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Educational Research and EvaluationAn International Journal on Theory and Practice
ISSN: 1380-3611 (Print) 1744-4187 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nere20
Home book reading and reading achievementin EU countries: the Progress in InternationalReading Literacy Study 2011 (PIRLS)
Luisa Araújo & Patricia Costa
To cite this article: Luisa Araújo & Patricia Costa (2015): Home book reading and readingachievement in EU countries: the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2011 (PIRLS),Educational Research and Evaluation, DOI: 10.1080/13803611.2015.1111803
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2015.1111803
© 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor &Francis
Published online: 23 Nov 2015.
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Home book reading and reading achievement in EU countries: theProgress in International Reading Literacy Study 2011 (PIRLS)
Luisa Araújo* and Patricia Costa
European Commission, Joint Research Center, Econometrics and Applied Statistics Unit, Ispra VA,Italy
(Received 23 February 2015; final version received 12 October 2015)
Home shared book reading during the preschool years is a strong predictor of students’reading achievement in primary school, and, according to Sénéchal (2012), it can benefitmore children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. This study examinesthe association between frequency of book reading before the start of compulsoryeducation and the reading achievement of 4th-grade students whose parents have highand low education levels in 22 European countries. Using data from the Progress inInternational Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2011), we show that the contribution ofshared reading for the achievement of students from distinct SES backgrounds isdifferent in different countries and that shared reading does not always benefit morechildren from low-SES backgrounds. Results are discussed in light of Sénéchal’shome literacy model, the dynamics of cultural capital, and current policy efforts tosupport children’s literacy development in European countries.
Keywords: reading achievement; home book reading; parental education levels;socioeconomic status (SES)
Introduction
The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) consistently shows strongrelationships between students’ background and reading achievement at the fourth gradelevel. This large-scale international study offers a unique opportunity to investigaterelations between student background variables and reading achievement, because it col-lects contextual information via the application of a home questionnaire, in addition toschool and student questionnaires, in a variety of countries. Results from PIRLS 2001and 2006 show “a positive relationship between students’ reading achievement in fourthgrade and parents having engaged their children in early literacy activities before startingschool” (Mullins, Martin, Kennedy, & Foy, 2007, p. 5). In addition, PIRLS results indicatethat, across participating countries, higher achievement is related to higher levels of parentaleducation and to a higher number of books at home (Mullis, Martin, Foy, & Drucker, 2012;Mullis et al., 2007).
© 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & FrancisThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativesLicense (http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Educational Research and Evaluation, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2015.1111803
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In Europe, initiatives aimed at informing educational policies stress the importance ofpromoting a literate environment in the home. For example, The High Level Group ofExperts on Literacy (HLGL) report highlights the need to create communities of readerswhere the home environment and the school environment need to reinforce each other inorder to boost high literacy levels (European Commission, 2012). The same report pointsout that since some caregivers may not be able to provide the material well-being relatedto good literacy outcomes, school aid to buy books may reduce the negative effects ofmaterial deprivation and increase educational opportunities. The rationale is that avail-ability of literacy resources at home positively influences the development of literacyskills and ultimately reading achievement (Myrberg & Rosén, 2009). As PIRLS 2011results indicate, the percentage of European students that do not reach a satisfactorylevel of reading achievement is not negligible: “… on average, 20% of fourth graders inparticipating European Union countries have low reading literacy skills” (Stancel-Piatak,Mirazchiyski, & Desa, 2013, p. 498). These fourth graders are likely to face reduced educationalopportunities since students who do not develop sound literacy skills during primary school tendto avoid reading and to show low levels of motivation for reading (Adams, 1990).
Research shows that parental book reading (Sénéchal, 2006; Sénéchal & LeFevre,2002) positively impacts kindergarten-age children’s reading in Grade 4, and this findingis linked to the oral vocabulary knowledge that Canadian children acquire from sharedbook reading (Sénéchal, 2006). Family literacy programmes that specifically targetshared reading also single out the contribution of oral vocabulary as a predictor of futureliteracy development, but most of this evidence was collected in the United States (NationalInstitute for Literacy, 2008). In addition, most of the studies have been conducted withmiddle-class families although there is some evidence to suggest that it benefits the voca-bulary growth of children from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Mol & Bus, 2011). Onehypothesis concerning shared book reading is that it can be more advantageous or contrib-ute more to boost the reading comprehension of children from low socioeconomic status(SES) backgrounds than that of middle-class children (Sénéchal, 2012). However,studies that address the magnitude of this contribution for children from different back-grounds are lacking.
Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of a specific early literacypractice – book reading – with the reading achievement of two groups of students: thosewhose parents have low education levels and those whose parents have high levels of edu-cation in European countries. Following a comparative perspective and in view of drawingimplications for practice and policy, our aim is to describe the nature of this relationship indifferent European Union (EU) countries participating in PIRLS 2011 and whether it differsfor specific socioeconomic subgroups.
Reading literacy
The first moment for international performance monitoring in reading at the fourth gradelevel with the PIRLS large-scale assessment mirrors the notion that by Grade 4, studentsshould have acquired the basic skills needed to comprehend what they read. Reading lit-eracy in PIRLS is defined as:
the ability to understand and use those written language forms required by society and/orvalued by the individual. Young readers can construct meaning from a variety of texts. Theyread to learn, to participate in communities of readers in school and everyday life, and forenjoyment. (Mullis, Kennedy, Martin, & Sainsbury, 2006, p. 103)
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Research indicates that knowledge of the alphabet, or children’s ability to name lettersof the alphabet before formal reading instruction begins, is one of the strongest predictors ofchildren’s reading ability (Bond & Dykstra, 1967; Piasta & Wagner, 2010; Riley, 1996).Alphabet knowledge shares a reciprocal relation with phonological awareness (PA)because some letter names also include their sounds (Ehri, 1983), and together with PA,this knowledge is a component of early reading skills. Understanding how letters andletter combinations represent speech sounds enables readers to identify words automati-cally. In turn, this automaticity makes it possible for readers to comprehend what they read.
Indeed, several decades of research have confirmed LaBerge and Samuels’ (1974)model of reading and showed that “slow reading of words consumes the limited conscious-ness available for processing text, with the result that no consciousness is left over forunderstanding what is read” (Pressley, Gaskins, & Fingeret, 2006, p. 54). In a similarvein, Perfetti’s (1992) verbal-efficiency account of reading ability postulates that fastword-identification skills serve as the foundation for text comprehension. Evidence fromresearch with students with reading difficulties, in particular, confirms that the greatmajority of those students have not developed adequate decoding and efficient word recog-nition abilities (Stanovich, 2000). Nonetheless, as reading ability develops, factors otherthan efficient decoding, such as vocabulary knowledge, explain reading comprehension(Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005). For this reason, oral comprehension skills should bedeveloped before school starts, both in the home context and in preschool (Bianco et al.,2011; Sénéchal, 2012).
When preschool-age children are exposed to book reading, they develop the under-standing of vocabulary that is not commonly used in daily oral interactions. This oralcomprehension will assist them in comprehending what they will read by themselveslater. In fact, vocabulary knowledge is strongly associated with reading achievementbecause “… reading with comprehension depends on understanding at least 95% of thewords of the text” (Adams, 2009, p. 172). According to the home literacy model proposedby Sénéchal (2012), when parents engage in shared reading with their kindergarten chil-dren, they informally teach them vocabulary words because interactions during storybookreading revolve around discussing the meaning of print. Across different studies, frequentexposure to home shared reading during preschool and kindergarten is positively related tochildren’s oral expressive vocabulary skills and explains about 7% of the variation in theirreading comprehension in later grades (Sénéchal, Pagan, Lever, & Ouellette, 2008). Con-sistent with these findings with English-speaking children, a study using PIRLS 2006data for Sweden found that home engagement in early literacy activities such as singingsongs and reading books positively impacted Grade 4 reading achievement (Myrberg &Rosén, 2009).
Reading frequently to preschool children in the home, in particular, can contribute togive them the skills they need to be successful in school (Whitehurst, 2001). Evidencefor the importance of this literacy practice is well documented, and several large-scalesurveys such as PIRLS and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC)collect information on the frequency of home shared reading (Kalb & Ours, 2013).While the first does not define frequency in precise units, the latter asks parents to reportbook reading frequency in three specific intervals: 0 to 2, 3 to 5, or 6 to 7 days a week.Studies with the LSAC survey indicate that book reading frequency for the second andthird intervals has an effect on reading skills when these are measured both at 4 and 5years of age and at 10 and 11 years of age (Kalb & Ours, 2013). This is consistent withevidence that children who are read to three times per week or more do better in schoolthan children who are read to less than three times per week (Whitehurst, 2001).
