Parent Goals and Beliefs and their Prediction of Behaviour

during Shared Book Reading

by

Diana Rose Audet

A Thesis
presented to
The University of Guelph

In partial fulfillment of requirements

for the degree of
Doctorate of Philosophy
in
Psychology

Guelph, Ontario, Canada

© Diana Rose Audet, May 2013

 ABSTRACT

Parent Goals and Beliefs and their Prediction of Behaviour during Shared Book Reading

Diana Rose Audet Advisor:

University of Guelph, 2012 Professor Mary Ann Evans

In this dissertation two studies are reported to explore the relation between parents’ goals

for, beliefs about, and behaviour during parent-child shared book reading. In the first study, 92

parents rated the importance of potential reasons for reading with their children using the Parent

Goals for Shared Reading Questionnaire (Evans & Williams, 2003). Ratings were completed

longitudinally each year from their child’s junior kindergarten to grade 1 year. Factor analysis

largely confirmed previous cross-sectional findings that the questionnaire items reflect distinct

parent goals for shared book reading, including fostering reading skills, stimulating development,

engaging in an enjoyable activity, and experiencing closeness with their child. The second study

used data from the senior kindergarten year of this same sample of children to investigate the

relation between parents’ beliefs about how to teach reading, how highly they rated fostering

reading skills as a goal versus non-reading goal subsets, and their behaviour during shared book

reading (i.e., the nature of the extratextual comments and error corrections made). Results

demonstrated that, as parent goals to foster children’s reading skills increase, their tendency to

provide the correct word in response to their child’s miscues decreases. When goals to foster

reading skills were high, parents were more likely to use strategies that help their child to read

misread words, regardless of their ratings of goals to engage in a positive experience with their

child. However, when goals to foster reading skills were low, increasing ratings of the goal to
engage in a positive experience related to decreasing instances of parents helping their child to

read misread words. Furthermore, the goal to engage in a positive experience with one’s child

was positively related to extratextual conversation not related to teaching reading but only when

goals to foster reading skills were also low. Finally, goals to foster reading and constructivist

beliefs both made independent contributions to the prediction of parents’ use of context cues to

correct reading errors. Implications of these findings for literacy intervention programs targeted

at the shared-book reading interaction are discussed.

 Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge my supervisor, Dr. Mary Ann Evans, for her infinite and

unwavering support and guidance throughout this process. I would also to thank my committee

members, Dr. Marcia Barnes, Dr. Kathy Brophy, Dr. Karl Hennig and Dr. Sandra Martin-Chang

for their expertise in helping to revise my dissertation and involvement in my oral defense, and

Dr. Lana Trick for her support in chairing the oral defense. I would like to express my gratitude

to the school boards involved in this study as well as to the participating parents and children for

their time and commitment throughout the study. Finally, I am indebted to the black sheep and

panthers among my colleagues for their unending support throughout this journey.

iv
 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………….iv

Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………….v

List of Tables…......…………………….…………………………………...…………………..viii

List of Figures…......………………….…………...………………………………………...........ix

Parent goals and beliefs and their prediction of behaviour during shared book reading.................1

Benefits of Shared Book Reading...…......………..…………………………….………......2

Shared Book Reading Styles………………………………………………………………..5

Parental interaction styles during shared book reading……………..……………......5

Concurrent correlates of shared book reading styles..……...…...………….........…...7

Parental interaction styles and child outcomes…………………………….……..…12

Beliefs and Values in Literacy Practices and their Relation to Parent Behaviour….……..15

Parent Goals for and Behaviour during Shared Book Reading…………………….….…..21

The Current Study……….……...…………………….…………………....….……….….27

Study 1…………………………………………………………………………………………...30

Methodology………………………………………………………………………………30

Participants……………...…….…..………….……..…………………...…………..30

Materials…………………………………………………………………………….32

Procedures……………………….…….…………………………………………….33

Results……….………………………………………………………………………….…34

Confirmatory factor analysis……………………………...………………….…..….34

Exploratory factor analysis……………………..….……...………………..……….35

v
 Analysis of goals by grade.…….……………………………………………...….…37

Summary…………………………………………………………………………………..38

Study 2…………………………………………………………………………………………...41

Methodology………………………………………………………………..……………..42

Participants……………...…….…..………….……..…………………...…………..42

Materials…………………………………………………………………………….43

Goals questionnaire…………………………………………………………...43

Belief questionnaire…………………………………………………………...44

Storybooks………………………………………………………………….…45

Procedures……………………….…….…………………………………………….46

Coding of shared book reading………………………………………………..48

Results……….………………………………………………………………………….…51

Goals for shared book reading………………………………………………………51

Preliminary analyses………………………………………………………………...53

Regression analyses preparation…………………………………………………….54

Parent goals and the type of extratextual comments made………………………….55

Parent goals and supplying a word not read correctly………………………………57

Parent goals and providing sustaining feedback…………………………………….59

Parent beliefs about beginning reading instruction and their use of cues for correcting

reading errors as a function of their goal to foster reading skills …………………...60

Use of context cues……………………………………………………………61

Use of graphophonemic cues………………………………………………….62

Summary…………………………………………………………………………………..64

vi
General Discussion………………………..……………………..………………………………65

Implications of the Results………………………..……………………..…………….…..69

Limitations of the Study...…………...………………...…………………………………..71

Future Research……………………………………………………………………………73

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………76

References………………...……………………………………………………………………...77

Appendix A……………...………………………………………………………………….........89

Appendix B…………………….………………………………………………………………...92

Appendix C………………………………………………………………………………………95

vii
 List of Tables

Table 1: Study 1: Means and Standard Deviations of Item Ratings on the Parent Goals for

Shared Reading Questionnaire for JK, SK, Grade 1, and Overall Averaged Item

Ratings...……………………………………………...……………………………...…97

Table 2: Study 1: Factor Loadings of Items Relating to the Goal Subsets………………………99

Table 3: Study 2: Items Included in the Foster Reading and Non-Reading Goal Subsets……..101

Table 4: Characteristics of Books Used for Home Book Reading Sessions……………………103

viii
 List of Figures

Figure 1: Study 1: Goal Subset Endorsement by Grade.............................................................104

Figure 2. Relation Between Standardized Not Read (i.e., Non-Reading) and Read (i.e., Foster

Reading) Goal Subset Ratings……………………………………………………….105

Figure 3: Relation Between Enjoyment-Related Extratextual Comments and Non-Reading Goal

Subset Ratings at High and Low Levels of Foster Reading Goal Subset

Endorsement…………………………………………………………………………106

Figure 4: Relation Between Parents’ Provision of Sustaining Feedback and Non-Reading Goal

Subset Ratings at High and Low Levels of Foster Reading Goal Subset

Endorsement................................................................................................................107

ix
 The experience of sharing a book with another, whether they be a parent, sibling, child,

or teacher, is one that is familiar to most people in developed countries. While it is generally

agreed that reading with your child (or, shared book reading) is an activity that leads to many

benefits for the child’s learning and for the parent-child relationship, the exact nature of these

benefits is much less straightforward. Of particular interest is the role that shared book reading

has in children’s literacy development. The questions for researchers, educators, and parents are

numerous: How often should one read with their child?; What books?; In what manner?; How

should one correct the child’s errors?; and so forth. In the absence of common or scientific

wisdom different parents will likely negotiate this activity in quite different ways.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that parental involvement, the parent-child

relationship, and the home environment are all involved in the growth of children’s literacy skills

(e.g., Beals & De Temple, 1993; Dickinson & Tabors, 1991; Fitton & Gredler, 1996; Haney &

Hill, 2004; Hewison, 1988; Lee & Croninger, 1994; Roberts, Jurgens, & Burchinal, 2005;

Weinberger, 1996). Other studies have looked more specifically at the actual shared book

reading interaction and how it relates to children’s literacy development (Evans, Shaw, & Bell,

2000; Richman & Colombo, 2007; Sénéchal, LeFevre, Hudson, & Lawson, 1996). Directly

measuring the benefits to children’s literacy development is, however, no simple task. For

example, a review of the literature on shared book reading by Scarborough and Dobrich (1994)

found considerable variability in the results between studies, even when the outcomes measured

were comparable (although they note that, in these studies, outcomes might not have always been

measured optimally or appropriately). Furthermore, their findings suggest that, contrary to

common wisdom, the quality and quantity of parent-child shared book reading is actually not

strongly related to children’s literacy development (although it should be noted that these results

1
could be due to the availability of research in this area at this time or to the selection of

inappropriate qualitative measures). The authors conclude that further research needs to be

conducted in this area before firm statements about the benefits of shared book reading (or lack

thereof) can be made. Thus, while “reading with your children” is undoubtedly simple and good

advice, evaluating the nature of the benefits of this activity is a far less straightforward task. As

noted by Bergin (2001), educators encourage parents to read to their children, but this is often

without a sense of how this advice is carried out by different parents.

The purpose of this study was to create a framework for understanding parent behaviour

during shared book reading by exploring the goals parents have for shared book reading as well

as their beliefs about reading. As will be described below, research in this area has focused

primarily on the relation between parent behaviour during shared book reading and child

outcomes related to the development of literacy skills. Very little attention, however, has been

paid to parents’ cognitions related to literacy and whether these cognitions might shape their

shared book reading interactions. To provide a background to this research three main sets of

research studies are reviewed: 1) those evaluating the benefits of shared book reading in general;

2) those which explore the nature of parent shared book reading styles, concurrent correlates of

specific styles, and the relation between specific styles and child outcomes; and 3) those

investigating the impact of parental beliefs on the shared book reading interaction.

Benefits of Shared Book Reading

Research has evaluated the benefits of shared book reading compared to other home

literacy experiences. For example, in a longitudinal study from kindergarten to grade one,

Sénéchal and LeFevre (2002) found that the frequency of storybook reading was related to

2
children’s receptive language development but not to their reading skill. In contrast, parents’

report of how frequently they taught their children about reading and printing words was directly

related to children’s reading development. By grade three, storybook exposure predicted 4% of

the variance in a composite reading skill measure (including both reading vocabulary and

reading comprehension). Sénéchal (2006) found similar results with French-speaking children:

Parent teaching about literacy in kindergarten predicted both children’s alphabet knowledge in

kindergarten and their grade four reading fluency while storybook exposure directly predicted

kindergarten vocabulary and the frequency with which children reported reading for pleasure in

grade four and indirectly predicted grade four reading comprehension.

Other studies have also found results consistent with these. For instance, Levy, Gong,

Hessels, Evans, and Jared (2006) found that, while the extent of storybook reading related to oral

language development, it was the frequency of literary activities in which the (four to six-year-

old) children actively participated and focused on print that related to the development of

visual/orthographic skills. Similarly, Evans, Shaw, and Bell (2000) found that, after controlling

for child age, child ability, and parent education, the frequency of being read to was related to

young children’s vocabulary scores, while the frequency of home activities that entailed letters

(i.e., learning letter names and sounds, printing letters) predicted children’s knowledge of letter

names, letter sounds, and phonological sensitivity. Thus, while vocabulary development appears

to be enhanced by shared book reading, children’s knowledge of sounds and letters and

phonological awareness appears to be fostered by focusing the child’s attention on the letters and

sounds. Consistent with this notion, Weigel, Martin, and Bennett (2005) found that preschool-

aged children performed better on literacy and language tasks when their parents modeled

literacy behaviours and actively engaged them in literacy and language activities. This

3
underscores the benefits of active parental involvement in the development of children’s reading

skills and highlights the notion that simply asking parents to read with their children will not

necessarily lead to the expected benefits to the development of their children’s literacy skills.

The notion that it is not just the mere occurrence of shared book reading but the

interactions that occur during shared book reading that are related to children’s literacy

development is one that is becoming increasingly discussed in the literature. For example,

Phillips, Norris, and Anderson (2008) argued that shared book reading often does not lead to the

expected benefits for children’s early literacy development because the adults typically do not

draw the children’s attention to features of the print and the children most often attend to the

illustrations and not to the print (see also Evans & Saint-Aubin, 2005 and Justice, Skibbe,

Canning, & Lankford, 2005). However, Phillps and colleagues pointed to research that

demonstrated that, if supplemented with explicitly teaching children about print, shared book

reading has proven benefits for children’s future reading ability. Similarly, a review by Evans

and Shaw (2008) concluded that particular home activities (such as, shared book reading of

alphabet and rhyming books and books that expand vocabulary, listening to children read just

beyond the child’s independent reading level while coaching word recognition, teaching letter

names and sounds, and drawing the child’s attention to print and its form and purpose) predict

reading skill (that is, phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, print knowledge,

vocabulary, and word recognition).

A meta-analysis of sixteen studies (including 626 preschool and kindergarten-aged

children) by Mol, Bus, de Jong, and Smeets (2008) demonstrated that enhancing parent-child

dialogue during reading sessions strengthens the effects of book reading on children’s

vocabulary (measured as a composite of linguistic skills), but the relation was only moderate (r =

4
.20). Thus, it is not just exposure to a story but active parental involvement, in the form of

eliciting verbal responses to the story from their child with the help of open-ended questions,

which promotes language development. This effect was most pronounced for the younger and

less experienced readers and the effects were strongest for children’s expressive vocabulary.

Taken together, these studies demonstrate that shared book reading activities contribute to the

child’s language and literacy development, but these benefits depend on the style and quality of

parent behaviours and interactions and the nature of the shared book reading experience.

Shared Book Reading Styles

Parental interaction styles during shared book reading.

Given these findings, it is important that we next examine what parents actually do with

their children when they read with them. Several studies have examined parental interactions

with their children during shared book reading and some have confirmed hypotheses that these

interactions are associated in diverse ways and to varying degrees with children’s literacy

development. For instance, studies have shown that parents have specific ways in which they

interact with their children during shared book reading (e.g., DeTemple, 2001; Morgan, 2005;

Reese, Cox, Harte, & McAnally, 2003). One area of particular focus in the literature is the

extratextual comments (i.e., comments beyond what is written in the text) made by parents

during shared book reading. For example, Hayden and Fagan (1983) demonstrated that parents

vary in the clarification strategies (how they ask children to clarify and specify their

understanding of the information in the story) they use with their kindergarten children.

In an attempt to further understand these extratextual comments, an investigation by

Hammett, VanKleeck, and Huberty (2003) found that parents’ extratextual comments while

5
reading with their preschool-aged children could be categorized into one of four different

interaction styles. The majority of parents made few comments to their children while reading

and focused principally on the reading of the story. These parents appeared to make comments

involving both high and low levels of abstraction and their comments were generally in reference

to the content of the story. The second cluster of parents provided a moderate number of

extratextual comments related to behaviour management, feedback, and story content during

shared book reading. These parents are described as placing the emphasis on creating a positive

book sharing experience and opportunities for successful verbal participation. The final two

smaller groups of parents provided many comments during book reading, but differed in the

extent to which they focused the child’s attention on the print and discussed print and book

conventions (with one group placing a particular emphasis on print and book conventions). Thus,

parents vary in the manner in which they read with their children, and the particular style they

adopt could contribute to what aspects of the book and story they and their children focus on.

Similarly, Mansell, Evans and Hamilton-Hulak (2005) examined differences and patterns

in the feedback strategies parents use during shared book reading to help their children over

miscues, from kindergarten to grade two. They found evidence for two basic styles; “code

coaxers,” who focused on helping their child to sound out unknown words, and “word

suppliers,” who primarily told the child the words. Furthermore, there was stability in these

feedback styles over time suggesting that parents select their feedback strategies based at least

partially on some sort of general principle that extends across time, such as beliefs or values.

Variability between the feedback strategies used by parents during shared book reading

was also demonstrated in a longitudinal study by Haden, Reese, and Fivush (1996). They

examined mothers’ extratextual comments during storybook reading with their preschool-aged

6
children and found three distinct maternal stylistic groups. Describers primarily described the

pictures, Comprehenders focused on story meaning (whether taken from pictures or the text),

and Collaborators engaged in conversation during book reading that largely consisted of the

mother confirming but not elaborating on the child’s comments by a variety of strategies. As in

the study by Mansell and colleagues (2005), this study also found that mothers’ storybook

reading styles were consistent over time but less consistent across different types of books

(familiar or unfamiliar). This demonstrates stability in parental interaction styles over time as

well as flexibility to adapt their styles to different situations (i.e., with different types of books).

Concurrent correlates of shared book reading styles.

While research demonstrates that there is indeed variability in the interaction styles of

parents with their children during shared book reading, the factors and parent characteristics

contributing to and influencing these interaction styles are numerous, multifarious, and not well

understood. As an example, Tracey and Young (2002) showed that high-school educated

mothers made significantly more error corrections and comments to their third-grade children

during at-home oral reading than college educated mothers, despite equal numbers of above-

average and below-average readers in each group. Furthermore, college educated mothers asked

more questions than high-school educated mothers. Similarly, Bracken and Fischel (2008) found

that parents who completed higher levels of education showed greater levels of interest in

reading, had children who showed greater levels of interest in reading, and had higher levels of

shared-reading interaction with their child. Neuman (1996) found that patterns of reading might

differ according to parents’ own reading proficiency. In their investigation, low proficiency

parent readers engaged elementary school-aged children in lower cognitive demand behaviours

7
such as chiming and repeating text whereas more capable readers used higher cognitive demand

behaviours, such as bridging and involving children’s recall of the story. Karrass, VanDeventer,

and Braungart-Rieker (2003) found that the mothers who were most likely to read with their 8-

month old infants reported lower parenting stress, fewer general hassles, and a higher family

income. Finally, Evans (1998) found that how parents read with their children could depend on

what they themselves experienced as children and their memories of how they were read to.

