Hispanic Parents’ Beliefs and Practices During Shared Reading in English and Spanish

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: Shared book reading is important for children’s early literacy development. Although there is an increasing number of dual language learners, few studies have examined families’ shared book reading practices in their two languages. The current study examined Hispanic parents’ beliefs and practices during shared reading in English and Spanish, and explored how their reading practices differ as a function of language and parental education level. Overall, Hispanic parents reported they read more frequently and had more books in English than in Spanish. Parents’ feelings about shared reading and their interactive strategies during shared reading differed by education level, parents’ preferred language, and book language. English-dominant parents engaged in more interactive reading strategies and reported more positive feelings when they read in English, while Spanish-dominant parents engaged in more reading strategies and reported more positive feelings when they read in Spanish. Practice & Policy: These findings highlight the importance of examining the language of reading interactions and parents’ preferred language to understand the complex nature of reading interactions in Hispanic families. These findings can be helpful for researchers, educators, and intervention providers to offer families the appropriate support they need to engage in shared book reading.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2024.2389368.

Notes

1. Note that, because the current study focuses on Spanish-speaking families, we use the term Hispanic, rather than Latino, as it refers to people from countries where Spanish is spoken (Austin & Johnson, 2012). This is also the term preferred by many US Hispanics/Latinos (Lopez et al., 2021).

2. Although we did not explicitly ask parents about their language preference, our definition is consistent with previous studies suggesting that parents tend to speak to their child most often in their preferred (or dominant) language (DeAnda et al., 2016; Read et al., 2021). Prior studies have often defined dominant language as the language in which a bilingual person has the greater proficiency, which we did not measure. Thus, we use the term “preferred language,” rather than “dominant language,” to avoid confusion.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders under Grant [R21DC018357]; Delaney Family Foundation Grant; and Institute of Education Sciences under Grant [R324A160241].