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The unique contribution of home shared book reading for vocabulary developmentand related reading outcomes has also been supported by family interventions studiesthat teach parents how to read to their children (Whitehurst, 2001), and research suggeststhat this contribution is not easily achieved in a school context. Specifically, research byShager et al. (2013) indicates that “… achievement-based skills such as early reading,early math, and letter recognition skills appear to be more sensitive to Head Start attend-ance than cognitive skills such as IQ, vocabulary, and attention which are less sensitiveto classroom instruction” (p. 90). This suggests that children have much to gain from anearly exposure to shared reading in the home context and that this gain could be evenmore important for children from low SES. As Sénéchal (2012) argues, “the associationbetween shared reading and reading comprehension could be stronger in low-SESfamilies because it exposes the child to language that is distinct from that usuallyused in the home” (pp. 39–40).
SES, in most studies, is determined by the education level of the parents, which is usedas a proxy of SES to investigate the relationship between background characteristics of stu-dents and achievement (Yang & Gustafsson, 2004). This is the case because parental edu-cational credentials can be seen as cultural capital which shapes family socialisationpractices (Tramonte & Willms, 2010; Yang & Gustafsson, 2004). Families with more cul-tural capital tend to pass on to their children the type of knowledge valued in school andwhich is useful for school success (Caro, Sandoval-Hernández, & Lüdtke, 2014). Forexample, more than twice as many mothers with a university degree read aloud to their chil-dren than mothers who do not complete secondary education (O’Donnel & Mulligan,2008). Moreover, the former have been found to read to their children using an interactivestyle that involves the children in the reading, and they also ask more “why” questions(Heath, 1982; Huebner & Meltzoff, 2005).
Objectives of the study
This study looks at whether frequency of home book reading prior to school entry is relatedto reading achievement advantages for children whose parents have low and high educationlevels across EU countries. For this purpose, this analysis of PIRLS 2011 at the fourth gradelevel answers the following questions:
. How does frequency of book reading before attending primary school relate to thereading achievement of students whose parents have high and low educationlevels?
. Is the relationship between students’ achievement and the frequency of book readingsimilar for students whose parents have high and low education levels?
Data source and methods
The target population is composed of fourth-grade students in 22 EU countries that par-ticipated in PIRLS 2011. England was excluded due to the non-application of the homequestionnaire. Thus, the countries included in the analysis are: Austria, FrenchBelgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France,Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal,Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. The data source in thisstudy considers the individual student, and our initial EU sample consisted of 54,593students split, for the purpose of this study, into two education subsamples: those
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whose parents have a low education level and those who have parents with a high edu-cation level.
Instruments
Students’ reading comprehension in PIRLS 2011 is reported on a scale with a mean of 500and a standard deviation of 100 and includes 10 reading passages: 5 for the literary experi-ence purpose and 5 for the acquisition and use of information purpose. Each passage hadbetween 13 to 16 questions, including both multiple-choice and constructed-response ques-tions, with a total of 135 questions in the 10 passages. However, following a rotating designmade possible by the use of item response theory, not all students read all passages andanswer all questions, so their overall score is estimated and reported in five plausiblevalues. In addition to measuring reading achievement, PIRLS collects information onreading skills, attitudes, and habits by collecting data on students (student questionnaires),schools (school and teacher questionnaires), and home literacy environments and practices(home questionnaire).
Variables
The outcome measure is the reading score obtained by students in the continuous PIRLSscale while the independent variables are categorical. The variable measuring the“Highest level of education of either parent” in the PIRLS 2011 home questionnaire con-siders the highest education level of one of the parents. Thus, the highest level can corre-spond to either the mother’s or the father’s, depending on which parent reports the highestlevel. Following the same approach as the one used in the PIRLS 2011 international report,we considered in the lower educational bound those parents that have completed highschool or upper secondary education and in the upper educational bound those that com-pleted tertiary education or higher. Accordingly, we refer to these categories using thelabels LowEd and HighEd.
We selected the variable “Book Reading” in the home questionnaire, which asks parentsto report how often they or someone in the household read to their children before thebeginning of compulsory education according to the categories: “often”, “sometimes”,and “never or almost never”. Thus, we equate often with high reading frequency, andnever or almost never with low reading frequency. Hereafter, we refer to these categoriesas HighRead and LowRead.
“Book Reading” is a part of the Index of Early Literacy Activities (ELA), whichincludes eight other variables that relate to language development in general: sing songs,tell stories, play with alphabet toys, talk about things you have done, talk about whatyou have read, play word games, write letters or words, and read aloud signs or labels.Since our goal was to investigate hypotheses related specifically to home book reading,we used only the variable “Book Reading”. Additionally, a univariate regression analysisconfirmed that this variable explains more of the variance in reading achievement (8%)than the variance explained by the ELA on reading achievement (4%).
