Background: This paper investigates multiple antecedents of literacy in children, such as demographics, child reading behaviour, parent reading behaviour and family context. Methods: The study included a Romanian sample of 924 primary schoolers (Grades 1-4) and their parents; children and parents were tested with a standardised measure of…

Background: Reading interest plays an important role in predicting and regulating the literacy development of deaf children, but the family factors influencing their reading interest have not been previously explored. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of parents' education and home literacy environment (HLE) on reading interest…

Background: Parents play a crucial role in supporting children's literacy, especially in the first years of school. However, parents can find this challenging if they struggle with reading themselves. We explore whether family learning phonics courses boost parents' reading-related skills and ability to support their children's reading, in a…

Background: Research has suggested that one of the most important variables for the development of reading comprehension is the home literacy environment, composed of the literacy interface and what is known as the limiting environment. The current study investigated Spanish children's reading comprehension in relation to these two dimensions.…

This study draws on interviews with 26 individuals who attained an advanced degree and whose parents did not attend university and who reported having at least one older sibling. Participants were asked about independent reading practices in their youth and the reading practices of their older siblings. Participants reported many memories of their…

Twenty-three preschool-age children, 3;6 (years; months) to 4;1, were videotaped separately with their mothers and fathers while each mother and father read a different unfamiliar storybook to them. The text from the unfamiliar storybooks was parsed and coded into story grammar elements and all parental extratextual utterances were transcribed and…

We examined the cross-lagged relations between the home literacy environment and literacy skills in Japanese, and whether child's gender, parents' education and child's level of literacy performance moderate the relations. One hundred forty-two Japanese children were followed from Grades 1 to 2 and assessed on character knowledge, reading fluency…

Examines the issues raised by photographs children took of reading in the home as part of a funded research project exploring the gendering of reading in the 7-9 age group. Focuses on the dilemmas the images pose for analysis, and what the images, considered in themselves, can be taken as evidence for. (SG)

Presents initial findings of three years of research with six families in which the children were considered by their parents to be successfully learning to read and write. Suggests that multigenerational family literacy patterns mediated by personal experiences are important to the development of a child's reading and writing skills. (FL)

Explores issues arising from the long-standing theoretical and empirical attention to reading as a specifiable set of psychological processes, and the consequences of this attention for parents' and educators' deliberations and practices. Concludes that theories of reading need to deal fundamentally with the practices that learners, teachers and…

This paper deals with the relation between children's home literacy environments (HLE) and their literacy development in the first phase of primary school. On the basis of a broad conceptualisation of the HLE, we identified three home literacy profiles (rich, child-directed and poor HLE). Firstly, we related these profiles to socio-cultural…

Aims to build upon the existing home literacy practices of a group of three- and four-year-old children living in the United Kingdom. Develops literacy materials and resources which could be borrowed from nursery and used within the home to promote children's literacy development. Indicates that much of children's reading was focused on popular…