It has also been demonstrated that the mother-child attachment relationship is related to

the nature and quality of a mother’s interactions with her infant child during shared book

reading. Bus, Belsky, van IJzendoorn, and Crnic (1997) found that the interaction patterns during

shared book reading of mothers identified as insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant are

different from the interactions of secure pairs. The pairs in the insecure-avoidant relationships

were more inclined to focus on the verbal text and less inclined to initiate contingent, reciprocal,

and age-appropriate interactions around the pictures. The insecure-resistant pairs were similar to

the secure pairs in that they initiated labelling routines to the same extent as the secure mothers.

However, these insecure dyads were less successful at regulating their children’s behaviours than

their secure counterparts. Given these findings, the authors concluded that the book reading

sessions of insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant mother-child pairs were less rewarding and

didactic and, as a consequence, such dyads may not develop satisfying book reading routines to

the same extent as secure pairs.

Research by Anderson, Anderson, Lynch, and Shapiro (2004) found that mothers and

fathers differed in how they read to their four-year old children. Fathers were more interactive

during shared book reading than mothers and this difference was even more pronounced with

non-narrative texts than with narrative texts (however, both mothers and fathers were more

8
interactive with non-narrative texts than narrative texts). Furthermore, while the average number

of interactions was similar when parents read to boys and girls, when sharing narratives, mothers

elaborated twice as much for boys as they did for girls. In contrast, Blake, Macdonald, Bayrami,

Agosta, and Milian (2006) found few differences between mothers’ and fathers’ verbalizations

during shared book reading with their grade one children. Both mothers and fathers differentiated

their verbalizations to children in terms of the child’s age and but not gender. They posed more

questions to older children, gave them more feedback, and imitated them more. In contrast, with

younger children, they spent more time trying to gain the children’s attention and to make more

of a game of the book-reading situation. One possible explanation for the contrasting findings of

these two studies is the difference in the sample of children’s age (four versus six year-olds) and

thus, the children’s reading proficiency. Furthermore, the type of book read may have also

contributed to this difference as Anderson and colleagues found that the greatest differences

between mothers and fathers’ reading styles occurred during the use of non-narrative texts,

which were not included in the study by Blake and colleagues.

Other studies have found that, during shared book reading, parents are sensitive to their

children’s age, developmental level, communication abilities, and reading ability. Parents

demonstrate this sensitivity in the language they use and the nature and variety of extratextual

comments they make, with parents of less-skilled readers providing more varied and directive

feedback at a lower level of abstraction than parents of skilled readers (e.g., Pellegrini, Brody, &

Sigel, 1985; Stoltz & Fischel, 2003; van Kleeck & Beckley-McCall, 2002). Consistent with these

findings, Evans, Barraball, and Eberle (1998) found that the more accurately kindergarten and

first-grade children read, the less parents ignored their reading errors, the less they offered

picture clues, and the more they focused their children’s attention to individual letters and gave

9
sound clues to aid in word recognition. Similarly, Mansell and colleagues (2005) found that

whether the miscue resulted in a high or low level of meaning change influenced the likelihood

that parents offered corrective feedback, with high meaning changes less often ignored.

More recently, in a study by Davis, Evans, and Reynolds (2010) of shared alphabet book

reading with five-year-old nonreaders, it was found that children who knew more letter names

had parents who provided a higher proportion of feedback to child miscues that directed the

child’s attention to the print while children who knew fewer letter names and sounds had parents

who provided a greater proportion of feedback in which they supplied the word. Furthermore,

they found that parent feedback was influenced by the type of miscue in that parents tended to

provide sustaining rather than terminal feedback (that is, feedback that helps the child to read the

word versus feedback in which the word is given or the miscue ignored) when the child made no

attempt or labeled the incorrect object but there was no difference in feedback type following

mispronunciations or mislabeling of objects. This suggests that parents provided more direct

assistance to nonreaders who demonstrated less competency in naming the correct objects.

Thus, it seems that characteristics of both the parent and child and the nature of the

parent-child relationship influence parents’ interaction styles during shared book reading. In their

longitudinal study, Mansell and colleagues (2005) demonstrated that, while the storybook

reading styles of mothers are indeed consistent over time, the feedback they provide changes

across the grades and is responsive to characteristics of the child and the nature of the miscue.

For example, with increasing child skill parents accorded children more of the reader role and

decreased their use of the most supportive feedback strategies for helping their child identify a

word, such as supplying the word and giving unambiguous context or anticipatory clues (see also

Evans, Moretti, Shaw & Fox, 2003). Change, as well as stability, in parent interaction styles

10
during shared book reading has also been demonstrated with younger children by Sénéchal,

Cornell and Broda (1995). They examined parents’ verbalizations while reading a picture book

to preverbal and verbal infants. They found that parents reading to 9-month-old infants used

more attention-recruiting verbalizations and more elaboration than those with 27-month-old

infants and, with these older infants, parents posed more questions and provided more feedback.

Also, the types of comments parents made during picture-book reading expanded from labeling

comments, to sequences of labeling questions, to dialogues that exercise the growing linguistic

competency of the child. Stability in parental verbalizations was exemplified by the finding that,

across the age groups, parents monitored and attempted to maximize their infant’s attention to

the book. In a review by Klauda (2009) of the empirical research that examined the nature and

extent of relations between parent support for reading and adolescents’ reading motivation and

engagement, it was found that parents’ support for their children’s reading continues to relate

positively to children’s motivation to read well into their adolescence even though the strategies

parents employ appear to change as their children age. Finally, Martin-Chang and Gould (2012)

examined the relation between parent-to-child and child-to-parent book reading and parent

behaviour during book reading as well as child outcomes in a sample of grade one children.

When children were read to by their parents, the child’s engagement in the story was enhanced

by parent comments that extend and draw the child’s attention to the story, such as comments

about the print, illustration, story-to-life- or story-to-story comparisons (although, because the

results were correlational, the direction of the relationship was not entirely clear). When children

read to their parent, parent text-related comments were more prominent although praise and

comments outside the reading of the text were also featured. This demonstrates that a parent may

11
interact differently during shared book reading depending on who is taking on the principal

reader role (e.g., parent or child).

As these studies demonstrate, parents differ in their interactions with their children during

shared book reading, particularly in the quality and frequency of feedback provided and in the

nature of extratextual remarks. Their behaviour has also been shown to change as a function of

their children’s age and linguistic abilities. However, the evidence that there is some stability in

parental interaction styles over time suggests that some overarching principles may also guide

parent behaviour. Before embarking on a discussion of the nature of these overarching

principles, however, we must first explore the influence of these parent interaction styles during

shared book reading on different child outcomes.

Parental interaction styles and child outcomes.

If parents vary in their interactions with their children during shared book reading, how

then do these differing interaction styles influence the quality of the shared book reading

experience and children’s subsequent reading and literacy development? Parent-child

interactions during shared book reading are indeed varied and complex and much research has

examined this intricate relationship.

Reese and Cox (1999) examined three maternal styles of extratextual comments found to

naturally occur during parent-child storybook reading – Describer, Comprehender, and

Performance-Oriented – for their relative benefits for preschooler’s emergent literacy. The

Describer and Comprehender styles are similar to two of the three styles described by Haden and

colleagues (1996) and the Performance-Oriented Style involves introducing the book and

discussing story meaning upon completion. Reese and Cox assigned a group of four-year olds to

12
receive one of the three reading styles over a six-week period. In comparison with the other two

reading styles, the Describer style provided overall benefits for children’s receptive vocabulary

and print skills. However, when the child’s initial skill level was taken into account, the

Performance-Oriented style had the most benefits for vocabulary development in those children

with higher initial vocabulary and the Describer style was most beneficial for print skills when

children had higher initial story comprehension levels. Thus, shared book reading does appear to

have benefits for children’s early literacy development, but the nature and extent of these effects

seems to depend on certain child characteristics and different interaction styles may benefit

different literacy skills to different extents at differing levels of child reading proficiency.

Stoltz and Fischel (2003) similarly found that the children of parents identified as

Learner Centered in their interactions with their children during shared book reading did not

perform as well as children of Inactive parents on measures of reading ability. However, the data

was collected concurrently and it may well be that the parents of children with better reading

skills no longer needed to be “learner centered” and provide explicit feedback to their children,

while the parents of weaker readers provided this feedback to help increase their child’s reading

skills. Evans, Mansell and Shaw (2006) examined the effect of parental miscue feedback style on

the reading achievement of normally progressing and at risk readers across the primary grades.

After controlling for kindergarten reading achievement, children in both groups whose parents

adopted a code coaxer style in late kindergarten and grade one obtained higher scores in their

word attack skills at the end of grade one. The effect was especially marked for children making

poorer progress at the end of kindergarten. Normally progressing readers in grade two also fared

better in word identification under a code coaxer style.

13
 Britto, Brooks-Gunn, and Griffin (2006) looked at both the reading and teaching patterns

of low-income, young African American mothers while reading with their preschool-age

children. They found evidence for two different reading patterns (Story-Readers and Story-

Tellers) and three teaching patterns (Low Support and Low Teaching; Support and Low

Teaching; Support and Teaching) based on the mother’s verbal and nonverbal interactions during

these sessions. Children whose mothers were identified as Story-Tellers and those from the

Support and Teaching group of mothers had better language skills than children whose mothers

were not in these groups (with maternal education and verbal skills controlled for). The Story-

Teller mothers were interactive and treated shared book-reading as an opportunity to engage in

conversation with their children beyond the pages of the book, interspersing their discussion

before, during, and after reading the text. In contrast, the Story-Reader mothers construed the

activity as limited to the pages of the book and talked less, used fewer forms of decontextualized

language, and focused most of their conversation during the reading of the text. This

demonstrates that the timing of maternal conversation during shared book reading is an

important characteristic of a mother’s reading pattern. The Support and Teaching and Support

and Low Teaching mothers were the most likely to be Story-Tellers (using an interactive

discussion-oriented pattern of reading) compared to the Low Support and Low Teaching group

of mothers, who were more likely to be classified as Story-Readers. With respect to children’s

literacy development, Britto and colleagues found that children's vocabulary appears to be

associated with a more interactive maternal book-reading pattern (i.e., encouraging the child’s

participation in the activity, asking questions, and extending children's knowledge beyond the

pages of the book) and with a teaching pattern that combines both support and instruction. It was

found that merely providing support with low teaching did not appear to be linked with child

14
outcomes. The authors note that, while these findings point to distinct patterns in maternal

interactions that contribute to different extents to children’s literacy development, there is much

less knowledge and research about how and why parents choose the reading and teaching

strategies that they use.

Taken together, these studies demonstrate that a parent’s interaction style during shared

book reading is a function of a variety of factors, such as their gender, education level, stress,

family income, their own childhood experiences with reading, the attachment relationship with

their child, and their child’s developmental level and reading and communication abilities.

Parents demonstrate stability in their particular interaction style over time but they are also able

to demonstrate flexibility in their ability to adapt to different types of texts and to their child’s

developing skills. Furthermore, parental interactions have differing influences on different

aspects of their children’s literacy development. In particular, it appears that reading to children

encourages their vocabulary development but contributes less to the development of word

recognition skills than does actively engaging the child in print-related materials and activities.

Beliefs and Values in Literacy Practices and their Relation to Parent Behaviour

We have seen, to this point, that parents have distinct manners in which they interact with

their children during shared book reading and there are a multitude of factors shaping these

interactions. There is also research that suggests that the beliefs a parent holds can influence the

types of behaviours and literary activities they engage in during shared book reading. These

include beliefs about the importance and function of shared book reading, how parents perceive

their role in their children’s literacy development, and how they view the process by which

children acquire literacy skills.

15
 Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1997) reviewed a variety of research examining how

parents’ beliefs relate to their behaviours. They found a consistent pattern in the research

suggesting that child-rearing beliefs appear to influence parents’ choice of behaviours, some of

which are pertinent to their involvement in children’s education. For example, their review found

that parents who believe that intelligence is malleable tend to develop and implement proactive

strategies designed to help their children succeed in school. In contrast, those who believe that

intelligence and ability are fixed are more likely to respond passively to children’s school

problems. Consistent with this, Davis-Kean (2005) found that parents’ educational expectations

predicted the amount of parent-child involvement in play activities and influenced the types of

stimulation provided in the home. As another example of how beliefs relate to behaviour, it has

been found that parents who hold more child-centered beliefs, such as supporting self-directed

child behaviour, are more likely to be sensitive and supportive of autonomous activity in their

interactions with their children (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Early Child Care Research Network, 2004). Lastly, Sonnenschein, Brody and Munsterman

(1996) emphasized that parents have clear beliefs about the cognitive and social skills that their

children need to master, and about the timelines they should master them within. They also note

that parents select early educational experiences for their children that are consistent with their

beliefs about the skills that are necessary for their children to develop.

Parent beliefs also appear to exert an influence on the educational activities they choose

to engage in with their children. For example, Stipek, Milburn, Clements, and Daniels (1992)

examined how parents’ behaviours were related to whether they embraced a didactic (i.e.,

teacher-directed) or child-centered approach to teaching. Compared to parents who opposed a

didactic approach, those who endorsed it chose schools that were compatible with their beliefs

16
and engaged in relatively more formal teaching activities (e.g. flash cards, workbooks) with their

children, and relatively less informal activities (e.g. reading to their child). Similarly, in a study

by Musun-Miller and Blevins-Knabe (1998), the more important parents felt that mathematics

was and the more important they felt it was for their child to acquire a wide range of skills before

starting school, the more they reported promoting and engaging in mathematics-related activities

with their child. Halle, Kurtz-Costes, and Mahoney (1997) found that the expectations of

economically disadvantaged African-American parents about their children's future scholastic

attainment and their perceptions of their children's current abilities were reliably related to their

reported achievement-fostering behaviours in the home.

There is also evidence for a relation between parent beliefs and the literary activities they

engage in with their child. Martini and Sénéchal (2012) found that parents who reported teaching

literacy skills frequently to their young children tended to have higher expectations about their

child’s early literacy skills. DeBaryshe and Binder (1994) found a strong association between

parental beliefs about reading to preschool-age children and how often parents reported reading

to their children, number of books owned, age at which reading practices were established, and

frequency of questions and verbal feedback in interactions with their child. In a separate study,

DeBaryshe (1995) found that education, income, and mothers’ own reading habits predicted oral

reading with their preschool-age children. Furthermore, mothers with beliefs consistent with

current models of emergent literacy and developmentally appropriate educational practices

provided their children with broader and more frequent joint reading experiences and engaged in

more discussion with their children when reading aloud. An understanding of parental practices

during shared book reading should therefore begin with an understanding of the implicit and

explicit beliefs parents hold about reading development.

17
 Skibbe, Justice, Zucker, and McGinty (2008) have also found evidence for an association

between literary beliefs and practices, where mothers of four and five-year-old children with a

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in their study described fewer positive beliefs about literacy

and engaged in fewer literary activities with their children than those mothers of children with

typically developing language skills. Meagher, Arnold, Doctoroff, and Baker (2008) explored the

relation between beliefs and behaviour in the reading practices of a group of mothers and their

five and six-year-old children. Results indicated that those mothers who believed reading should

involve learning showed more learning-focused behaviour while reading with their children (e.g.,

higher quality scaffolding, asking more specific questions, providing more information), while

those who believed that reading should be fun engaged in more positive interactions while

reading with their children (e.g., higher levels of praise, positive emotional tone). However, the

authors note that the results are correlational and it could be that this relation between beliefs and

behaviour is bidirectional.

Not surprisingly, parents also have beliefs about how reading is best taught. Within the

psychological literature, top-down or constructivist approaches to reading (e.g., Cambourne,

1988; Goodman, 1989; Smith, 1978, 1992) emphasize the importance of higher order contextual

information that draws from knowledge about the structures of text and linguistics as well as

general knowledge about gaining meaning and focusing attention to various aspects of the print.

In contrast, bottom-up or graphophonemic approaches (e.g., Gough, 1972; LaBerge & Samuels,

1974; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989) focus on the efficient and automatic recoding of print into a

phonological code in short-term memory where the higher level processing of meaning occurs.

Interactive theories about reading development consider both of these approaches on some level

(e.g., Plaut, McLelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996; Pressley, 1998; Seidenberg &

18
McLelland, 1989). Furthermore, parents would be expected to have their own influential naïve

theories and beliefs about the development of literacy skills and how reading is best taught.

In an observational study, Evans, Barraball, and Eberle (1998) found that parents’ views

of how they read with their grade one children were consistent with their behaviors during shared

book reading. Compared to those parents who reported following a top-down approach, those

who reported following a bottom-up approach to helping their child read were observed to be

less likely to provide the incorrectly read word and point out the context clues, and were more

likely to encourage the child to try the word again and give graphophonemic help. From this

work, Evans, Fox, Cremaso and McKinnon (2004) developed a survey to examine general parent

beliefs about the process of reading and what they viewed as valuable elements and practices in

learning to read. Parents who viewed reading as a process in which the letters and order of the

letters are relied on and processed automatically through practice to derive meaning from text

assigned higher importance ratings to phonics and sounding out words. They also more highly

endorsed using books with controlled vocabulary and familiar spelling patterns. In contrast,

parents who believed that readers rely on their knowledge of the world and the language and

context of the passage, and derive meaning without having to pay attention to all the letters, gave

higher ratings to contextual approaches to reading unfamiliar words (e.g., knowledge of language

structures, looking at pictures, using general knowledge). These parents also preferred using

books that contain natural language as opposed to controlled syntax and vocabulary. Results of

these studies support the notion that how a parent believes children learn to read influences their

approach to teaching their children to read and the types of books they select to read with them.

