| The purpose of this interdisciplinary inquiry was to investigate the information needs and information seeking activities of a group of parents who had expressed concerns about or interest in the literacy development of beginning readers and writers.; The inqury used a qualitative approach informed by principles of Action Research, Feminist methodologies, and Sense-Making theory. In a series of semi-structured interviews, twenty mothers described their past involvement in parent education activities, their perspectives on parents', teachers', and librarians' roles in supporting children's literacy development, their concerns about literacy development, and one recent action taken to address a concern.; Respondents' comments were transcribed and coded for expected and emergent themes, then presented using as a framework a model of professionals' information seeking.; The data supported a proposal that parents' information needs arise from their efforts to perform tasks associated with the interrelated roles of "parent as teacher" and "parent as advocate" and suggest that for this group of parents, the advocate role placed more stress on parent-teacher partnerships than did the teacher role.; Themes discussed include respondents' needs for timely, relevant, and specific information, the positive influences of emotional support and informal information networks on the perceived success of information seeking, and the influence of cultural practices which subordinate the issues of the domestic world to those of the public world.; The main implications for teachers focus on communication issues. Teachers need to articulate their practice more clearly and to develop ways to foster intersubjectivity in their communication with parents. The main implications for children's librarians focus on the development of library services that reflect interactive rather than passive approaches to the support of children's literacy development. |
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