Home-Based literacy practices of Arab mothers from Kuwait

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Research has widely documented that several home-based literacy activities such as storytelling, shared book reading and exposure to print, support children's language and literacy development. This study explored home literacy practices (HLP) in a sample of Arab mothers from Kuwait.

Method: A questionnaire to gather information about HLP was distributed to mothers of children aged two to five years (N = 243). Several variables were examined including maternal education, child age and child gender.

Results: The findings indicated that Kuwaiti mothers engage their children in certain HLP, albeit irregularly. Examination of scores for four home literacy routines (reading stories, telling stories, teaching numbers and letters, and reciting nursery rhymes) as a function of maternal level of education revealed that mothers with post-secondary training were significantly higher than those of mothers with less education. The participants were more likely to teach alphabet letters and numbers to older preschoolers (four to five years) than to younger ones (two to three years). No significant group differences emerged with respect to the child's gender.

Conclusion: The study underscores the need for outreach programs and family guidance in fostering emergent literacy within the home environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Home literacy environment
• early literacy development
• emergent literacy
• Arab mothers
• preschool children
• Kuwait

Acknowledgements

A special gratitude goes to the mothers who participated in this study for their time and contributions. We wish to acknowledge former Kuwait University students (Salwa Alkharafi, Doa Malek, Aisha Albloushi and Aisha BenAli) for assistance with data gathering.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.