It logically follows that, if parent educational beliefs are related to parenting practices,

these beliefs and practices would also be related to child outcomes. Xu, Kushner Benson,

19
Mudrey-Camino, and Steiner (2010) found that parental educational expectations for their fifth

grade children had the strongest overall beneficial effect on their child’s self-regulated learning

and the second largest beneficial effect on reading achievement, as compared to other variables

such as homework help, homework frequency, TV rules, extracurricular activities, and school

involvement. Consistent with these findings, Martini and Sénéchal (2012) found that parent

expectations predicted unique variance in four and five-year-old children’s early literacy skills

beyond that predicted by their direct teaching behaviours or by SES levels.

Zhang, Haddad, Torres, and Chen (2011) found evidence for a reciprocal relation

between parents’ educational expectations and adolescents’ educational expectations in that

students’ previous achievement affected parents’ expectations which, in turn, affected students’

expectations. Furthermore, both adolescent and parent expectations made independent

contributions to academic achievement later in adolescence. Stability and change in parent

beliefs was demonstrated by the finding that, as children aged, parents became more sensitive to

their child’s goals and wishes and adjusted their educational expectations accordingly. Gender

and ethnicity further moderated these relations, as the effect of parents’ expectations on

children’s expectations was strongest for male children and weakest among African Americans

as compared to other ethnic groups (i.e., Asian, Hispanic, and White Americans). A multiethnic,

longitudinal study by Davis-Kean and Sexton (2009) provided further evidence for cultural

variations in the relation between parent beliefs and related child outcomes. They found that

parents’ expectations for educational success were a strong predictor of child achievement for

European American, African American, and Asian American families but not for Hispanic

American families.

20
Parent Goals for and Behaviour during Shared Book Reading

The studies described above demonstrate that the beliefs parents hold about literacy

development and how reading is best taught influence their behaviours and interactions with

their children during shared book reading and these beliefs can lead to differing child outcomes.

What is much less well understood is the nature of the goals parents hold for reading with their

children and how these goals relate to or intersect with their beliefs and behaviours. The

importance of a specific focus on goals in understanding how parents support their children has

been previously described in the literature. For example, in a study of how parents help their

children learn math, Schnee and Bose (2010) stated that: “If parent involvement is increasingly

seen as a policy move towards improving student achievement and part of math educators’ view

of how children learn math, then how and why parents interact with their children’s math

homework becomes critically important.” Achhpal, Goldman, and Rohner (2007) identified

similarities and differences between Head Start parents of European American and Puerto Rican

backgrounds with respect to their socialization goals and expectations about the early educational

experiences of their preschool age children. From this research, they concluded that, in order to

maximize the effects of early childhood programs and interventions, educators and policy

makers must recognize and respond to differences in parents’ goals and expectations.

Parent goals are also important in a more general way because of their influence on

parental practices and, as such, their overall impact on how children are raised, educated,

disciplined, and cared for. For example, Bigelow and Zhou (2001) found that the similarities

over grade levels between parent and child ratings of goals for the child’s schooling (e.g.,

acquiring knowledge, getting a good job) were more common than were the differences in their

ratings, suggesting that the goals that parents have for their children have an impact on their

21
children’s own goals for their education and schooling. Baker and Scher (2002) found that

parental identification of pleasure as a reason for reading predicted children’s motivation for

reading. Furthermore, Suizzo (2004) found that the specific, short-term goals that parents have

are frequently viewed as steps towards more general long-term goals, which in turn may affect

children later in their lives. Baharudin, Hong, Lim, and Sheereen Zulkefly (2010) found a

positive relation between parent goals for their child’s education and more positive parenting

practices, such as school involvement. School involvement, in turn, was related to the

adolescents’ academic success. Taken together, these studies point to the importance of studying

parental goals when considering parents’ involvement in their child’s education.

As noted by Gonzalez (1996): “Parents interact using such different styles.” Gonzalez

attributes this diversity to the different representations that different adults may hold about the

meaning of the task. Thus, while some may concentrate on the interactive process itself and use

it as a situation for teaching/learning, others will orient more towards the final product and focus

on finishing the task properly, rather than on helping the child learn to do it. Remarkably, despite

the mounting literature on shared book reading, research has scarcely addressed how parents

construe literacy development and shared book reading and what guides parent behaviour during

these interactions. Sonnenschein and colleagues (1997) found that the most common parental

responses to questions about the most important reasons for reading fell into the categories of

daily living, employment, education, and empowerment. It was also found that parents tended to

emphasize either the view that literacy is a source of entertainment or that literacy is a skill to be

deliberately cultivated. Parents who emphasized a skills approach were more likely to report

engaging in direct reading instruction while those who emphasized an entertainment perspective

focused on the child’s experience, tailored their approach to their child’s abilities and interests,

22
and engaged in a higher number of “entertainment” print-related activities with their child.

Furthermore, while there were many commonalities between the experiences and goals reported

by families of different sociocultural backgrounds, families with lower incomes were more likely

to emphasize a skills orientation than were the middle-income families.

As an ancillary part of study by Evans, Shaw, and Bell (2000), 149 parents responded to

an open-ended question about what they hoped to accomplish in reading with their child. Parents

most often cited some aspect of learning to read but goals related to enjoyment, building general

knowledge, and fostering their child’s emotional development were also noted. Guided by these

comments and the objective to more systematically collect data about this question, Evans and

Williamson (2003) developed a survey for parents to rate their various goals for shared book

reading (‘Parent Goals for Shared Reading Questionnaire’, see Appendix A).

Using this questionnaire with a cross-sectional sample of 318 children from Junior

Kindergarten (JK) to grade 3, Audet, Evans, Williamson, and Reynolds (2008) found that parents

do indeed have distinct goals for shared book reading. While Sonnenschein and colleagues

(1997) described two goals that parents endorse for reading with their child; enjoyment of

reading and helping their child learn to read, Audet and colleagues found evidence for the

existence of five subsets of goals that parents endorse when reading with their children. These

include stimulation (expand their child’s world and expose them to a variety of facts, languages,

genres, and ideas), foster reading (help their child learn to read and teach and monitor the

development of their child’s literacy skills), bond (share quality time and strengthen their

relationship with their child), soothe (soothe their child and establish a routine for bedtime), and

enjoyment (increase their child’s enjoyment of reading and interest in and respect for books).

23
These five goal subsets were consistent across child gender while parent age and level of

education had only a marginally significant effect on the ratings they gave the goal subsets.

In addition, results from Audet and colleagues indicated that certain goal subsets were

rated more highly than others, with the goal subsets of enjoy and bond rated the highest and

equally highly at each grade, followed by read, stimulate, and lastly soothe as the lowest rated

goal subset at each grade. However, the goal of fostering reading was relatively more highly

rated by parents of grade one children than by parents of children in higher or lower grades. As

noted by the authors, this result is consistent with the finding of Mansell and colleagues (2005)

that parents increase their use of graphophonemic cues as a feedback strategy during the grade

one year, when children are typically beginning to learn to read in school. Together, these two

findings suggest a relation between parents’ reasons for reading with their child and what they

are actually doing when they read with their child.

Finally, Audet and colleagues (2008) found modest support for the notion that, as parents

increasingly endorsed a bottom-up, graphophonemic approach to learning to read, fostering

reading as a goal increased while the goals of bonding with and soothing decreased. The authors

noted, however, that this relation between goals and beliefs was modest at best, and that the data

on parent beliefs about approaches to beginning reading and reading instruction accounted for

less than three percent of the variance in the goal subset endorsement. Parents’ beliefs and goals

could thus independently contribute to how parents negotiate shared book reading with their

children but very few studies have explored this possibility.

Doyle and Zhang (2011) also explored the relation between goals and beliefs by

conducting a study to identify parent goals for participating in one of two family literacy

program models with varying participation structures (i.e., parents attended with their preschool

24
age children or alone). They found that parents in both programs were motivated by a common

underlying goal: to support their children’s literacy development. However, the groups differed

in the parents’ beliefs about how the program met their goal, as the parent-only group saw

themselves as central to the process by which their children’s learning would be supported while

parents in the parent–child program cited greater emphasis on the direct experience for their

child. This study underlines the importance of studying the relation between beliefs and goals

because it illustrates how parents with common underlying goals may engage in different

behaviours because of differing beliefs about how the goal should best be accomplished.

The findings of Audet and colleagues (2008) provide an important step towards

developing an understanding of what motivates parent behaviour during shared book reading. Of

note from this study is the finding that, across all grades, the goals of bonding and enjoyment

were most highly rated. This finding was consistent across parent education levels and child

gender and indicates that most parents who sit down to read with their children are doing so with

the intent to create an enjoyable experience and bond with their child. However, the body of

research previously discussed indicates that it is active and direct parent involvement in teaching

children to read during shared book reading that contributes to children’s literacy development,

not just the experience of reading a book with their parent in and of itself. Are parent goals for

reading with their children therefore in opposition to the behaviours research has indicated are

critical for fostering literacy skills in children? As described by Britto and Brooks-Gunn (2001),

the social and emotional aspects of family literacy are indeed understudied and poorly

understood, particularly as they relate to children’s reading abilities. Baker, Mackler,

Sonnenschein, and Serpell (2001) explored the affective interactions during shared book reading

with parents and their grade one children, and how these interactions related to children’s

25
literacy development. Results indicated that many parents did not use the shared book reading

interaction as one in which to teach decoding skills and that the talk within it (generally

meaning-related talk about the illustrations) was not strongly related to children’s reading

achievement but was positively related to the the affective quality of the interaction in creating

an enjoyable experience. The authors concluded that how parents engage in shared book reading

or other literacy activities with their children will depend, in part, on their particular goals at that

particular time. Likewise, Bergin (2001) found that the affective quality of the shared reading

experience was strongly related to children’s attitudes towards reading as well as children’s

reading fluency. Thus, a parent focus on creating an enjoyable experience during shared book

reading would not be misguided if it leads to child engagement in and motivation to read. This

notion was supported by Martin-Chang and Gould (2012), who found that shared book reading

offered opportunities for the development of both literacy appreciation and literacy skills.

As has been described, research indicates that there is a relation between the beliefs

parents hold about reading and the behaviours they report engaging in while reading with their

children. In addition, Audet and colleagues (2008) demonstrated that parents have specific goals

for shared book reading and these goals are modestly related to their beliefs about the acquisition

of literacy skills. No study, however, has examined the two in conjunction with respect to the

roles in predicting parental behavior during shared book reading.

Audet and colleagues (2008) made a start on addressing this issue. Specifically, they

examined the extent to which parents’ ratings on the Survey of Goals for Shared Reading (Evans

& Williamson, 2003) related to the extent to which they referenced print when reading with their

JK children. The book reading sessions were observed and audiotaped by the researchers and

behaviours during these sessions were recorded. From the survey results, summary scores were

26
created for the goal subsets of foster reading and stimulation, while the goal subsets of

enjoyment, bond, and soothe were combined to create a third summary score. These latter three

goal subsets were combined together as affective goals entailing a positive mood. Subgroups of

contrasting parents were then created: those who rated foster reading higher than the other two

goal subsets and those for whom the opposite pattern held. It was found that, while little print

referencing occurred during the JK year, parents whose top goal was to help their child to learn

to read nonetheless coached their child in aspects of reading, through various comments that

referenced the print, more often than did parents who rated this goal as less important.

Furthermore, those parents rating foster reading the highest were most likely to engage in echo

reading. These findings suggest that goals may in fact drive behaviour; however, the young age

of the children provided limited opportunity to study this.

The Current Study

To expand on the findings of Audet and colleagues (2008) and to further explore the

relation between parents’ goals for, beliefs about, and behaviour during shared book reading, two

studies were conducted.

The first study examined whether the cross sectional findings of Audet and colleagues

(2008) would be replicated in a longitudinal sample of children observed from JK to grade one.

The use of a longitudinal sample allowed us to better determine whether parents' goals for

reading change across the grades. It was hypothesized that 1) similar goal subsets would be

found as in the previous cross-sectional research by Audet and colleagues; 2) the relative

importance of goals, as described previously, would be replicated in that the goal subsets of bond

and enjoyment would be the most highly rated at each grade; and 3) there would be an increase in

27
endorsement of the goal of fostering reading skills during the grade one year when formal

reading instruction in school begins.

The second study examined the relation between parents’ goals for shared book reading

(observed in Study 1), their beliefs about reading development, and their behaviours while

reading with their children. The findings of Audet and colleagues suggested a possible relation

between beliefs and goals but, because the study was conducted when children were in junior

kindergarten, they were able to examine in only a limited way whether the goals parents have for

shared book reading were related to their behaviours when reading with their children. The

limitation was that, at that young age, relatively little teaching of reading occurs. Furthermore,

goals may act as a moderator of the influence of beliefs on behavior. For example, the relation

between parent beliefs about how reading is best taught and parent behaviours during shared

book reading might only be observed when parents also endorse the goal of teaching their child

to read. Their beliefs about how reading is best taught would not be expected to influence their

behaviour when their goal is not to teach their child to read.

As such, the second study investigated the relations between both the goals parents have

for shared book reading and their beliefs about reading development to their behaviour while

reading with their children during their child’s senior kindergarten (SK) year. Parents completed

questionnaires assessing their beliefs about how best to teach reading and their goals for shared

reading. They were also observed and audiotaped while reading with their children and their

behaviours were coded. The SK year was chosen because there is likely to be more commentary

about the print and coaching of reading during shared book reading at this age than in JK as well

as more variability in parental goals during this year than in JK or grade 1. Overall, it is

postulated that parents with high ratings on the foster reading goal subset would be more likely

28
to engage in behaviours related to the teaching of literacy skills to their children (e.g., focusing

attention to the print, correcting reading errors, focusing on the sounds of words), while those

parents more highly endorsing the goals of bonding with their child and enjoyment will engage in

behaviours designed to create a positive affective environment (e.g., relating the story to the

child’s own experience and understanding, discussing illustrations). Moreover, beliefs and goals

are anticipated to interact in predicting parental behaviours, with goals acting as a moderator of

the relation between beliefs about what is important in learning to read and parental behaviours

during shared book reading.

To explore these possibilities, four specific sets of hypotheses were thus proposed for this

second study. First, it was hypothesized that, as parents’ use of extratextual comments that

engage the child in the story but do not directly teach reading skills increases, their ratings of

goals related to fostering reading skills would decrease while their ratings of goals related to

bonding and engaging in a positive and enjoyable experience with their child would increase.

Second, it was hypothesized that instances where the parent simply provides the word in

response to a child miscue would be highest among parents with high ratings of goals to bond

and engage in a positive and enjoyable experience with their child and lowest among parents

with high ratings of the goal to foster their child’s reading skills. Next, it was hypothesized that

parents’ who highly rate goals related to fostering their child’s reading skills would be more

likely to use cues that help their child to correct reading miscues (including providing

graphophonemic or context cues) than parents with high ratings of goals related to bonding and

engaging in a positive and enjoyable experience with their child. Lastly, the relations between

parent goals, beliefs, and behaviour was explored. It was hypothesized that parent beliefs about

how reading skills are best taught (i.e., constructivist versus graphophonemic approaches) would

29
relate to whether they use context versus graphophonemic cues to correct their child’s reading

errors, but only if they concomitantly endorse the goal of fostering their child’s reading skills.

Thus, in the presence of high ratings on the foster reading goal subset, constructivist beliefs

about reading development will relate to the use of context cues to correct reading errors while

graphophonemic beliefs will relate to the use of graphophonemic cues.

Study 1

The first study examined parent ratings on The Parent Goals for Shared Reading

Questionnaire (Evans & Williamson, 2003) using a longitudinal sample of children from JK to

grade 1. Consistency between the pattern of goal subset endorsement of this sample and that

described by Audet and colleagues (2008), who used a cross-sectional sample of children from

JK to grade 3, was examined.

Methodology

Participants.

Participants were drawn from 151 parents who agreed to participate with their child in a

longitudinal study of children’s literacy for three years (from their child’s JK to grade one year).

The participating parent identified himself or herself as the parent who most often read with the

child. Their children attended various rural (n = 41) and urban (n = 110) schools in the region.

The children were 4 years, 6 months of age, on average at the time of the first home visit in JK.

54 percent of participating children (N=82) in the sample were male and 46 percent were female

(N=69). Of the 144 participants who completed the demographic questionnaire in their child’s

JK year, 92 percent were mothers (N=132), 4 percent were fathers (N=6), and 4 percent were

30
completed by both parents (N=6). 98 percent of mothers (N=141) had at least a high school

education while 85 percent (N=122) had some level of college or university. 96 percent of

fathers (N=138) had at least a high school education while 78 percent (N=112) had some level of

college or university. Of the 137 parents who provided information about their family income on

this questionnaire, 10 percent (N=14) made less than $40,000 in a year, 27 percent (N=37) made

between $40,000 and $70,000 in a year, 32 percent (N=44) made between $70,000 and $100,000

in a year, and 31 percent (N=42) made more than $100,000 in a year. Parents reported that they

spent, on average, 155 minutes a week engaged in shared book reading with their child.

Due to the nature of the statistical analyses involved, completed questionnaires at all

three years were required for a participant’s inclusion in the study. Furthermore, questionnaires

were deemed ineligible and excluded from analyses if five or more items were not filled in or if

there was little or no variability in the responses (that is, if all items were given the same rating

and less than four items were given a different rating). From the original sample of 151

participants, 29 participants had a questionnaire either excluded or not returned for one year of

the study, 21 for two years of the study, and nine for all of the three years of the study (59 total).

When examined by grade, fourteen parents of JK children did not return the survey, three were

excluded for low variability, and two were excluded for leaving greater than five items

incomplete. At SK, 35 parents did not return the questionnaire and five were excluded for low

variability. At Grade 1, 37 parents did not return the questionnaire and two were excluded for

low variability. In total, 92 participants remained for the analyses. While only limited

information was obtained about why parents did not complete the goal questionnaire, it is known

that eight participants moved, one withdrew from the study, and one could not be contacted.

