the USA and internationally. Dr. Prins is the co-author of Teaching and Learning about Family Literacy and Family Literacy Programs (with J. Lynch, Routledge, 2022) and the co-editor of Family and Intergenerational Literacy and Learning: International Perspectives (with R. Zholdoshalieva, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2025), as well as more than 50 peer-reviewed articles.

Ms Rakhat Zholdoshalieva is the team leader of the Quality Learning Ecosystems Programme programme at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) in Hamburg, Germany. As the team leader, she coordinates various activities and projects related to literacy, educators, and technologies for lifelong learning. Rakhat holds a doctorate in education from the University of Toronto, Canada. In April 2025, Professor Esther Prins of the Penn State University, USA, and Rakhat Zholdoshalieva, as co-editors, launched a new book Family and Intergenerational Literacy and Learning: International Perspectives (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning [UIL], 2025). Focusing on non-Anglophone, low- or middle-income countries, this book includes 20 chapters covering 5 continents and 15 countries from Argentina to Uganda.