Parental Beliefs about Ways to Help Children Learn to Read: The Impact of an Entertainment or a Skills Perspective

Abstract

The Early Childhood Project is a longitudinal investigation of the contexts in which children from different sociocultural groups learn to read. The data discussed here were collected from 41 families when the focal children were in prekindergarten and kindergarten. Data sources were diary reports of children's activities, parental answers to interview questions, and children's performance on a broad‐based battery of literacy‐related tasks. Parents’ responses to a question about the most effective way to help their child learn to read were coded for an entertainment perspective or a skills perspective. There was some consistency between parental beliefs about how to foster reading development and the nature of experiences made available to the children. That is, parents having an entertainment perspective spontaneously reported in their diaries that their child engaged in more such activities. Taking the view that literacy is a source of entertainment was positively related to children's scores on the literacy‐related tasks.