Thus, we focused our analysis on the relationship between the frequency of home bookreading and parental education level according to four pairwise combinations: high edu-cation/high reading [HighEd/HighRead], high education/low reading [HighEd/LowRead],low education/high reading [LowEd/HighRead], low education/low reading [LowEd/LowRead]. We focus on these comparisons because they are based on our research ques-tions and on existing research.
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Data analysis
The analysis per country took into account the complex PIRLS design and was run takinginto consideration the student weights, the replicate weights, and the five plausible valuescreated on the basis of the students’ responses. First, we calculated the reading scores for thetwo groups of students from the low and from the high parental education levels. Second,we checked if parents with a high education level reported higher frequency of bookreading. Lastly, we calculated students’ reading achievement according to the followingfour pairwise combinations: HighEd/HighRead, HighEd/LowRead, LowEd/HighRead,and LowEd/LowRead. Statistical significance t tests at the .95 confidence level were usedto compare the differences in scores.
In order to check whether the pairwise comparisons could be interpreted reliably, wecalculated coefficients of variation (CV) of the reading achievement score per country.They provide a measure of the accuracy of the estimates and are calculated as the standarderror of the estimate divided by the value of the parameter being estimated and multipliedby 100 (Jensen, Sandoval-Hernández, Knoll, & Gonzalez, 2012). Lower CV values areassociated with higher levels of precision, and we adopted the cut-off points suggestedby Jensen et al. (2012) as follows: for CV values in the range of 0.0 to 16.5%, estimatescan be considered for unrestricted interpretation; for CV values greater than 16.5% andup to 33.3%, estimates can be considered for unrestricted interpretation, but with cautionbecause of the high sampling variability associated with the estimates; and finally, valueshigher than 33.3% reflect very high variability and should not be interpreted.
Findings
Across the 22 countries, when comparing students of different home educational back-grounds and performance in reading, those whose parents have lower education havelower achievement than students whose parents have higher education (Figure 1). Differ-ences in students’ achievement vary from about 40 to 90 points, favouring the ones witha high parental education level. Comparing low and high parental education levels,greater differences in reading achievement are found for Malta and Romania. On theother hand, Denmark and The Netherlands present the smallest differences in readingachievement by parental levels of education. Also, the confidence intervals show that forhigh parental education, students’ reading achievement presents wider dispersion inMalta and Romania. Similar dispersion occurs in Denmark for the reading achievementof students whose parents have low education.
In all countries, parents with a high education level report that they read to their childrenmore often than parents from a low education level (Appendix 1, Table A1). However, evenin the low education category most countries have a high percentage of families reportinghigh reading. In a smaller number of countries, like Romania, there is a wider difference inthe reported frequency of book reading according to education level: 62.1% for LowEd/HighRead and 98.9% for HighEd/HighRead. To answer the first research question, ouranalysis focused on the pairwise comparisons that allow us to examine how achievementdifferences within High and Low education levels might be related to High and Low fre-quency of book reading. To that end, for the pairwise combinations we obtained unaccep-table coefficients of variation (CV) in six countries – The Netherlands, Slovenia, SlovakRepublic, Poland, Malta, and Romania – for HighEd/LowRead (Appendix 1, Table A1).In addition, in Finland the CV results were not acceptable for both HighEd/LowReadand LowEd/LowRead. This suggests that there are very few parents, regardless of the
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level of parental education, in this country that never or almost never engage in bookreading with their children. We do not report results for the above-mentioned pairwise com-parisons for these seven countries. The remaining countries’ mean scores for LowEd/High-Read versus LowEd/LowRead are plotted in Figure 2, and the mean scores for HighEd/HighRead versus HighEd/LowRead are plotted in Figure 3. t Test statistics (.05 significancelevel) for the difference in mean scores for HighRead and LowRead are presented inAppendix 1, Table A2.
Figure 2 shows that in the low education sample, in 10 countries there are statisticallysignificant differences in reading scores between LowEd/HighRead and LowEd/LowReadof 40 points or more (Malta, Romania, Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary,Sweden, Austria, Slovak Republic, and Italy). The countries with larger differences inreading scores are Ireland, Romania, and Malta. For the same sample, the smallest differ-ences in reading achievement between high and low book reading frequency are found inFrance, the Czech Republic, and Croatia. Denmark is the only country where the differencein reading scores between LowEd/HighRead and LowEd/LowRead is not statistically sig-nificant. Overall, differences in reading scores vary between 22 and 92 points in Franceand Ireland, respectively (Appendix 1, Table A1).