Given that only nine of the 151 participants failed to complete the questionnaire at all three time

31
points and attrition within any longitudinal study must be expected, there is little reason to

believe that these 9 participants differed from the full sample in any statistically meaningful

manner. Furthermore, 80% of participants (121 out of 151) completed the questionnaire at two of

the time periods indicating that, overall, participation was relatively high.

Independent samples t-tests were conducted to determine if the 92 participants included

in the study differed from the 59 participants excluded on any of the key demographic variables

described above. It should be noted that seven of the participants did not complete the

demographic questionnaire, five of whom also failed to complete the goal questionnaire during

any of the three years of the study. A further five participants who completed the demographic

questionnaire did not respond to the question about their family income range. Results indicated

that there was no significant difference between the included and excluded participants with

respect to maternal education [t (142) = -.47, p = .64], family income range [t (135) = -1.50, p =

.14], child gender [t (149) = .01, p = .99], or time spent each week engaged in shared book

reading with their child [t (141) = -.89, p = .37]. These results indicate that the participants

included in the analyses were representative of the full sample initially recruited for the study.

Materials.

The Parent Goals for Shared Reading Questionnaire (Evans & Williamson, 2003; see

Appendix A) was used to assess the goals that parent hold for this activity. It consists of three

sections. Section A asks questions related to demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, highest

level of schooling completed, amount of time spent reading at home). Section B contains 41

items that present possible purposes for reading with their child on which parents rate the

importance of each of these items on a 5-point Likert scale, from 1 being not an important

32
purpose to 5 being a purpose of great importance. Section C (not used in the current study) lists

6 general goals for shared reading and asks the parents to rank order these goals.

Procedures.

Approval of the research was gained from a local school board and schools designated for

the project. Participants were recruited by sending information letters home to parents via JK

classrooms and soliciting volunteers for the longitudinal study (involving home observations of

shared book reading sessions, parent surveys, and child assessment of literacy skills each year).

Participants were recruited in JK over two years leading to two separate cohorts who were

followed longitudinally throughout the duration of the study. Recruitment was completed at two

time periods as it was not possible to recruit the number of required participants in one year nor

could all the home visits for such a large sample have been completed in the necessary

timeframes. Parents initially received a letter (see Appendix B) that described the study,

explained their right to anonymity and to leave questions blank or withdraw from the study,

provided instructions for returning the completed questionnaires, and gave contact information.

Parents who expressed an interest in participating in the study returned the accompanying

consent form to their child’s teacher and the researchers collected these forms from the schools.

When their child was in JK, parents received a package with an information letter,

questionnaires, and envelope in which to return the completed questionnaire. Subsequently,

when their child was in SK and grade one, parents received another brief information letter that

requested them to fill out and return the accompanying questionnaires. All questionnaires

returned received an ID code to allow for tracking of responses across grades.

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Results

Descriptive statistics for individual item ratings at each grade, including means and

standard deviations, are presented in Table 1.

Confirmatory factor analysis.

A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to determine if the five-goal

component model from the (JK-grade 3) cross-sectional sample of Audet et al. (2008) emerged

in the (JK-grade 1) longitudinal sample of the current study. While the ranges of included grades

differed between studies, in Audet et al., the same main components found in the overall sample

also emerged when the sample of only JK-grade 1 students was analyzed. Furthermore, the same

items that fell under each goal subset in the overall sample fell under these components in the

sample of younger children. To further ensure consistency between studies, the same items

selected for inclusion in Audet et al. study were included in this analysis. This resulted in the

exclusion of item 4. Also excluded were items that did not emerge in the final factor structure of

that study. Thus, items 3 and 9 were excluded from the current CFA because they sat by

themselves on an extraneous factor in Audet et al. and items 3, 31, and 35 were excluded because

they cross-loaded on more than one factor.

Maximum likelihood estimation of the model suggested by the Audet et al. (2008)

findings produced unfavourable fit statistics, χ2 (584, N = 92) = 1106.34, p < .001, GFI = .604,

RMSEA = .099, CFI = .765. While there was little theoretical basis for testing competing factor

models given the limited use of this survey and research into parent goals for shared book

reading, a second four-factor model was tested in which the goal subsets of bond and enjoyment

were combined. This relation was suggested by the finding of Audet and colleagues that the

34
means of these two goal subsets did not significantly differ. Maximum likelihood estimation of

this model further produced unfavourable fit statistics, χ2 (588, N = 92) = 1172.06, p < .001, GFI

= .576, RMSEA = .104, CFI = .737. Furthermore, in comparing these two models, the change in

χ2 relative to the change in degrees of freedom was significant [χ2 (4, N = 92) = 65.72, p < .001]

indicating that the fit of the initial 5-factor model was more favourable.

Exploratory factor analysis.

The results of the CFA suggested that the factor structure from Audet et al. (2008) was

not an optimal fit for the data in the current study but provided little information about the factor

structure for this new, longitudinal sample. Thus, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted.

As in the Audet et al. study, items with little variability in responses (i.e., range ≤ 2) were

excluded from the analysis. This resulted in the loss of items 2 and 4 (as in the 2008 study) as

well as item 5.

From inspection of the scree plot generated by the principal components analysis with

varimax rotation on the responses to the Parent Goals for Shared Reading survey (N=92), a four-

component structure was suggested. This four-component structure was also deemed most

appropriate by the use of the Parallel Analysis procedure (Hayton, Allen, & Scarpello, 2004;

Horn, 1965). Given that the four-component solution was deemed most appropriate, the principal

components analysis was re-run with the specifications that only four components be extracted.

The rotated component matrix was then inspected to ensure that all items had loadings of .4 or

greater and that any items that cross-loaded on more than one component with loadings greater

than .4 were eliminated from the analysis. This resulted in the elimination of items 9, 10, 16, 18,

and 32. It should be noted that a small number of the remaining 33 items had moderate cross-

35
loadings on more than one component. However, the difference between these loadings was

deemed to be sufficient (equal to or greater than .08) and these items will be noted in the

component descriptions below. The final four-component solution explained respectively 36, 10,

8, and 7 percent of the variance, for a total of 61.22% of the total variance. Eigen values were

12.02, 3.35, 2.53, and 2.31 respectively. Table 2 shows the item loadings on these components.

While many aspects of the resulting component structure were consistent with the five-

goal structure proposed by Audet et al. (2008), some important distinctions were nevertheless

present. To begin, the first component was almost identical in item distribution to that of the

“foster reading” goal subset of Audet et al. (2008) and thus retained its original label in the

current study. The only distinction was that item 2, “To help my child learn to read” was

eliminated from the current analysis due to its restricted range. Furthermore, item 35, “To

increase my child’s listening skills,” which had been eliminated from the Audet et al. analysis,

was now included on this component. Finally, item 29, “To prepare my child for formal reading

instruction or supplement the instruction he/she is already receiving” showed a moderate cross-

loading on another component. The second component was analogous to the 2008 goal subset of

“stimulation” (and thus also retained its original label) in that it contained eight of the eleven

original items. The remaining three items (10, 16, and 18) were eliminated due to significant

cross loadings on more than one component while item 13, “For my child to develop

morals/ethics through books,” showed a moderate cross-loading with another component.

Finally, item 31, “To develop an appreciation of the beauty of books and illustrations in them,”

eliminated from the 2008 analysis, now fell within this component but cross-loaded moderately

on another factor. The third component consisted of all six original items from the Audet et al.

“soothe” goal subset, as well two items from the original “bond” subset of goals: item 11, “To

36
experience physical closeness with my child” and item 24, “To strengthen the relationship

between myself and my child.” Item 24 further showed a moderate cross-loading on another

factor. This component has been labeled “closeness” for the current study. Finally, the fourth

component contained all four items from the 2008 “enjoyment” goal subset as well as two items

from the original “bond” subset: item 14, “To share an activity I enjoy with my child” and item

19, “To create a positive childhood experience for my child that he/she will always remember.”

Item 19 also showed a moderate cross-loading on another factor. Furthermore, item 3 (“To

develop my child’s creativity and imagination”) eliminated from the Audet et al. analysis, now

fell within this factor. This component retained the label of “enjoyment” for the current study.

Analysis of goals by grade.

A Repeated Measures ANOVA was conducted with the factors Grade (JK, SK, 1) by

Goal (stimulate, foster reading, closeness, enjoyment) using the Greenhouse-Geisser correction

to correct for violations to the assumption of sphericity. A significant main effect of Goal was

found, F (2.69, 244.63) = 79.43, p < .001, η2= .47, indicating that, across all grades, certain goal

subsets were rated more highly than others. There was no main effect of grade but a significant

interaction between goal subset and grade was found, F (5.21, 473.67) = 4.32, p < .01, η2= .05,

indicating that the pattern of goal subset endorsement was not consistent over time. As can be

seen in Figure 1, it appears that the goal subset of enjoyment was rated the highest at each grade,

followed by read, stimulate, and closeness as the lowest rated goal subset across all grades.

Paired sample t-tests (df = 91) with alpha set at .005 as a Bonferroni correction showed that all

37
goal means significantly differed from each other (p ≤ .001), with the exception that means for

the two lowest rated goals, stimulate and closeness, did not significantly differ.

To explore the significant overall interaction between grade and goal subset, one-way

ANOVAs were conducted for each goal subset to test for differences in endorsement over time.

The results of these one-way ANOVAs were not significant for the goal subsets of stimulation,

closeness, or enjoyment (p > .05). However, the ANOVA for the foster reading goal subset was

significant F (2,182) = 6.88, p = .01, η2= .07. Using LSD post-hoc comparisons, it was found that

the parents of children in grade one rated the foster reading goal subset significantly higher than

parents in JK (p < .001) but not than parents in SK. Parents in SK, however, rated the this goal

subset significantly higher than parents in JK (p < .005).

Summary

The initial component structure of goal subset endorsement from the cross sectional

sample of Audet et al. (2008) was not replicated in the longitudinal sample of the current study.

In the longitudinal sample, a four-component solution, rather than five, best characterized the

responses. There could be several reasons for these results.

First, the longitudinal sample, for which inclusion involved the completion of

questionnaires over three years, may have had characteristics distinct from the cross-sectional

sample of the Audet et al. (2008) study. In the latter study, participation was limited to a one-

time anonymous completion of a single measure rather than commitment over a three-year

period entailing questionnaires and observations. The participants of the current, longitudinal

study might include parents who are more highly invested in their child’s literacy development

38
than those parents from the 2008 study and they could thus have different goals for reading with

their children. Furthermore, these longitudinal parents might also be more inclined to give high

ratings than parents in the cross-sectional study as their high investment in their child’s reading

is likely related to overall higher goals related to reading, which would thus lead to higher ratings

(and, perhaps, reduced variability in responding) across the various goal subsets.

Second, the grade range of these two samples was different in that the 2008 sample

spanned parents of children in grades JK, SK, 1, 2 and 3 versus JK, SK and 1 of the present

study. While Audet and colleagues found little difference in goal subset endorsement between

their overall sample and the sample of only JK-grade 1 participants, one must still consider that

ratings of goal subset endorsement were averaged over time (that is, ratings for each item were

averaged across all grades included in the study). Therefore, the inclusion in the 2008 study of

ratings for parents of children in grades 2 and 3 could potentially lead to different overall

(averaged) item ratings than in the current study in which these grades were not included.

Finally, as noted by Russell, Kahn, Spoth, and Altmaier (1998), the size of the sample

that is available and the distribution of scores on the measures used in the analysis are both

particularly relevant to the use of CFA in experimental studies. They argued that fewer than 100

observations can result in unreliable estimates of the population parameters in a CFA, as will a

ratio of participants to parameters that is fewer than 5:1. They also noted that maximum

likelihood procedures assume that the data being analyzed are multivariate normal and, if not, the

value of the chi-square statistic will be inflated and the standard error associated with the model

parameters increased. In the current study, there were only 92 observations and 82 parameters to

be estimated and data that did not meet the assumption of multivariate normality. Thus, it is not

39
entirely surprising that the factor structure from Audet et al. (2008) was not replicated using the

CFA procedure.

Nevertheless, results of current study demonstrated many similarities between the sets of

goals in these two studies. To begin, the goals of fostering reading and stimulate emerge in both,

with similar items, the few exceptions being ones that cross-loaded with other components. In

addition, both studies arrived at goal subsets of soothe and enjoyment. The difference was that

the current study found that items that emerged on the bond goal subset in Audet et al. (2008)

were distributed across the previously identified soothe and enjoyment goal subsets. This led to

renaming one of the goal subsets “closeness” to better reflect the items. This new title reflects a

parent’s desire to engage in shared book reading in order to experience physical and emotional

closeness with their child, which also entails soothing and relaxing their child. The second goal

subset retained the label of enjoyment, as it continued to describe a parent’s intention to create an

enjoyable experience with their child as well as a positive association with books and reading.

Also consistent with the findings of Audet et al. (2008) was the pattern of goal subset

endorsement over time. In the 2008 sample, parents rated the enjoyment and bond subsets the

highest across all grades, followed by foster reading, stimulate, and soothe. This pattern was

replicated in the current sample with goal subset ratings highest for enjoyment, followed by

foster reading, stimulate, and closeness. Furthermore, Audet et al. demonstrated that the goal

subset of foster reading was the only goal subset to show changes in ratings over time in that

parents of children in grade one rated this goal subset significantly higher than parents in JK and

SK, who did not differ, and higher than those in Grades two and three, who also did not differ.

This pattern was also demonstrated in the current study, as parents of children in grade one and

SK rated the foster reading goal subset significantly higher than parents in JK, while their ratings

40
did not significantly differ. This could suggest that parents in the longitudinal sample, a group

potentially more actively engaged in their children’s academic development (as discussed

above), are beginning to prioritize the teaching of reading skills to their children at an earlier age

than those in the cross-sectional sample.

Study 2

Principle components analyses using both longitudinal and cross-sectional samples

revealed that the goal subset of helping the child learn to read emerged in both studies with very

similar items. These findings point to the robustness of this component of the questionnaire as

well as to this goal for shared book reading. The component of providing a stimulating

experience was also generally congruent between these two studies. Somewhat less stability was

found for the other items in that they fell on two rather than three factors, However these latter

three components all reflected non reading goals – i.e., cognitive stimulation, enjoyment, and

closeness with the child. These two contrasting goal types (i.e., reading versus non-reading

related goals) were expected to differentially relate to the behaviours that parents of SK children

displayed in their extratextual comments and in how they attempted to help their child over

reading errors when the child took on the reader role. The following predictions were made:

1. Parents’ use of extratextual comments that engage the child but do not directly teach

reading skills will decrease as their ratings on the Foster Reading goal subset increase,

and increase as their ratings for the Non-Reading goal increase.

2. As parent ratings of goals to foster their children’s reading skills increase, the instances

of simply providing the word in response to their child’s reading errors would decrease.

In contrast, as non-reading related goals increase, the instances of providing the word

41
 in response to miscues would increase as a result of the parent’s attempt to keep the

interaction and storyline flowing.

3. Parent ratings of the goal to foster reading skills during shared book reading would be

positively associated with their use of sustaining feedback to help their child over

reading errors (i.e. graphophonemic and context cues), while ratings of goals to engage

in a positive experience with their child would be negatively related to providing

sustaining feedback.

4. Parent constructivist beliefs about how reading skills are best taught would relate to

their use of context cues to help their child over reading errors while graphophonemic

beliefs would relate to the use of graphophonemic cues, but only if parents

concomitantly endorsed fostering their child’s reading skills as a goal for shared book

reading. Thus, if the goal is not to help with reading then the beliefs that one has about

how reading is best taught should have little bearing on the type of feedback provided.

Methodology

Participants.

The participant pool for Study 2 was that of Study 1 from whom data from the goal

questionnaire and observations of parents reading with their children were gathered. Only data

from the child’s SK year was used for the second study. From the initial sample of 151 children

in JK, 40 participants were eliminated from the analyses due to incomplete goal questionnaires

or because of little to no variability in their ratings (as described in Study 1).

Of these 111 participants, a further twelve participants were removed from subsequent

analyses because the home book reading session could not be completed. Ten of these

42
participants lived in rural and/or remote areas that were difficult to travel to in winter for the

observation. For the remaining two, a home visit could not be scheduled because the parent

either could not be contacted or declined to participate in this portion of the research project.

Finally, one additional participant was eliminated because the parent’s first language was not

English and, because her child read at an advanced level for her age, she was thus not able to

correct the few reading errors that her child made. To be included in the study analyses, parents

must have made a minimum of five error corrections throughout the book reading session. In

total, 98 participants thus furnished the data for how parents read with their SK child.

As in Study 1, independent samples t-tests were conducted to determine if the 98 families

included in the study differed from the 53 participants excluded from analyses on any of the key

demographic variables previously described. For those participants who provided demographic

information (as described in Study 1), results indicated that there was no significant difference

between the included and excluded participants with respect to maternal education [t (142) = -

1.13, p = .26], family income range [t (135) = -1.54, p = .13], child gender [t (149) = -.07, p =

.94], or time spent each week engaged in shared book reading with their child [t (141) = -.95, p =

.34]. These results indicate that the participants included in the analyses were representative of

the full sample initially recruited for the study.

Materials.

Goal questionnaire. The Parent Goals for Shared Reading Questionnaire (Evans &

Williamson, 2003; See Appendix A), as described in Study 1, was used to assess the extent to

which parents endorsed reading development versus non-reading development goals during

43
shared book reading. Items falling into each of these two contrasting goals subtypes are

displayed in Table 3.