Figure 1. Estimated average reading scores and 95% confidence intervals by parental educationallevel and country.
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Figure 2. Reading scores for LowEd/LowRead and for LowEd/HighRead by country.Note: White bars signal differences that are not statistically significant. Countries are ranked inascending order according to the reading mean for LowRead.
Figure 3. Reading scores for HighEd/LowRead and for HighEd/HighRead by country.Note: White bars signal differences that are not statistically significant. Countries are ranked inascending order according to the reading mean for LowRead.
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Figure 3 shows that for the high education sample, in five countries there are statisticallysignificant differences in reading scores of 40 points or more between HighEd/HighReadand HighEd/LowRead (Sweden, Austria, Spain, Lithuania, and Ireland). The countrieswith larger differences in reading scores are Sweden, Austria, and Lithuania. For thesame sample, the smallest differences in reading achievement between high and lowbook reading frequency are found in Italy, Bulgaria, and Portugal. In Croatia, the CzechRepublic, Germany, and Hungary, the difference between HighEd/HighRead andHighEd/LowRead does not result in statistically significant differences in reading achieve-ment. The range of the statistically significant differences is from 26 to 83 points; the smal-lest is found in Italy and the largest in Sweden (Appendix 1, Table A1).
Importantly, in four countries – Sweden, Austria, Lithuania, and Ireland – the differencein reading scores between low and high reading is quite large – above 40 points – both forthe high and the low education levels. Studies using scales similar to that of PIRLS 2011with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100 have shown that the increase inreading and mathematics achievement over 1 year is about 40 points (Rindermann, 2007).
Considering the second research question on whether the relationship between fre-quency of book reading and reading achievement is similar for students from high andlow parental education levels, as Figures 2 and 3 show, the results vary among the 10countries where comparisons are possible.1 More specifically, as Figure 4 shows, forone group of 6 countries, Austria, Belgium French, France, Lithuania, Spain, andSweden, the magnitude of the reading score difference between HighRead and LowReadis larger in the high education sample. In contrast, in the other 4 countries, Bulgaria,Ireland, Italy, and Portugal, the magnitude of the reading score difference between High-Read and LowRead is larger in the low education sample. For example, in Sweden thereading scores difference between HighEd/HighRead and HighEd/LowRead is 84 pointsand for LowEd/HighRead and LowEd/LowRead 57, which shows that for this countrythe magnitude of the difference in reading scores is larger for the high educationsample. Conversely, in Ireland the relationship is the opposite: High book reading fre-quency benefits more the reading achievement of children from a low parental educationalbackground (93 score points) than that of those from a high parental education background(46 score points).
Figure 4. Reading scores for HighEd/HighRead, HighEd/LowRead, LowEd/HighRead, and LowEd/LowRead by country.
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Discussion
The findings of this study are in line with previous research showing that the education levelof parents is related to the reading achievement of their children (Mullis et al., 2012;Sénéchal, 2012). In addition, this analysis for European countries suggests that highfrequency of shared book reading before the beginning of primary education is related tohigher student achievement, both for children from high and from low parental educationbackgrounds. This extends to Europe the home literacy model proposed by Sénéchal(2012) based on Canadian data, and its postulate that shared book reading before formalschooling contributes to positive reading outcomes in primary school. However, theresults only partially confirm Sénéchal’s hypothesis that book reading can be more impor-tant for children from low-SES backgrounds. The comparison of results from the high andlow parental education levels by country indicates that only in 4 out of 10 countries themagnitude of the difference in reading scores is higher for the low education level.
We could only examine the magnitude of the contribution of shared reading to thePIRLS reading score for the high education group in 11 EU countries, but in some ofthese countries this contribution is quite large. As such, our findings suggest that this con-tribution may be country specific. There is one group of countries where there is more of anadvantage of home shared reading in the high education group.
Several reasons may account for the different patterns found. First, this study captures cul-tural capital, but the nature of the data does not allow for an account of the dynamic form ofcultural capital (Caro & Lenkeit, 2012) that characterises the language interactions betweenparents and children during shared book reading. It could be that culturally different stylesof interaction expose children to distinct language. Themain reasonwhy reading to young chil-dren contributes to later reading comprehension is the use of language and vocabulary that isnot commonly used in daily interactions. It could be that in some countries the interactionalstyle of families from high and low education backgrounds is more similar than in others. Ifmore similar, a more even contribution of shared reading to later achievement for both edu-cation levels is to be expected. On the contrary, if families from low education backgroundsare less able to expose their children to rich language interactions during book reading, thenthe advantage can be more substantial for children from high parental education backgrounds.
Indeed, the assumption that many low-SES parents lack the knowledge to support theirchildren’s literacy development justifies targeted family interventions. In particular, severalhome intervention studies have shown that programmes that teach parents dialogic readingstrategies reduce the literacy underachieving of children from low-SES backgrounds(Pillinger & Wood, 2014). Interactive reading that encourages a dialogue whereby childrenare prompted to respond to the information presented and the adult expands and rephraseswhat the child has said has been shown to reduce children’s risk of school failure (Mol, Bus,De Jong, & Smeets, 2008). However, despite evidence from a few UK studies, the extensiveresearch on the benefits of dialogic reading has been mostly gathered in the US and Canada(Pillinger & Wood, 2014). More evidence is needed to understand how patterns of sharedreading between young children and adults may vary according to diverse SES back-grounds in European contexts. This study is not an observational one, and as such itcannot address the quality of language interactions during shared book reading. What thefindings indicate is that the hypothesis that shared book reading can be more advantageousfor low-SES children does not hold in several European countries. This suggests that vari-ations in the quality of book reading interactions may account for the differences found.
Second, it could be that some countries invest more and better in education resources.The provision of quality early childhood care, for example, can help bridge the achievement
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gap between more and less advantaged populations. Early childhood settings with age-appropriate libraries and professionals who provide young children with language-richexperiences may make the difference. This is what the public resources substitutiontheory predicts: The quality and quantity of public resources reduces the importance offamily background (Caro & Lenkeit, 2012). Within this conceptual model, the expectationis that the reduced role of the family in explaining literacy outcomes is more pronounced inricher countries. In line with this idea, the findings show that in countries like Ireland andItaly, where the gross domestic product (GDP) is high (Eurostat Statistics Explained, 2015),the impact of book reading is higher for the low education level. However, the same is truein Bulgaria, a country with a much lower GDP per capita. The same is not true in Swedenand Austria, countries with a higher GDP per capita than Ireland, and where the magnitudeof the difference in reading scores is higher for the high education level.
In sum, country profiles suggest that different factors linked to societal contexts mayinfluence the different SES relationship between book reading and achievement. Evidencegathered in the US exemplifies the multitude of social factors that may influence readingachievement. For example, high poverty means less access to books at home (Ravitch,2012), and high-SES children have more access to reading material not only at home butalso in their community and at school (Krashen, 2004).
Understanding the differential influence of parental book reading by family SES iscrucial for policy decisions. This study provides European countries with informationthat allows for a better understanding of the impact of shared book reading on achievementfor students of different SES backgrounds. The identification of country profiles can helpcountries adopt measures to increase equity. If this book reading influence is weaker forchildren from low-SES backgrounds, parental intervention programmes might need tofocus not only on the possession of cultural resources such as books but also on thequality of interactions around books. Many EU countries have launched literacy/readingplans that bring educational resources, such as electronic children’s books, to the homeenvironment (Portuguese National Reading Plan, 2011, http://www.planonacionaldeleitura.gov.pt/index1.php). In Poland, the campaign “All of Poland Reads to Kids”, implemented in2001, has similar goals: to raise awareness of the importance of reading in schools and insociety at large and to equip libraries with books (European Commission, 2012). Othercountries, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Lithuania, have taken similar initiativesand have focused specifically on an early start (European Commission, 2012). This study cor-roborates the notion that high frequency of home shared book reading early in life contributes toreading achievement in fourth grade, and, as such, it lends support to the potential of this type ofinitiatives. It would be interesting to monitor the impact of such programmes on reading literacyskills and assess whether home book reading increases as the presence of books and readingmaterials at home and in educational settings increases.
This study with PIRLS data is, to our knowledge, the first to analyse the relationshipbetween a specific predictor of reading ability in PIRLS – home book reading – and thereading achievement of children from high and low parental education backgrounds.Book reading is more informative in terms of its contribution to reading attainment thanthe PIRLS index of Early Literacy Activities (ELA). PIRLS international reports haveexamined the contribution of early literacy activities to reading scores, but the former com-prise book reading as well as other early literacy variables in the ELA index. Thus, they donot address the specific link between home shared reading during the preschool years andreading comprehension in primary school. Similarly, Myrberg and Rosén (2009) showedthe joint effect of parental reading activities and oral story telling on the reading achieve-ment of Swedish third graders, but not of one or the other literacy practices separately.