Ratings on this survey from all participants were entered into a database. Two summary

scores were created based on the results from the principal components analysis of Study 1: The

first, Foster Reading, consisted of the items from the foster reading goal subset of Study 1 that

clearly loaded on that factor. The second component, Non-Reading, consisted of all of the clearly

loading remaining items from the goal subsets of stimulation, enjoyment, and closeness of Study

1. In other words, this summary score reflected goals that were the ones not directly related to

teaching their child to learn to read. The final two goal subsets, Foster Reading and Non-

Reading, consisting of the average scores for the items included in these goal subsets (see Table

3), were used for the subsequent regression analyses (as described below). As described in Audet

et al. (2008), reliability of the foster reading goal subset was high (α = .91) and this goal subset

was also predictive of print-related behaviour.

Belief questionnaire. Parents also received the Approaches to Beginning Reading and

Reading Instruction questionnaire (ABRRI, Evans, Fox, Cremaso & McKinnon, 2004; see

Appendix C) to assess their beliefs about how beginning reading instruction should best occur.

This questionnaire first asks participants to rate 14 different items on a Likert scale from 1 (little

importance) to 5 (most important) as to their importance in learning to read and in a beginning

reading program. Next, parents were asked to rate 8 items on the same 5-point Likert scale as to

what are the most important ways to help children to read unfamiliar words they encounter in

text. These items tap into two main components reflecting graphophonemic and constructivist

approaches to helping children learn to read. Finally, parents were also asked to read a short

description of bottom-up (i.e., graphophonemic) and constructivist (i.e., top-down) approaches to

44
reading and then decide which approach they most endorse and which approach they feel is

closest to how they learned to read. This latter section was not used in the current study.

As described by Evans and colleagues (2004), internal consistency of the items within the

graphophonemic and constructivist components was high (Cronbach’s alpha = .82 for both

components). Evans and colleagues further demonstrated validity of this item by correlating the

graphophonemic and constructivist scores of the ABRRI with the phonics, skills, and whole

language scores of the Theoretical Orientation to Reading Profile (TORP; Deford, 1985), a

measure of teachers’ views on beginning reading. The ABRRI graphophonemic score correlated

positively with the TORP phonics and skills scores and negatively with the whole language score

while the constructivist score correlated negatively with the TORP scores and positively with the

whole language scores.

Ratings from all participants on the ABRRI were entered into a database and each

participant’s score on the items relating to a constructivist view and to a graphophonemic view

of reading development were averaged to create two composite scores (as outlined by Evans et

al., 2004): Constructivist (corresponding to a top-down view of reading development) and

Graphophonemic (corresponding to a bottom-up view of reading development). Missing item

responses were replaced with the average of that item for the grade.

Storybooks. Four storybooks were provided: Buttons Buttons (Lanczak Williams, 1994),

A Child’s First Alphabet Book (Jay, 2003), Watch Your Step, Mr. Rabbit! (Scarry, 1991), and

Snore! (Rosen & Langley, 2003). These books are at a variety of reading levels and each is

accompanied by full-color illustrations. A Child’s First Alphabet Book, read by all but two

children (98%) included in the final sample, is an alphabet book with each letter of the alphabet

and an accompanying word beginning with that letter presented across two pages of a

45
multifarious illustrated scene involving many items also beginning with the letter. Buttons

Buttons (read by 93 or 95 percent of children) is a highly predictable pattern book in which four

words appear on each page, two being "buttons" and the other an adjective describing the

accompanying picture of a type of button (e.g., round, blue, small). Watch Your Step Mr. Rabbit!

(read by all but one child or 99 percent of children) is a book for beginning readers involving a

simple story and many sections of patterned and dramatized text. Finally, at an early reader level,

Snore! is the most advanced book in the set of four and includes rhymes, repetition, and

dramatized text. It was attempted by only 19 children in the final sample (19 percent). Refer to

Table 4 for a more detailed comparison of the characteristics of these four books.

Procedures.

The Parent Goals for Shared Reading Questionnaire (Evans & Williamson, 2003; See

Appendix A) and ABBRI (Evans et al., 2004; see Appendix C) were mailed to each family with

a return envelope for mailing directly to the researchers once completed. Once returned, parents

were telephoned to schedule a visit to the home in which parent and child would be observed

reading together using the books supplied by the researcher. To maximize the ecological validity

of the data collected, visits were scheduled at a time chosen by the parent for when shared

reading normally occurred (typically in the evening, just before or after supper or before bed) in

as unobtrusive a manner as possible in the location of the home where shared reading normally

occurs (typically in the living room, kitchen, or in the child’s bedroom. At the home visits,

parents were observed and audiotaped engaging in shared reading using storybooks provided by

the researchers. Parent and child were asked to read them together as they normally would in any

order they choose. Sessions were audiotaped by clipping a small microphone near the child and

46
parent, who most often sat together on a bed, sofa, or at a table. While the parent read to the

child, the observer noted nonverbal behaviour, such as pointing to the words, at the point in the

text when the behaviour occurred. Each book took approximately five to fifteen minutes to read,

depending on the child’s reading ability, amount of extratextual speech, inspection of the

illustrations, and off task behaviour (e.g., discussion of topics unrelated to the story). Within the

98 participants included in the analyses, children read, on average, three books and 213 words

during the book reading sessions. This translated to the children reading, on average, 77.53

percent of the text within the books.

After the books had been read, parents were asked to rate how typical the interaction had

been compared to what they normally do when reading. These Likert scale ratings ranged from

“1” (not at all typical) to “5” (very typical). Because of interruptions, four participants did not

provide this rating. Overall, with a mean typicality rating of 4.33, participants rated the reading

sessions as quite typical of what they normally do when reading with their child (N=94, SD =

.86). Of these 94 participants, one gave a rating of “1,” three gave a rating of “2,” nine gave a

rating of “3,” thirty-two gave a rating of “4,” and forty-nine gave a rating of “5” (representing

respectively 1, 3, 10, 34, and 52 percent of participants who provided this rating). In addition, t-

tests were conducted to see whether the twenty-three parents excluded from the study due to

missing questionnaires differed in their typicality ratings from participants retained for the

analyses. Levene’s test of equality of variances was significant, F(1,115) = 6.36, p<.05),

indicating that equal variances in this sample could not be assumed. While average typicality

ratings of parents included in the study were lower for participants excluded in the study (µ =

3.80) than for participants included in the study (µ = 4.33), this difference only approached

statistical significance [t(27.83) = -1.99, p = .057, ns], indicating that the excluded parents did

47
not differ significantly from parents included in the study in how close they felt that the book

reading sessions were to what they typically do with their child.

Coding of shared book reading. Audiotapes were transcribed using the format of the

Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) (MacWhinney, 2000) and the notations of

nonverbal behaviour were added at the relevant points in the transcript. After coding the

transcripts, frequencies of the various codes were calculated using the CHAT programme that

accompanies CHILDES. Two basic coding schemes were applied to code how parents responded

to their child’s reading errors or miscues and for the types of other extratextual comments that

they made. First, transcripts were coded for extratextual comments. The separate codes were as

follows:

(a) Fostering the child’s reading skills, such as drawing the child’s attention to letters or

spelling, indicating a letter sound or emphasizing a phoneme in relation to the printed

text, encouraging the child to predict a word in the text without reading it (e.g., by

pointing to a picture), or naming a general reading concept (e.g., “This is the title”).

This category accounted for 38 percent of extratextual comments made by parents

and parents made, on average, 21 of these comments throughout the book reading

session.

(b) Having an enjoyable time with the child, such as dramatizing the dialogue or

exclaiming at developments in the plot, offering judgements or personal reactions to

the story/illustrations (e.g., “That was funny”), or asking the child to look at/name

parts of the story without reference to story meaning. This category accounted for 30

percent of extratextual comments made by parents and parents made, on average, 17

of these comments throughout the book reading session.

48
 (c) Facilitating comprehension, such as involving the child in thinking about the story by

asking comprehension questions about the plot or pictures or speculating on what

might happen next, relating the story to child’s experience, or explaining vocabulary.

This category accounted for 32 percent of extratextual comments made by parents

and parents made, on average, 18 of these comments throughout the book reading

session.

The latter two codes were then collapsed to form one overall code of comments that

reflected engaging the child in the story, encouraging comprehension, and strengthening the

parent-child relationship versus the first coding category of referencing the print. This resulted in

two dependent variables.

Second, the way the parent first responded to a child’s reading error was coded into the

following categories, as outlined in Mansell et al (2005):

(a) Try Again: encouraging the child to try the word again without any explicit hint as to

how to figure out the word; rereading sentence to point of miscue.

(b) Graphophonemic Cue: including (i) Letter Detail – pointing out specific letter details

or combination of letters within words; (ii) Phonics/Word Analysis – encouraging the

child to use their knowledge of sound-letter correspondence to sound out a word or

saying a single sound clue or word part for the child to complete; and (iii) Drawing

Out – stretching out the word for the child to hear its component sounds.

(c) Context Cue: including (i) General Knowledge – drawing on information from

outside the text as clue to word recognition; (ii) Text Meaning – pointing out

previous text as clue to word recognition or asking child what makes sense given the

story, previous text, title, or remaining text; (iii) Illustration Clue – drawing attention

49
 to illustrations so as to clue the child to the word or to cue the concept; and (iv) Word

Reminder – pointing out previous instances of a word or reminding child that he/she

had previously read the word correctly. By far, the largest subcategory here was

drawing the child’s attention to the accompanying illustration as a clue to the word.

(d) Word Supply: supplying the word (i.e., terminal as opposed to sustaining feedback).

(e) Ignore: ignoring the child’s reading error.

Raw scores for codes were then converted to percentages of all first feedbacks given in

response to a miscue to account for children making different amounts of reading errors that

could be corrected by parents. On average, children made 33 reading errors during the book

reading sessions. The number of child reading errors in the sample ranged from 5 to 111. The

feedback of interest was the parent’s first response to their child’s error because subsequent

feedback may depend on what they had already tried at the first attempt. Thus, subsequent

corrections (that is, if the child was not successfully able to read the word after the parent’s

initial feedback) were not included in the counts.

The following variables were thus arrived at: the percent of feedback when the parent

simply provides the word (category d); the percent of all sustaining feedback that provides

graphophonemic cues (category b); the percent of all sustaining feedback in the form of a context

cue (category c); and the percent of all feedback that aids the child in any way to read the word

(categories b and c combined).

Reliability was assessed by having a second researcher code a random sample of 20

transcripts from the total sample of 98 participants included in the second study. The extent to

which the raters agreed on which comments should be coded, as well as their agreement on the

50
specific code to be given, were examined for both the extratextual comments and the parent

responses to miscues.

For the extratextual comments, the extent to which the two raters agreed on which

instances of behaviour should be coded was found to be high. That is, 96 percent of the instances

coded by the first rater as a comment that engages the child in the story/strengthens the parent-

child relationship and 99 percent of instances coded as referencing the print were also identified

by the second rater. Furthermore, there were no instances of disagreement between the raters

about whether a given extratextual comment should be coded as engaging the child in the

story/strengthening the parent-child relationship or as referencing the print.

For parent responses to miscues, 100 percent of the instances coded by the first rater as

sustaining feedback that encourages the child to read the word (categories a, b, and c; described

above) and 99 percent of the instances of word supply (category d) were also identified by the

second rater. Within the instances coded by both raters, the raters agreed about the specific code

to be given on all but one occasion (Cohen’s Kappa = .997).

Overall, these results indicate that inter-rater reliability was high as the two raters nearly

always agreed on whether a specific behaviour should be coded or not and, if so, the specific

code that it should be given.

Results

Goals for shared book reading.

The statistical concerns noted about the principal components analysis of The Parent

Goals for Shared Reading Questionnaire (Evans & Williamson, 2003) in Study 1, such as sample

size and the distribution of scores on the measures, would also be present, if not more of a

51
concern, within the truncated SK-only sample. It is expected that scores that come from parents

in one grade would be more homogenous and thus more problematic than scores that are

averaged across three grades. Given these concerns about interpretation of the results of a

principal components analysis with the SK-only data, it was determined that the item distribution

within the goal subsets from Study 1 would be used for the current analyses.

To ensure that the items falling within the Foster Reading goal subset were comparable

between the full sample of Study 1 (including participants from JK, SK, and grade 1) and the

SK-only sample of the current study, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted using only the

SK data. As in the Audet et al. study (2008), items 2, 4, and 5 were removed from this analysis

due to low variability (i.e., range ≤ 2) and missing item responses were replaced with the average

of that item for the grade. From analysis of the scree plot generated by the principal components

analysis with varimax rotation on the responses to the Parent Goals for Shared Reading survey

(N=111), a four-component structure was suggested. This four-component structure was also

deemed most appropriate by the use of the Parallel Analysis procedure (Hayton, Allen, &

Scarpello, 2004; Horn, 1965). The principal components analysis was thus re-run with the

specifications that only four components be extracted. While the item distribution between

components was considerably different than what was obtained with the full sample in Study 1,

the goal subset of Foster Reading was highly congruent.

Given these results, some minor adjustments to the items belonging to the two summary

scores, Foster Reading and Non-Reading (as previously described) were made for the current

study. Thus, Foster Reading consisted of the items from the foster reading goal subset of Study

1, with the exception of the removal of items 29 and 35, which cross-loaded substantially on the

second component, Non-Reading, when only the SK sample was analyzed. This second

52
component, Non-Reading, consisted of the items from the goal subsets of stimulation, enjoyment,

and closeness of Study 1 (that is, the goals not directly related to teaching their child to learn to

read). The exception was that item 32, eliminated in Study 1 for substantial cross-loading on

more than one factor, was included in the Non-Reading goal subset as this cross-loading was no

longer present. Table 3 presents a list of the items included in the final two goal subsets, Foster

Reading and Non-Reading, which were used for the regression analyses reported below.

The correlation between the Foster Reading and Non-Reading goal subset rankings was

significant, r(96) = -.58, p < .001, indicating congruence between the ratings parents gave on

these two subscales. In other words, parents who highly endorsed goals to teach their child to

read were also likely to give high ratings to non-reading related goal items, and those giving low

ratings on one subscale tended to also give low ratings on the other. This relation between the

standardized goal subset ratings can be seen in Figure 2. These findings suggest that the goals

parents hold for shared reading are not necessarily in opposition to one another and high goal

ratings in one area are more likely to be accompanied by high, not low, ratings in the other area.

Preliminary analyses.

Preliminary analyses were conducted to determine whether child gender was related to

any of the variables. Independent t-tests were conducted to determine if child gender was related

to parent ratings on The Parent Goals for Shared Reading Questionnaire. Results indicated that

child gender was not related to endorsement on the Foster Reading [t(96) = -.08, p > .9, ns] or

Non-Reading [t(96) = -1.47, p > .1, ns] goal subsets.

Similarly, independent t-tests were conducted to determine if child gender was related to

parent ratings on The Approaches to Beginning Reading and Reading Instruction Questionnaire.

53
Results indicated that child gender was not related to endorsement on the Graphophonemic

component [t(96) = -.79, p > .4, ns] but child gender was related to endorsement of beliefs on the

Constructivist component [t(96) = -2.44, p < .05]. Further examination revealed that two of the

items within this component were rated significantly differently by parents depending on their

child’s gender: “Develop children’s confidence and interest in putting their ideas on paper in

whatever form they can” [t(96) = -3.78, p < .01, d = .77] and “Using one’s general knowledge

about the world and the topic of what is being read to figure out the words” [t(96) = -2.49, p <

.05, d = .51]. On both of these items, ratings for male children were significantly lower than

those for female children and the effect sizes of these differences are classified as “large” and

“medium,” respectively. Thus, for analyses involving the Constructivist variable, the influence of

child gender on the results will be considered.

Also examined was whether different miscue feedback and extratextual comments were

given to boys versus girls. Independent t-tests indicated that child gender was not related to any

parent behaviour during the home book reading sessions (all p-values > .3).

Finally, one-way ANOVAs of the 98 participants included in the study indicated that

parent rating of how typical the home book reading session was to what they typically do with

their child were not significantly related to any parent behaviour occurring during the sessions

(all p values > .1).

Regression analyses preparation.

For the regression analyses, first the goal predictor variables Foster Reading and Non-

Reading, as well as the belief variables, Graphophonemic and Constructivist, were centered (as

described in Aiken & West, 1991) in order to mitigate multicollinearity. Each of these centered

54
predictors was then multiplied with the corresponding predictor (depending on the hypothesis

being tested) to create the interaction terms for the analyses. After each initial regression

analysis, multivariate outliers were examined and subsequently removed. Three measures of

overall influence on the results were considered for this stage. The first, Cook’s Distance, a

measure of the influence of individual data points on the slope of the regression line, was used at

the threshold of 4/(n-k-1) as it takes into account both leverage (a function of scores on the

independent variable) and residuals (a function of scores on the dependent variable). The

standardized values of DFBETA, a measure of the relative effect of an observation on each

coefficient and DFFIT, the degree to which the fitted values change when a case is deleted, were

also considered at the thresholds of 2/√n and 2*√(p/n) respectively. The regressions were then

repeated with the outliers removed and the results described below.

Parent goals and the type of extratextual comments made.

It was hypothesized that, as parents’ use of extratextual comments to engage the child

and strengthen the parent-child relationship increases, their ratings of items belonging to the

Foster Reading goal will decrease while their ratings of the Non-Reading goal will increase.

Contrary to expectations, correlational analyses demonstrated that both the Foster Reading and

Non-Reading variables were significantly negatively correlated with the number of extratextual

comments to engage the child [r(91) = -.31, p < .005 and r(91) = -.24, p < .05, respectively].

Thus, parents who gave lower ratings to both sets of goals were parents who made more

extratextual comments of this type.

A linear hierarchical regression was completed with the centered predictors Foster

Reading and Non-Reading in the first block and the interaction between these two variables in

55
the second block. The dependent variable was the percentage of extratextual comments made to

engage the child/strengthen the parent-child relationship. Five participants were deemed outliers

after this initial analysis and removed from subsequent analyses. Tests for multicollinearity

indicated that a very low level of multicollinearity was present (VIF = 1.44 for Foster Reading,

1.51 for Non-Reading, and 1.07 for the interaction term).

Results indicated that the model of best fit was that which included the interaction

between the Foster Reading and Non-Reading variables in the regression analysis [Adjusted R2=

.163, F(3,89) = 6.98, p < .001]. Inclusion of the interaction term led to a significant improvement

in prediction of the dependent variable [R2 change = .09, F change (1,89) = 9.33, p < .005] over

the model that did not include the interaction. Foster Reading was a significant predictor of the

extratextual comments, β = -.31, t(89) = -2.68, p < .01, while Non-Reading was not, β = -.01,

t(89) = -.09, p = .93, ns. The interaction was also significant, β = -.30, t(89) = -3.05, p < .005.

The simple slopes procedure of Aiken and West (1991) was used to explore the

significant interaction between scores for the Foster Reading and Non-Reading goals in the

prediction of these extratextual comments. The relation between parent scores on the Non-

Reading goal and the extratextual comments was examined at high and low ratings on the Foster

Reading goal. As can be seen in Figure 3, when ratings for Foster Reading were low the

percentage of extratextual comments not directly related to teaching reading increased as Non-

Reading ratings increased. While this overall trend was consistent with the hypotheses of the

current study, this relation approached but was not significant (-1 SD; β = 10.87, t(89) = 1.80, p

= .08, ns). In contrast, when Foster Reading goal ratings were high the percentage of extratextual

comments not related to teaching reading decreased significantly as Non-Reading goal ratings

increased, +1 SD; β = -11.57, t(89) = -2.47, p < .05.

56
 An alternative way of looking at the data is that there was little difference in the

percentage of extratextual comments not related to teaching reading made when Non-Reading

goal ratings were low, no matter what the level of Foster Reading goal ratings were, -1 SD; β =

.75, t(89) = 0.13, p > .05, ns. However, at high levels of Non-Reading goal ratings, significantly

more of these extratextual comments were made when Foster Reading ratings were low than

when Foster Reading ratings are high, +1 SD; β = -19.04, t(89) = -4.28, p > .01.

Our original hypothesis, that the percentage of extratextual comments to engage the

child/strengthen the parent-child relationship would decrease as ratings of the Fostering Reading

goal increase but increase as the Non-Reading goal ratings increase was, thus, partially

supported. Parents with high reading-related goals, a potentially more motivated and directed

group, thus, overall, engaged in less extratextual conversation during shared book reading that

did not reference the print than parents with lower reading-related goal ratings. The most

extratextual comments to engage the child in ways not related to the print or teaching of reading

were made by parents who not only highly rated of goals of bonding with their child and creating

an enjoyable experience but also lowly rated the goal of teaching reading skills. In contrast,

parents with high Foster Reading goal ratings made significantly fewer of these comments,

particularly when they also had high ratings for goals not related to teaching reading.

Parent goals and supplying a word not read correctly.

It was hypothesized that, as parent ratings of the goal to foster children’s reading skills

increase, there would be a decreasing percentage of instances where the parent simply provides

the word in response to the child not reading a word correctly, while increases in parent ratings

of non-reading goals to engage in a positive activity would be related to increases in supplying

57
the word. Correlational analyses demonstrated that, as expected, ratings for Foster Reading goal

were significantly negatively correlated with instances of parents supplying the word, r(94) = -

.23, p < .05, but ratings for the Non-Reading goal were not, r(94) = -.09, p > .1, ns.

A linear hierarchical regression was completed with the centered predictors Foster

Reading and Non-Reading in the first block and the interaction between these two variables in

the second block. The dependent variable was the percentage of instances when the parent

simply provided the child with the word in response to a miscue. Two participants were deemed

outliers after this initial analysis and removed from subsequent analyses. Tests for

multicollinearity indicated that a very low level of multicollinearity was present (VIF = 1.55 for

Foster Reading, 1.64 for Non-Reading, and 1.09 for the interaction term).

Results indicated that including the interaction term in the model resulted in no

improvement in overall model fit (R2 change = .004, F(1,92) = .41, p > .5, ns). In addition, the

overall model which did not include the interaction was not significant, although it did approach

significance [Adjusted R2= .036, F(2,93) = 2.80, p = .066, ns]. From the model which did not

include the interaction term, Foster Reading was significantly negatively related to the

dependent variable [β = -.27, t(93) =-2.19, p < .05.] but Non-Reading was not [β = .07, t(93) =

.56, p > .5, ns], paralleling the correlation reported above.

Thus, as predicted, parents’ tendency to simply tell their child the correct word in

response to reading errors decreased as their goal to foster their children’s reading skills

increased. Their goals to engage in a positive experience with their child, however, did not

predict the extent to which they chose to supply the word over other feedback responses.

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 Parent goals and providing sustaining feedback.

It was hypothesized that parents’ ratings of the Foster Reading goal would be positively

associated with their use of sustaining feedback to help their child correct reading miscues, while

Non-Reading goals related to engaging in a positive experience with their child would show the

opposite pattern. As described earlier, sustaining feedback consisted of both graphophonemic

and context cues. Correlational analyses demonstrated that the ratings for Foster Reading were

significantly positively correlated with the percentage of sustaining feedback [r(92) = .195, p <

.05] but ratings on the Non-Reading variable were not [r(92) = -.070, p > .25, ns].

A linear hierarchical regression was completed with the centered predictors Foster

Reading and Non-Reading in the first block and the interaction between these two variables in

the second block. The dependent variable was the percentage of comments made in response to

reading errors that aid the child in reading the word. Four participants were deemed outliers after

this initial analysis and removed from subsequent analyses. Tests for multicollinearity indicated

that a very low level of multicollinearity was present (VIF = 1.54 for Foster Reading, 1.65 for

Non-Reading, and 1.09 for the interaction term).

Results indicated that the model of best fit was that which included the interaction

between the Foster Reading and Non-Reading variables in the regression analysis [Adjusted R2=

.100, F(3,90) = 4.46, p < .01] as it led to a significant improvement in prediction of the

dependent variable [R2 change = .04, F(1,90) = 4.16, p < .05) over the model which did not

include the interaction. Foster Reading was a significant predictor of the parents’ use of cues to

help their child to read the word [β = .39, t(90) = 3.22, p < .005], as was Non-Reading, [β = -.35,

t(90) = -2.79, p < .01]. The interaction was also significant, β = .21, t(90) = 2.04, p < .05.

59
 Results were, overall, consistent with the hypothesis that occurrences of parents helping

their child to read a word following a miscue decrease as ratings for the Non-Reading goal

increase and increase as ratings for the Foster Reading goal increase. To better understand the

findings, however, the simple slopes procedure of Aiken and West (1991) was used to explore

the significant interaction between scores for the Foster Reading and Non-Reading goals in the

prediction of parents’ provision of sustaining feedback in response to their child’s reading errors.

As can be seen in Figure 4, when parents’ ratings on the Foster Reading goal were high, there

was no influence of their Non-Reading goal ratings on the extent to which they gave sustaining

feedback: the occurrences of this type of response at high ratings of Foster Reading were

universally high [+1 SD; β = -.13, t(90) = .92, p > .3, ns]. However, when ratings on the Foster

Reading goal were low, the effect of parents’ Non-Reading ratings on the provision of sustaining

feedback was significant, [-1 SD; β = -.58, t(90) = -3.04, p < .005]. Thus, the instances of helping

their child to correct their reading errors decreased as parents’ ratings of goals to engage in a

positive experience with their child increased but only when they did not strongly endorse goals

to teach their child to read. The relation between parents’ goals to engage in a positive

experience with their child and their tendency to help their child read misread words was thus

moderated by their goal to foster their children’s reading skills.

Parent beliefs about beginning reading instruction and their use of cues for

correcting reading errors as a function of their goal to foster reading skills.

It was hypothesized that parents’ beliefs about how reading skills are best taught (i.e.,

constructivist versus graphophonemic approaches) will relate to their approach to correcting their

child’s reading errors (i.e., whether they use context versus graphophonemic cues) but only if

60
they concomitantly endorse fostering their child’s reading skills as a goal for shared book

reading. In other words, if the goal of reading with one’s child is not to help with the child’s

reading development then the beliefs that one has about how to help their child to learn to read

during shared book reading will be near irrelevant.

It should be noted that there was a significant negative correlation between parents’ use

of context and graphophonemic cues [r(96) = -.56, p < .001] indicating that parents who choose

one strategy are less likely to choose the other.

Use of context cues. To begin, we examined the relation between ratings of

Constructivist beliefs and the goal of Foster Reading in the prediction of the use of context cues

(e.g., illustration, meaning from text, retrieve previous word, general knowledge) to correct child

reading errors. Correlational analyses demonstrated that ratings for Foster Reading were

significantly negatively correlated with the percentage of context cues used [r(90) = -.25, p <

.01] but ratings for Constructivist were not [r(90) = -.14, p > .05, ns].

A linear hierarchical regression was completed with the child’s sex entered in the first

block to account for any effect it might have on parents’ ratings on the Constructivist variable (as

described in a section above). The centered predictors Foster Reading and Constructivist were

entered in the second block and the interaction between these two variables in the third block.

The dependent variable was the percentage of context cues made in response to child reading

errors. Six participants were deemed outliers after this initial analysis and removed from

subsequent analyses. Tests for multicollinearity indicated that a very low level of

multicollinearity was present (VIF = 1.13 for Sex, 1.13 for Foster Reading, 1.18 for

Constructivist, and 1.08 for the interaction term).

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 Results indicated that the model containing only sex as a predictor was not significant

[Model 1: Adjusted R2= -.009, F(1,90) = .195, p > .65], indicating that the child’s sex was not

significantly related to parents’ use of context cues. The second model, incorporating the Foster

Reading and Constructivist variables was, however, significant [Model 2: Adjusted R2= .087,

F(3,88) = 3.91, p < .05] and resulted in a significant improvement in model fit over the first

model [R2 change = .12, F = 5.75, p < .01]. Finally, no significant improvement in model fit was

gained by including the interaction between Foster Reading and Constructivist in the regression

analysis [Model 3: Adjusted R2= .085, F(4, 87) = 3.13, p < .05; R2 change = .01, F = .81, p > .37,

ns]. From Model 2, Foster Reading was a significant predictor of context cues, β = -.32, t(88) = -

3.03, p < .005, as was Constructivist, β = .25, t(88) = 2.33, p < .05. Neither the child’s sex nor

the interaction between Foster Reading and Constructivist were significant (p>.05). Thus, it

appears that parents’ use of context cues to correct reading errors increases as their constructivist

beliefs about reading development increase but this is not contingent on how highly they endorse

the goal of teaching their child to read during shared book reading. Furthermore, as ratings on the

foster reading goal subset increase, parents’ use of context cues to correct reading errors

decreases.

Use of graphophonemic cues. Next, the relation between ratings of graphophonemic

beliefs and the goal of fostering reading in the prediction of the use of graphophonemic cues

(e.g., phonological, letter clues, drawing the word out) to correct child reading errors was

examined. Correlational analyses demonstrated that neither Foster Reading nor Graphophonemic

were significantly correlated with the percentage of graphophonemic cues used (both p-values >

.1). A regression analysis was nevertheless conducted in order to determine whether an

62
interaction between these variables in the prediction of the use of graphophonemic cues was

present.

A linear hierarchical regression was completed with the centered predictors Foster

Reading and Graphophonemic in the first block and the interaction between these two variables

in the second block. The dependent variable was the percentage of comments made in response

to reading errors when graphophonemic cues were used. Seven participants were deemed outliers

after this initial analysis and removed from subsequent analyses. Tests for multicollinearity

indicated that a very low level of multicollinearity was present (VIF = 1.38 for Foster Reading,

1.35 for Graphophonemic, and 1.03 for the interaction term). Results indicated that neither of the

overall regression models (i.e., that which included the interaction between the Foster Reading

and Graphophonemic variables and that which did not) were significant in the prediction of the

use of graphophonemic cues [Model 1: Adjusted R2= -.007, F(2,88) = .68, p >.5, ns; Model 2:

Adjusted R2= -.018, F(3,87) = .48, p >.6, ns]. Furthermore, neither Foster Reading,

Graphophonemic, nor the interaction were significantly related to the use of graphophonemic

cues (all p-values > .40). Thus, contrary to the hypothesis, neither parent goals to teach reading

nor their beliefs that beginning reading is best taught using bottom-up methods, predicted parent

use of graphophonemic cues to correct their child’s reading errors during shared book reading.

In conclusion, while parents’ use of context cues to correct their children’s reading errors

was predicted by their constructivist beliefs as well as by their goal to foster their children’s

reading skills, neither their graphophonemic beliefs nor their goal to teach reading skills

predicted their use of graphophonemic cues.

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Summary

Results from the second study generally support the notion that the behaviours parents

engage in during shared booking are influenced by the goals they hold for shared book reading.

For example, as predicted, parents’ tendency to simply provide their child with the correct words

in response to reading errors decreases as their goal to foster their children’s reading skills

increases. A finding of particular interest was that parent goals are not necessarily independent

from one another, as the goals parents hold in one area can influence the relation between their

behaviour and goals in another area. For example, it was confirmed that parents who hold goals

to engage in a positive experience with their child engage in more extratextual conversation not

related to teaching reading than parents who do not hold these goals as highly, but only if they

also do not strongly endorse goals to teach their children reading skills. Further, parents who rate

the goal to foster their children’s reading skills highly are more likely to use strategies that help

their child to read misread words than parents with low ratings in this area, regardless of how

highly they rate their goal to engage in a positive experience with their child. However, when

parents rated the goal to foster their children’s reading skills at a low level, increasing ratings of

goals to engage in a positive experience resulted in decreasing instances where parents helped

their child to read the word in response to a miscue.

The expected interrelation between parents’ goals and beliefs in the prediction of their

behaviour during shared book reading was only partially supported. Results indicated that, while

parents’ use of context cues to correct their children’s reading errors were predicted

independently by their constructivist beliefs as well as by their goal to foster their children’s

reading skills, goals and beliefs did not interact to predict parents’ use of context cues.

64
Furthermore, neither graphophonemic beliefs, the goal to foster reading skills, nor the relation

between them predicted parents’ use of graphophonemic cues.

General Discussion

Understanding parents’ intentions when they read with their children is no doubt an

important avenue of research but one that has been surprisingly neglected in the field. While

some researchers have spoken about why goals are important to consider, this is typically

mentioned only as a discussion point within article summaries and rarely considered within the

analyses of empirical papers on children’s literacy development and shared book reading. Austin

and Vancouver (1996) discussed the importance of studying people’s goals and what motivates

them and argued for integrating across psychological content areas to study goal-directed

cognition and action more efficiently. Durand (2011) discussed the importance of understanding

the diversity of parents’ attitudes, cognitions, and goals for their children in order to create

school environments that are ready to serve children from diverse backgrounds. Some limited

research has suggested a relation between parent goals and child outcomes (e.g., Baharudin et al.,

2010; Baker & Scher, 2002; Bigelow & Zhou, 2001). However, with the exception of a very few

studies (e.g., Baharudin et al., 2010; Sonnenschein et al., 1997), the relation between parents’

academic goals and behaviours has been essentially overlooked, particularly in the field of

children’s literacy.

As previously discussed, there is much that is known about the shared book reading

interaction. Research has demonstrated that parents have distinct interaction styles during shared

book reading, particularly in terms of their use of extratextual comments (e.g., Hammett,

VanKleeck, & Huberty, 2003) and the feedback strategies they use (Mansell, Evans & Hamilton-

65
Hulak, 2005). These styles show both stability and change over time (Haden, Reese, & Fivush,

1996; Mansell, Evans & Hamilton-Hulak, 2005). Furthermore, parent interaction styles are

related in varying ways and to differing degrees to different aspects of their children’s literacy

development (Britto, Brooks-Gunn, & Griffin, 2006; Reese & Cox, 1999; Stoltz & Fischel,

2003). It is somewhat perplexing then that, while there is a growing understanding of how parent

behaviours and interactions during shared book reading influence children’s literacy

development, we are still so in the dark about why parents behave in the manner that they do.

Given these findings, increasing our understanding of what motivates parents’ behaviours

during shared book reading will provide an important contribution to the field of children’s

literacy development as well as to any intervention efforts to modify parent behaviour. Audet,

Evans, Williamson, and Reynolds (2008) began to explore this area of research and found that

the goals of parents of children in junior kindergarten are related to their behaviour during shared

book reading: specifically, to the amount of print referring and the time spent engaging in echo

reading. The current study extends this research in a number of important ways. First, it supports

the cross-sectional findings of Audet et al. that parents do, in fact, have specific goals when they

engage in shared book reading with their child. While the specific structure of these goals varied

somewhat between studies, in that Audet et al. identified five goals for shared book reading

(stimulation, foster reading, bond, soothe, and enjoyment) and the current longitudinal study

identified four (stimulation, foster reading, closeness, and enjoyment), the items contained within

the goal subsets were generally highly congruent, particularly for the Foster Reading goal subset.

Furthermore, there is evidence in both studies that, while goals related to enjoyment are rated the

highest from junior kindergarten to grade 1, there is a significant increase in parents’ goal to

foster their children’s reading skills in this same period. This suggests that parents are sensitive

66
to their children’s literacy development and school curriculum and shift the focus of the shared

book reading sessions to coincide with children’s acquisition of these skills.