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Park (2008) showed the pervasive effect of early literacy activities on PIRLS reading in 25countries, but did not consider book reading alone.
Although the analyses presented here are correlational in nature, the results presented aresupported by experimental studies that collect and analyse data in ways that make inferencesabout causality possible. In the case of parental involvement in reading during the preschoolyears and its relationship with reading comprehension in fourth grade, longitudinal studies bySénéchal (2006) and Sénéchal and LeFevre (2002) provide robust evidence of causal effects.Studies such as PIRLS with cross-sectional data have limitations that longitudinal studies donot have, both in terms of not following the same groups of students over time but also in theway home and school information is collected. In this survey, interpretations are based onparents’ retrospective perceptions about household engagement in shared book reading.
Lastly, this study offers a portrayal of what is important to consider for successful lit-eracy development, but individual countries may have much to gain from consideringfactors specific to their societal contexts and educational systems in country-specific analy-sis. For example, the school composition effects found in PIRLS for some Europeancountries and in the United States, such as the number of disadvantaged children in theschool, as well as the number of children with reading deficits, may also impact students’achievement (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008; Stancel-Piatak et al., 2013). Nonetheless, as otherstudies have shown, even when other student, school, and country background variables areconsidered, family book reading contributes to explaining the variation in students’ readingscores in PIRLS (Araújo & Costa, 2012).
Disclaimer
The views expressed are purely those of the writers and may not in any circumstances beregarded as stating an official position of the European Commission.
Note1. Excluding countries where differences are not statistically significant in at least one of the par-
ental education levels or where the coefficients of variation were unacceptable.
Notes on contributorsLuísa Araújo holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Delaware with a con-centration in literacy studies and bilingual education. Her research interests include literacy and earlyreading development and second language learning. She currently works for the European Commis-sion at the Joint Research Centre in Italy, where she conducts research for evidence-based policysupport in the area of education.
Patricia Costa is a researcher at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre – Econometrics andApplied Statistics Unit. Her areas of expertise are psychometrics and applied statistics, and her workfocuses on secondary data analysis of international large-scale surveys (e.g, PISA, PIAAC, PIRLS,TALIS, and ESLC) that inform evidence-based policies. She has mainly been involved in providingtechnical support to DG Education and Culture (EAC) by using statistical procedures to analyse Lit-eracy, Reading, Mathematics, and Foreign Language skills.
ORCID
Luisa Araújo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6491-5777
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Appendix 1. Statistical analyses
Table A1. Descriptive statistics of home book reading by parental education level.
CountryParental education
levelHome bookreading N %1 CV2
Readmean
ReadSE
Austria LowEd LowRead 84 4.4 11.7 482.2 6.55HighRead 1,470 95.6 2.3 531.5 1.95
HighEd LowRead 13 1.6 31.2 501.8 15.47HighRead 822 98.4 1.6 565.1 2.87