The current study also supports the findings of Audet et al. (2008) by providing concrete

evidence that parents’ goals for reading with their child are related to the comments they make

when reading with their child. Regardless of how highly parents rate the goal of wanting to

engage in a positive experience with their child, as their ratings of the goal to foster their

children’s reading skills increased, their tendency to simply supply words in response to child

miscues decreased. Furthermore, the influence of specific goals on parent behaviour was not

always straightforward as parent goals interacted in their relation to certain parent behaviours

during shared book reading. Thus, parents who provided low ratings of the goal to engage in a

positive experience with their child were more likely to use strategies to help their child to read

misread words than parents with high ratings in this area, no matter how highly they rated the

goal to teach their child to read. However, parents who highly rated goals to engage in a positive

experience with their child showed a decreasing use of these strategies as their goal to foster their

child’s reading skills increased. This suggests that, when parents’ do not hold the goal to engage

in a positive experience with their child, they implicitly use strategies to support their child’s

word-reading regardless of whether they explicitly hold the goal to teach reading skills. Parents

with strong intentions to engage in a positive experience with their child do use fewer of these

strategies, but only if they do not also hold the goal to teach reading skills. This goal to teach

reading skills thus seems to determine their use of these strategies and must be less important for

them in order for their goal to engage in a positive experience with their child to influence how

they respond to their child’s reading errors.

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 This pattern was also demonstrated in parents’ use of extratextual comments in that

parents who held the goal to engage in a positive experience with their child engaged in more

extratextual conversation not related to teaching reading than parents who did not hold these

goals as highly, but only if they did not also strongly endorse the goal of improving their child’s

reading skills. When this fostering reading goal was high, the opposite pattern held; that is,

increases in ratings of the goal to engage in a positive experience with their child was related to

decreasing instances of extratextual conversation that does not directly teach the child to read.

Finally, the current study explored the relation between goals, beliefs, and behaviour

during shared book reading. Consistent with the research previously described, that parent beliefs

about reading shape their book-reading behaviour (e.g., DeBaryshe, 1995; DeBaryshe & Binder,

1994; Evans, Fox, Cremaso, McKinnon, 2004; Martini & Sénéchal, 2012; Meagher, Arnold,

Doctoroff, & Baker, 2008; Skibbe, Justice, Zucker, & McGinty, 2008), it was found that parents’

use of context cues to correct reading errors was predicted by their beliefs about how reading is

best taught: high ratings of constructivist beliefs predicted a higher frequency of the use of

context cues during book reading. Parents’ beliefs, however, did not predict their use of

graphophonemic cues to correct reading errors, suggesting that other factors may drive this

behaviour. As previously described, these could include factors such as parent education (Tracey

& Young, 2002), parent reading proficiency (Neuman, 1996), parent memories of how they were

read to (Evans, 1998), the child’s age, developmental level, communication abilities, and/or

reading ability (Blake et al., 2006; Pelligrini, Brody, & Sigel, 1985; Stoltz & Fischel, 2003; van

Kleeck & Beckley-McCall, 2002), how accurately the child reads (Evans, Barraball, & Erberle,

1998), and/or whether the miscue resulted in a high or low level of meaning change.

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 The hypothesis that parents’ goals for shared book reading would moderate the relation

between their beliefs about how reading is best taught and their behaviour during shared book

reading was, however, not supported. While parents’ goal to foster their children’s reading skills

as well as their constructivist beliefs both predicted their use of context cues to correct their

child’s reading errors, they did so independently. This mutual exclusivity of goals and beliefs

was also evidenced by the findings of Audet and colleagues (2008). These findings support the

value of studying both beliefs and goals to understand parent behaviour. Finally, neither

graphophonemic beliefs nor the goal to foster reading skills predicted parents’ use of

graphophonemic cues to correct reading errors, nor did they interact to predict this tendency. It

may be that the current approach to beginning reading in the schools from which the children

were sampled, which emphasizes alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, and decoding,

has been more uniformly adopted by parents than in the past when whole language approaches

were more prominent.

Implications of the Results

The results of the current study will help to inform intervention efforts targeted at

improving children’s literacy skills. Previous research has demonstrated that what a parent does

during shared book reading can ultimately influence child reading outcomes and so intervention

efforts are regularly targeted at the home book reading experience. However, to influence how a

parent interacts with their child during shared book reading, we must first begin with an

understanding of why parents engage in shared book reading. For instance, if a mother’s goals

are primarily to have an enjoyable and positive experience when she reads with her child and she

perceives an intervention program that requires her to engage in direct and explicit instruction as

69
incompatible with her goal, the intervention might not lead to the expected changes in her

behaviour or, potentially, to her child’s reading outcomes. Given the relation described

throughout this study between parent goals and behaviour, it stands to reason that congruency

between parent goals and the goals of any child reading intervention program they are involved

in would improve the overall effectiveness of these programs and thus benefits to child reading

outcomes. Concomitant with this, intervention programs that target not only parent behaviour but

beliefs and goals as well would be expected to have a greater impact on parent behaviour than

those which fail to consider what a parent values and believes.

These results also have more general implications for children’s literacy in that they

suggest that parents might also consider what their goals are when reading with their children,

how they formed these goals, and how these goals may or may not influence when and what they

read with their children, what behaviours they engage in, and the outcomes they expect from the

shared reading experience. Perhaps a parent with a goal to share a positive experience with their

child, for example, would be less likely to engage in behaviour that corrects their child’s reading

errors or even to use books that the child might attempt to read, preferring instead to read more

advanced text to the child. As noted in the research previously described (e.g., Evans & Saint-

Aubin, 2005; Evans & Shaw, 2008; Justice, Skibbe, Canning, & Lankford, 2005; Levy et al.,

2006; Phillips, Norris, & Anderson, 2008), significant improvements in this child’s reading skills

would not be expected until perhaps later when the more advanced vocabulary skills that stem

from listening to books may assist reading comprehension (as suggested by research conducted

by Senechal, 2006 and Senechal & LeFevre, 2002). Therefore, armed with an understanding of

how their goals for (as well as beliefs about) shared reading relate to their behaviour while

reading with their child, which ultimately relates to a variety of child literacy outcomes, parents

70
and educators will be better able to structure the book reading experience to maximize the

effectiveness of the desired outcome(s) of the interaction.

Limitations of the Study

There are some limitations to note in the interpretation of the results of the current study.

To begin, the truncated sample size and likely homogenous nature of the sample (e.g., a sample

of mostly mothers who are relatively well educated, earn generally within a middle- to upper-

middle class income range, and are highly motivated, as evidenced by their active participation

in the study over the three years) is an area of concern, particularly as both of these could affect

the component structure of the goal subsets. If the goal subsets were, somehow, not

representative of the sample under consideration than it would follow that relation to the parent

behaviours and interrelation with parent beliefs would be less likely to be uncovered in the data.

As such, their behaviours, goals and beliefs may not necessarily be representative of the

population at large or other subgroups within it.

Another limitation of the current study was the presence of the researcher in the

audiotaping of the book reading sessions. The presence of a relatively unknown person during

these sessions could affect the behaviour of the parent and child, particularly in the case of

children who are less comfortable in the presence of strangers. Anecdotal evidence from

researchers at these sessions suggests that a few children seemed uncomfortable reading with

their parents in the presence of a researcher while other children were very excited by the

researcher and were more interested in playing and interacting with the researcher than in

reading with their parents. This concern was addressed by giving the child time to adjust to the

presence of the researcher at each session and by maintaining consistency in the researcher over

71
the three-year duration of the study. The same researcher visited the families each year and

children also worked with this researcher during biyearly school literacy assessments (not a

component of the current study). Thus, children and parents became not only familiar with the

researcher but also with the home visits, mitigating against the potential effects of being

observed. In fact, as previously described, parent reports of how similar the sessions were to

what normally happens when they read with their child revealed that they felt that the sessions

were quite typical. Nevertheless, it is expected that parents might behave somewhat differently

while reading with their child in the presence of the researcher, such as being more conscientious

about correcting errors or being less likely to engage in extraneous conversation out of concern

for privacy or taking up the researcher’s time, than when they read alone with their child.

Limitations also exist in the use of self-report measures, particularly with respect to

positive self-presentation effects regarding the belief and goal measures. Parents might have a

tendency to endorse all items highly in an effort to demonstrate their investment in the

development of their children’s literacy skills. This tendency could be particularly pronounced in

a sample of parents who would be engaged enough in this topic to participate in a study that

requires regular involvement over a three-year timeframe. They might not only be more likely to

rate items in a manner that presents them in a positive light to the researchers but they may also

genuinely hold elevated goals overall for shared book reading. A narrowing of the response

range would have important implications for interpretation of the results of the statistical

analyses, particularly with respect to the principal components analyses and the regressions.

Finally, by conducting the study with children in a specific grade--senior kindergarten--

results and implications of these results can only be cautiously extended to first grade. Given the

change in parent goal subset ratings during the first grade (as demonstrated by this study and

72
Audet et al., 2008), parent behaviours may look different (as indicated previously by Mansell,

Evans, & Hamilton-Hulak, 2005), as would the relation between goals and behaviour. Future

research should thus extend on these findings by exploring the relation between parent goals for,

beliefs about, and behaviour during shared book reading with children of different ages and at

different stages of their reading development.

Future Research

While this study points to a clear link between parent goals for and behaviour during

shared book reading, there are further considerations that could not be addressed within the

scope of this research. First, to better understand the relations between parent goals, beliefs, and

behaviour one must explore the factors driving parent goals. For example, Hunt and Ying (2011)

demonstrated that the value that American and Chinese-born mothers place on mathematics-

related tasks is influenced by their own past performance in mathematics and whether it was a

positive or negative experience for them. Those parents with more negative associations with

learning mathematics provided less direct assistance to their children at home, often allowing for

the teaching of mathematics to occur elsewhere in their children’s life (i.e., school). Through a

series of case studies, Nichols, Nixon, Pudney, and Jurvansuu (2009) found that parents’

personal goals for their children were influenced by their perceptions of their child’s specific

needs, as well as by their own values, and shaped their resource-seeking practices (e.g., aligning

the educational resources provided to one’s child with religious values). Finally, Baharudin,

Hong, Lim, and Zulkefly (2010) found that the relation between parent educational goals and

parenting practices varied between mothers and fathers in that perceived educational goals were

higher in the mothers in their sample than in the fathers and that higher goals in this area were

73
related to increases in both mothers’ and father’s monitoring behaviours and to mothers’ school

involvement. Together, these studies suggest that factors such as parents’ values, gender, as well

as their own previous experiences with reading and learning to read may be related to the goals

they hold for their children, as well as to their behaviour around their children’s learning and

educational development. Future research might explore why some parents highly endorse goals

related to fostering the development of their children’s reading skills while others hold goals

related to enjoyment and engaging in a positive experience with their child more highly.

A second consideration not explored in the current study is the influence of culture and

ethnicity on parent goals and beliefs. Given that the sample used within the current study was

predominantly white and middle to upper-middle class, it was not possible to explore these

influences. However, research suggests that one’s cultural/ethnic background does influence the

goals that he or she holds. For example, Yamamoto and Holloway (2010) concluded, from their

review of the research on the effects of parental expectations on student achievement, that the

level of parental expectations varies by racial/ethnic group and that students' previous academic

performance is a less influential determinant of parental expectations among racial/ethnic

minority parents than among European American parents. Thus, for parents with goals that focus

on the role of effort in achievement (e.g., as with Asian-American parents), the effects of past

performance are likely to be less salient for them in predicting future performance than for other

groups. In contrast, parents who believe that performance is a function of native ability, which

they perceive to be stable over time (e.g., as with European American parents), are more likely to

see past achievement as a reliable indicator of future performance. Consistent with this, Hunt and

Ying (2011) found that Chinese-born mothers expressed greater beliefs in the importance of

practice to learn mathematics and also to increase one’s interest in the subject than American-

74
born mothers. Finally, Durand (2011) argued that creating school environments that are able to

serve children from diverse backgrounds comes from a cultural perspective on children’s

transition to formal school and early academic performance and this is driven by increasing our

understanding of the diversity of parents’ goals for and beliefs about their children. Findings

such as these suggest that an important direction for future research in this field would be to

examine whether the goal subsets identified by Audet and colleagues (2008) and within the

current study, as well as the pattern of goal subset endorsement across the grades, would be

replicated in a culturally diverse sample and, if not, how they differ.

A final potential area for future research is children’s own goals for book reading. A

study by Bozack (2011) of 330 adolescent boys’ literacy and motivations for reading found that

they were less likely to endorse social motives for reading and more likely to endorse motives of

interest, recognition, aesthetic enjoyment, and reader identity. Furthermore, the adolescent boys’

motives for reading remained relatively stable from elementary school to high school although

some motives for reading (e.g.. interest/flow, social mentor, positive reader identity) became

more sophisticated over time. This suggestion, that goals for reading show both stability and

change over time, was also evidenced by Audet and colleagues (2008) and by the current study.

Therefore, to strengthen our understanding of the relation between parents’ goals for and

behaviour during shared book reading one must also consider how a child’s own goals may

interact with those of the parents’ and how, together, these goals influence behaviour and

outcomes of the interaction. For instance, a child with the goal to engage in an enjoyable

experience with their parent may not respond positively to being encouraged to take on the

reader role and work out how to read word with partial clues from a parent whose goal is to

75
foster their child’s reading skills. This might limit the parent’s ability to engage in behaviors

consistent with their goal, thereby complicating the relations between goals and behavior.

Conclusion

The current study contributes to an area lacking in the vast field of research on children’s

literacy development by providing evidence that parent behaviours during shared book reading

are, in part, influenced by the specific goals they bring to the book reading session. These goals

show both stability and change over time and are interrelated in their impact on some parent

behaviours. Given these findings, intervention efforts aimed at improving the development of

children’s literacy skills by targeting parent-child shared book reading should consider not only

how parents read with their children but also why they read with their children. Understanding

this relation between the how and the why will ultimately help us to better structure reading

intervention efforts to optimize benefits for children’s literacy development.

76
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88
 Appendix A

Parent Goals for Shared Reading Questionnaire (Evans & Williamson, 2003)
This questionnaire asks for your views of reading with your child and what you hope to be gained from it.
Please answer with respect to your child who is now in (indicate grade). There are no right or wrong
answers. We are simply interested in the views of parents. To be able to see whether views differ
according to various demographic features, please also answer a few questions below on this.

Part A.
Sex of child: girl ___ boy ____

Sex and age of parent in home completing questionnaire: female___ male___ Age: ____

Highest level of school completed by maternal caregiver in home: ______________________________

Highest level of school completed by paternal caregiver in home: _______________________________

If the caregivers were not born and raised in Canada please note where they grew up:

How many times a week do you read with your child? ____
Is there another child present then? Yes No

If yes, what percentage of time is he/she there? ______ What is the age of the other child? ____

Part B:

Please rate the importance of each of the following possible purposes when reading with your
child using the following scale:
1 2 3 4 5
Not an important A somewhat An important A very important A purpose of
purpose important purpose purpose purpose greatest importance

not greatest
important importance

1. For my child to learn about people, places and things…….. 1 2 3 4 5

2. To help my child learn to read.……………………………….. 1 2 3 4 5

3. To develop my child’s creativity and imagination…………… 1 2 3 4 5

4. To instill a love of reading in my child ………………………. 1 2 3 4 5

5. For my child to have fun..……………………………………… 1 2 3 4 5

6. To increase my child’s knowledge of printed letters and words 1 2 3 4 5

7. To help my child develop his/her vocabulary (learn new words) 1 2 3 4 5

89
 not greatest
important importance
8. To make reading a habit………………………………………. 1 2 3 4 5

9. To provide a reward for good behaviour..……………………. 1 2 3 4 5

10. To help develop my child’s problem-solving abilities…..….. 1 2 3 4 5

11. To experience physical closeness with my child……………. 1 2 3 4 5

12. To help my child relax …………………………………………. 1 2 3 4 5

13. For my child to develop morals/ethics through books………. 1 2 3 4 5

14. To share an activity that I enjoy with my child..…………….... 1 2 3 4 5

15. To help prepare my child for bed/sleep…………………….…. 1 2 3 4 5

16. To expand my child’s world...…………………………………… 1 2 3 4 5

17. To develop my child’s understanding of the way that the

sounds of language relate to letters in printed words….... 1 2 3 4 5

18. To expose my child to many different book types and genres. 1 2 3 4 5

19. To create a positive childhood experience for my child that

he/she will always remember…………………………….… 1 2 3 4 5

20. To give my child experience participating in quiet activities.… 1 2 3 4 5

21. To help my child develop a respect for literature and books… 1 2 3 4 5

22. To provide a context for the direct teaching of literacy skills… 1 2 3 4 5

23. To expose my child to different types of language not typically

used in everyday life (e.g, rhymes, poetry)……………….. 1 2 3 4 5

24. To strengthen the relationship between myself and my child… 1 2 3 4 5

25. For my child to learn to understand different forms of

humor and jokes……………………………………………… 1 2 3 4 5

26. To monitor my child’s development of literacy skills....……….. 1 2 3 4 5

27. To increase the chance that my child will later read books
on his/her own for enjoyment ……………………………… 1 2 3 4 5

28. To help soothe my child when he/she is upset…………….….. 1 2 3 4 5

29. To prepare my child for formal reading instruction or

supplement the instruction he/she is already receiving….. 1 2 3 4 5

30. For my child to learn new facts and things about the world….. 1 2 3 4 5

31. To develop an appreciation of the beauty of books and

illustrations in them ……………………………………….…. 1 2 3 4 5

90
 not greatest
important importance
32. To share quality time with my child…………………………..…. 1 2 3 4 5

33. To increase my child’s ability to understand the meaning

of stories and text read (reading comprehension skills)… 1 2 3 4 5

34. To help develop my child’s ability to see different perspectives 1 2 3 4 5

35. To increase my child’s listening skills.………………………..... 1 2 3 4 5

36. To develop a predictable routine for bedtime..………………… 1 2 3 4 5

37. To give my child 1:1 attention that he/she is less likely to

receive during the rest of the day………………………….. 1 2 3 4 5

38. To develop my child’s confidence in learning to read………… 1 2 3 4 5

39. To provide a context for the discussion of new ideas and

explanation of new concepts………………………………. 1 2 3 4 5

40. For my child to enjoy hearing a good story……………………. 1 2 3 4 5

41. To give my child the opportunity to experience or understand

different emotional responses through story books
e.g., joy, anger, jealousy) …………………………………… 1 2 3 4 5

Part C:
Now please rank order the following six general goals by putting a number from 1 to 6 in the
space provided before each of them. Put a 1 beside what you feel is your MOST IMPORTANT goal
when reading with your child at this time, and a 6 beside your LEAST IMPORTANT goal. Fill in the
remaining numbers to correspond with your view of the relative importance of the other general
goals at this time.

_____ Having an enjoyable time with my child

_____ Fostering skills that will help my child learn how to read

_____ Assisting with child behaviour and daily routines (e.g. routine for bedtime, soothing when child is
upset, a reward for good behaviour)

_____ Fostering an interest in literature and reading

_____ Fostering general social and emotional skills (e.g. creativity and imagination,
understanding of others, development of emotions)

_____ Developing general knowledge and comprehension (e.g. word meanings,

concepts, and facts)

PLEASE CONTINUE TO SECOND SURVEY

91
 Appendix B

Parent Letter Including Study Description and Consent Form

(Printed on University Letterhead)

Date

Dear Parents,

This letter is forwarded to you by your childʼs teacher in the hopes that you will join me in a
research project on childrenʼs language and reading development. The title of this project is From
“Reading To” to “Reading With”: Shared Reading from Ages 4 to 6. We know from previous
research that children gradually gain a base of knowledge on which formal reading instruction at
school rests, and that parents are their childʼs first teachers. As a part of the Canadian Language
and Literacy Research Network, a centre of excellence funded by the Canadian government (see
enclosed and www.CLLRNet.ca), my work is to understand how Canadian families contribute to
and support their childrenʼs learning in the first few years of school, and how childrenʼs
individual nature influences the learning process. I am interested in rural and city settings, in
families who do and do not struggle financially, and in children from shy to more outgoing.
Previous participants have found it very interesting to be a part of this research and I would very
much value having you join in.

This research is being done with the help of graduate students in child psychology at the
University of Guelph. If you agree to participate, your identity on the information collected
would only be known to us. One of them would visit your home each year to help you to give
some brief tests of language development to your child, and to audiotape you and your child
reading childrenʼs books together that we will bring. This could be done as 1 one-hour visit or 2
half-hour visits. The same student would also work with your child at school for 1 or 2 half-hour
sessions to assess your childʼs language, thinking, and reading skills. Each year you would also
complete a questionnaire regarding home activities. We have applied for funding to do this for
three years, beginning this year, to trace your childʼs development to the end of grade one. Each
year you will receive a token honorarium of $15, and at each school and home visit your child
will receive a very small gift.

The way that this research will be conducted has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the
University of Guelph. All data files created will not have your name within them, so that if any
data is requested in the future by other researchers in CLLRNet, your name will not be attached
to it. If for some reason after starting out in the research you do not want to continue, you may
stop without penalty. All participants will receive a summary of the main findings at the end of
the study.

The Research Advisory Committee of the XXXX District School Board has approved the study.
Your childʼs school has indicated its approval and I would very much appreciate your
participation. The project will create new knowledge to understand childrenʼs development, and

92
help my students meet the research requirements of their graduate degrees towards becoming
child psychologists. A consent form is attached for you to separate from this letter and return to
your childʼs teacher within four weeks. If you have any questions, do call me at my university
office 519-824-4120, ext 53080. If I am not at my desk, leave a message and I will be sure to
return your call.

Sincerely and with thanks for considering this request,

Mary Ann Evans, Ph.D., C. Psych

Professor of Psychology

93
 Consent For Participation

(Please return to your child’s teacher within two weeks of receiving this)

Name of Researcher: Dr. Mary Ann Evans, Department of Psychology, University of Guelph

----------------------------------------------------------------------
I am the parent who most often reads with my child and who is volunteering for this research project.

I have received an information letter about this research and what will be involved as a participant in it. I
understand that the researchers will mail me information at the end of the study about the overall main
findings.

I understand that after giving consent to participate in this research, my child or I may withdraw from the
project after it is underway without penalty.

I understand that when reading books with my child during the home visits by the researchers, the
researchers will audio record the interaction so that it may be later typed out and coded.

I have been assured that my identity will be confidential to Dr. Evans and student researchers working on
this project under her supervision. I also understand that data files created in this project that might be
shared with other researchers in the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network will not have my
name within them. I also understand that no information provided from us will be shared with my child’s
school.

In signing below I give consent for my child and myself to participate in this research.

My name as participating parent: (please print)

Name of participating child: (please print)

Birthdate of participating child:

Our address and postal code:

Telephone number(s) to reach us:

My signature: Date:

94
 Appendix C
Approaches to Beginning Reading and Reading Instruction
(ABRRI, Evans, Fox, Cremaso & McKinnon, 2004)
1. Different opinions exist about what is most important in learning to read and in a beginning
reading program. Rate each of the items below on a scale from 1 to 5 according to the importance
you give each of them. A rating of 1 indicates little importance and a rating of 5 indicates greatest
importance.

little greatest
importance importance

Develop broad reading interests in the child..................... 1 2 3 4 5

Practice and learn the letters of the alphabet.................... 1 2 3 4 5

Develop the child's confidence to guess at words from the

context such as pictures on the page or the topic of the story 1 2 3 4 5

Develop the child's ability to sound out words................... 1 2 3 4 5

Develop a personal dictionary for a child of words

related to topics in which he/she is interested................... 1 2 3 4 5

Develop the children's oral language as a basis for

their reading and writing development...........................… 1 2 3 4 5

Develop the ability to fluently read out loud with expression 1 2 3 4 5

Use books selected on the basis of their colourful

illustrations, high-interest content, and natural language.... 1 2 3 4 5

Develop the child's ability to hear the separate sounds

in spoken words, such as the "f" in "fish".......................….. 1 2 3 4 5

Develop the child's ability to know the letters and letter

combinations that represent sounds in printed words.......... 1 2 3 4 5

Use books selected to have words with simple or

familiar spelling patterns and short easy sentences............. 1 2 3 4 5

Develop through practice the ability to immediately recognize

printed words that occur often in reading materials.............. 1 2 3 4 5

Develop accurate oral reading in the child............................ 1 2 3 4 5

Develop children's confidence and interest in putting their

ideas on paper in whatever form they can............................ 1 2 3 4 5

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2. People have different opinions on what are the most important ways to help children to read
words that they do not recognize immediately. Rate each of the ways listed below according to
how important they are. A rating of 1 indicates little importance while a rating of 5 indicates
greatest importance.

little greatest
importance importance

Dividing a word into smaller parts or syllables to read it......... 1 2 3 4 5

Using picture context cues that appear near the words to
read the words......................................................................... 1 2 3 4 5
Using pronunciation rules such as "the final e makes the
vowel say its name" (e.g., "hat" vs. "hate") ............................. 1 2 3 4 5
Using the meaning of what has been read so far to read the
words ...................................................................................... 1 2 3 4 5
Sounding out each letter or group of letters in words to read
those words............................................................................. 1 2 3 4 5
Thinking about similar looking familiar words to read new,
words such as using "fat" and "cap to read "cat nap".............. 1 2 3 4 5
Using one's general knowledge about the world and the topic
of what is being read to figure out the words........................... 1 2 3 4 5
Skipping over a new word, so that the rest of the sentence
might help one to read the word.............................................. 1 2 3 4 5

4. There are two contrasting theories of reading.

One view is that when reading a passage, people rely on the letters and order of the letters in each
printed word to get at the meaning of the passage. This view is called BOTTOM-UP because readers
start at the "bottom" with the visual cues in the printed words such as letters and letter patterns. Good
reading occurs because readers develop the skills through practice to pick up that visual information
quickly as a way to get at the meaning of the passage.

Another view is that people rely on their broad knowledge to guess at the meaning of the passage. It is
called TOP-DOWN because readers start at the "top" with their knowledge of the world, the language,
and the context of the passage such its pictures and title. Good reading occurs because readers use this
knowledge to make sensible guesses as they read the passage, without having to pay attention to all the
letters and words on the page.

While there may be some truth to both theories, indicate which of the above is closest to your
view of reading by putting a check mark in one of the following boxes:
BOTTOM -UP or TOP-DOWN_______

Think back to when you learned to read. Check one of the following boxes to indicate which was
the way you think you learned to read:
BOTTOM -UP or TOP-DOWN ______

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Table 1

Study 1: Means and Standard Deviations of Item Ratings on the Parent Goals for Shared
Reading Questionnairea for JK, SK, Grade 1, and Overall Averaged Item Ratings

Item JK Mean JK SD SK Mean SK SD Gr. 1 Gr. 1 SD Overall Overall

Mean Mean SD
1 3.67 0.79 3.93 0.71 3.71 0.78 3.77 0.54
2 4.59 0.63 4.76 0.48 4.72 0.56 4.69 0.38
3 4.24 0.73 4.29 0.69 4.28 0.79 4.27 0.59
4 4.63 0.61 4.60 0.61 4.71 0.50 4.64 0.45
5 4.39 0.71 4.50 0.64 4.47 0.65 4.45 0.53
6 4.20 0.83 4.28 0.84 4.28 0.88 4.25 0.62
7 4.13 0.79 4.29 0.76 4.45 0.67 4.29 0.55
8 4.36 0.79 4.33 0.92 4.43 0.70 4.37 0.66
9 2.34 1.14 2.32 1.09 2.28 1.07 2.31 0.91
10 3.59 0.96 3.75 1.00 3.76 0.87 3.70 0.72
11 4.01 0.97 4.03 0.91 3.99 0.98 4.01 0.77
12 3.26 1.06 3.53 1.02 3.37 1.21 3.39 0.87
13 3.27 0.96 3.43 0.94 3.23 1.12 3.31 0.83
14 4.15 0.78 4.04 0.86 4.14 .09 4.11 0.69
15 3.43 1.07 3.40 1.06 3.37 1.24 3.40 0.95
16 3.98 0.81 4.01 0.78 4.13 0.77 4.04 0.60
17 3.60 0.93 3.85 0.91 3.71 0.87 3.72 0.68
18 3.41 0.89 3.51 0.92 3.60 0.93 3.51 0.72
19 4.14 0.78 4.15 0.89 4.03 0.93 4.11 0.69
20 3.52 0.82 3.39 0.93 3.25 0.96 3.39 0.70
21 3.99 0.86 3.96 0.89 3.92 0.83 3.96 0.65
22 3.34 0.92 3.61 0.88 3.54 0.86 3.50 0.69
23 3.25 0.79 3.40 0.86 3.18 0.97 3.28 0.68
24 3.90 0.95 3.90 1.05 3.77 1.04 3.86 0.84
25 2.83 0.91 3.02 0.94 3.02 0.98 2.96 0.77
26 3.54 1.02 3.66 0.87 4.02 0.78 3.74 0.72
27 4.40 0.76 4.47 0.70 4.52 0.67 4.46 0.54
28 2.59 1.11 2.50 1.23 2.47 1.18 2.52 1.00
29 3.59 0.92 3.85 0.89 3.85 0.97 3.76 0.68
30 3.76 0.83 3.79 0.85 3.80 0.83 3.79 0.65
31 3.72 0.93 3.60 1.05 3.60 1.01 3.64 0.82
32 4.36 0.74 4.26 0.90 4.10 0.91 4.24 0.67
33 3.83 0.90 4.07 0.80 4.18 0.75 4.03 0.61
34 3.59 0.80 3.67 0.88 3.74 0.85 3.67 0.68
35 3.77 0.95 3.71 0.90 3.48 1.02 3.65 0.75
36 3.41 1.16 3.36 1.18 3.24 1.31 3.34 1.08
37 3.54 0.98 3.65 1.18 3.67 1.15 3.62 0.91
38 4.12 0.80 4.25 0.78 4.49 0.64 4.29 0.57

97
39 3.51 0.85 3.42 0.90 3.71 0.91 3.55 0.71
40 4.18 0.75 4.05 0.75 4.05 0.73 4.10 0.61
41 3.84 0.83 3.65 0.80 3.46 0.97 3.65 0.69

Note. SD = Standard Deviation

a
Evans & Williamson (2003)

98
Table 2

Study 1: Factor Loadings of Items Relating to the Goal Subsets

Component

1 2 3 4

Foster Reading

17. Develop understanding of the sounds of language .85 - - -

6. Increase knowledge of printed letters and words .82 - - -

7. Develop child’s vocabulary .75 - - -

22. Provide a context for the teaching of literacy skills .74 - - -

33. Increase understanding of the meaning of stories .71 - - -

26. Monitor the development of child’s literacy skills .67 - - -

38. Develop confidence in learning to read .66 - - -

35. To increase my child’s listening skills .63 - - -

29. Prepare child for formal reading instruction .54 - .46 -

Stimulation

39. Discuss new ideas and explain new concepts - .82 - -

34. Develop ability to see different perspectives - .82 - -

30. Learn new facts and things about the world - .70 - -

41. Experience different emotional responses - .67 - -

25. Learn and understand different forms of humor - .64 - -

31. Develop an appreciation of the beauty of books - .62 - .47

23. Expose to different types of languages - .61 - -

13. Develop morals/ethics through books - .59 .42 -

99
1. Learn about people, places, and things - .47 - -

Closeness

28. Soothe child when he/she is upset - - .78 -

12. Help my child relax - - .74 -

37. Give my child 1:1 attention - - .72 -

36. Develop a predictable bedtime routine - - .69 -

24. Strengthen relationship with child - - .68 .42

15. Prepare my child for bed/sleep - - .66 -

11. Experience physical closeness with child - - .64 -

20. Give child experience participating in quiet activities - - .46 -

Enjoyment

14. Share an activity I enjoy with my child - - - .79

27. Increase chance child will read books on own - - - .73

21. Develop child’s respect for literature and books - - - .72

8. To make reading a habit - - - .70

19. Create a memorable positive childhood experience - - .48 .58

3. Develop child’s creativity and imagination - - - .54

40. For child to enjoy hearing a good story - - - .49

Items with no clear loadings on any of the components

9. To provide a reward for good behaviour
10. To help develop my child’s problem solving abilities
16. To expand my child’s world
18.To expose my child to many different book types and genres
32.To share quality time with my child
Note. Factor loadings of less than .4 represented by “-“

100
Table 3

Study 2: Items Included in the Foster Reading and Non-Reading Goal Subsets

Foster Reading

6. Increase knowledge of printed letters and words

7. Develop child’s vocabulary

17. Develop understanding of the sounds of language

22. Provide a context for the teaching of literacy skills

26. Monitor the development of child’s literacy skills

33. Increase understanding of the meaning of stories

38. Develop confidence in learning to read

Non-Reading

1. Learn about people, places, and things

3. Develop child’s creativity and imagination

8. To make reading a habit

11. Experience physical closeness with child

12. Help my child relax

13. Develop morals/ethics through books

14. Share an activity I enjoy with my child

15. Prepare my child for bed/sleep

19. Create a memorable positive childhood experience

20. Give child experience participating in quiet activities

101
21. Develop child’s respect for literature and books

23. Expose to different types of languages

24. Strengthen relationship with child

25. Learn and understand different forms of humor

27. Increase chance child will read books on own

28. Soothe child when he/she is upset

30. Learn new facts and things about the world

31. Develop an appreciation of the beauty of books

32. Share quality time with my child

34. Develop ability to see different perspectives

36. Develop a predictable bedtime routine

37. Give my child 1:1 attention

39. Discuss new ideas and explain new concepts

40. For child to enjoy hearing a good story

41. Experience different emotional responses

102
Table 4

Characteristics of Books Used for Home Book Reading Sessions

Book Title Pages with Number Words Different Words per % content Font
text of in book Words sentence words height in
sentences illustrated* mm
A Child’s First 26 26 109 61 4 100 10
Alphabet Book

Buttons Buttons 8 13 26 15 2 100 7

Watch Your Step, 18 22 93 39 4 100 7

Mr. Rabbit!

Snore! 24 34 267 87 8 85 7

* Percentage of content words illustrated in pictures is approximate

103
 4.4  

4.2  
Mean  Goal  Subset  Rating  

4.0   Enjoyment  

Reading  
3.8  
Stimulation  
3.6  
Closeness  

3.4  

3.2  
JK   SK   gr.1  
Grade  

Figure 1. Study 1: Goal Subset Endorsement by Grade.

104
Figure 2. Relation between standardized Not Read (i.e., Non-Reading) and Read (i.e., Foster
Reading) goal subset ratings.

105
 90
Percent  Enjoyment  Extratextual  Comments
85

80

75

70 Low  Read

High  Read
65

60

55

50
w

h
m

g
Lo

iu

Hi
ed
M

Not  Read  Goal  Subset  Ratings  

Figure 3. Relation between enjoyment-related extratextual comments and Non-Reading goal

subset ratings at high and low levels of Foster Reading goal subset endorsement.

106
 50  
Percent  Error  Corrections  that  Provide  

45  

40  
Sustaning  Feedback  

35  

30  
Low  Read  

25   High  Read  

20  

15  

10  
Low   High  
Level  of  Non-­‐Reading  Goal  Subset  Ratings  

Figure 4. Relation between parents’ provision of sustaining feedback and Non-Reading goal
subset ratings at high and low levels of Foster Reading goal subset endorsement.

107