Bulgaria LowEd LowRead 561 49.6 10.1 468.6 12.06HighRead 613 50.4 5.5 534.1 5.10
HighEd LowRead 90 8.5 11.4 554.8 10.02HighRead 1,025 91.5 2.2 590.2 2.51
Croatia LowEd LowRead 79 7.7 11.7 529.5 7.83HighRead 994 92.3 3.1 556.2 3.15
HighEd LowRead 12 2.3 29.5 592.7 12.42HighRead 513 97.7 3.0 597.9 3.20
Czech Republic LowEd LowRead 47 2.9 15.0 521.3 10.52HighRead 1,655 97.1 1.9 547.2 2.23
HighEd LowRead 10 0.8 32.4 552.3 25.51HighRead 942 99.2 2.1 580.2 3.05
Denmark LowEd LowRead 39 10 18.9 535.3 14.21HighRead 328 90 4.6 550.5 4.34
HighEd LowRead 26 1.4 22.2 538.8 15.29HighRead 1,758 98.6 1.3 577.5 1.67
Finland LowEd LowRead 12 1.6 38.1 * *HighRead 731 98.4 3.0 557.6 3.46
HighEd LowRead 4 0.2 50.2 * *HighRead 1,591 99.8 1.2 591.7 2.12
France LowEd LowRead 95 9.3 9.8 493.2 6.96HighRead 870 90.7 3.6 515.5 3.39
HighEd LowRead 25 2.3 25.3 535.2 13.37HighRead 976 97.7 1.6 569.2 2.31
Germany LowEd LowRead 49 6.3 13.8 506.3 7.20HighRead 722 93.7 2.5 541.3 2.72
HighEd LowRead 9 1.2 30.0 588.2 31.20HighRead 722 98.8 1.4 589.8 2.99
Hungary LowEd LowRead 97 6.8 14.3 477.3 20.25HighRead 1,508 93.2 2.4 537.8 2.82
HighEd LowRead 19 2 24.5 575.5 16.48HighRead 1,121 98 1.4 598.2 2.92
Ireland LowEd LowRead 25 3.9 20.6 446.2 25.15HighRead 652 96.1 3.5 538.6 3.28
HighEd LowRead 16 1.1 28.3 544.4 22.76HighRead 1,148 98.9 1.8 589.8 3.75
Italy LowEd LowRead 169 14.7 7.8 510.8 6.27HighRead 1,024 85.3 2.4 556.7 2.84
HighEd LowRead 41 92.1 18.2 558.7 11.06HighRead 510 7.9 2.8 584.8 3.65
Lithuania LowEd LowRead 67 11.6 12.6 466.4 14.92HighRead 485 88.4 4.1 521.4 3.60
HighEd LowRead 22 2.7 26.1 511.1 22.92HighRead 961 97.3 2.6 571.2 2.66
Malta LowEd LowRead 57 6 13.5 421.7 12.79HighRead 897 94 2.6 494.1 2.96
HighEd LowRead 4 0.9 35.3 * *HighRead 432 99.1 1.9 560.5 3.45
(Continued)
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Table A1. Continued.
CountryParental education
levelHome bookreading N %1 CV2
Readmean
ReadSE
Netherlands LowEd LowRead 31 4.3 15.6 516.4 10.89HighRead 685 95.7 2.4 545.3 3.01
HighEd LowRead 6 0.8 46.2 * *HighRead 788 99.2 1.4 575.8 2.42
Poland LowEd LowRead 61 5.2 17.4 455.8 10.95HighRead 1,292 94.8 2.2 525.8 2.55
HighEd LowRead 11 1 36.2 * *HighRead 1,246 99 1.4 574.0 2.73
Portugal LowEd LowRead 121 14.7 11.5 509.4 8.16HighRead 759 85.3 3.5 547.6 3.81
HighEd LowRead 16 2.8 23.3 544.0 16.03HighRead 759 97.2 2.6 580.6 3.50
Romania LowEd LowRead 296 37.9 12.3 428.1 10.21HighRead 690 62.1 6.5 509.8 5.49
HighEd LowRead 5 1.1 48.7 * *HighRead 571 98.9 3.2 583.2 4.29
SlovakRepublic
LowEd LowRead 135 6.6 25.8 481.5 14.24HighRead 1,802 93.4 2.6 538.3 2.95
HighEd LowRead 5 0.4 36.4 * *HighRead 1,116 99.6 1.6 577.1 3.11
Slovenia LowEd LowRead 44 3.2 16.1 493.9 13.72HighRead 1,400 96.8 2.0 527.1 2.36
HighEd LowRead 5 0.7 41.6 * *HighRead 848 99.3 2.0 573.5 2.87
Spain LowEd LowRead 299 14.6 8.7 482.7 6.00HighRead 1,434 85.4 3.7 517.8 2.84
HighEd LowRead 63 4.3 17.2 506.2 14.07HighRead 1,562 95.7 2.5 551.0 3.86
Sweden LowEd LowRead 39 5.6 19.9 477.8 11.79HighRead 562 94.4 3.6 535.4 4.17
HighEd LowRead 20 1 23.2 491.4 21.12HighRead 1,277 99 1.3 574.8 2.58
Belgium(French)
LowEd LowRead 116 25.7 13.3 467.0 6.88HighRead 356 74.3 5.2 505.1 4.16
HighEd LowRead 65 5.1 14.6 503.7 8.56HighRead 1,110 94.9 2.1 543.6 2.39
Note: 1Weighted values. 2For the estimates considered unrestricted but to be interpreted with caution, the cells arein italic. For the estimates that should not be interpreted, the cells contain an asterisk (*).
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Table A2. t Test values for mean differences between HighRead and LowRead by parental educationlevel.
CountryLow parental education High parental educationHighRead/LowRead HighRead/LowRead
Austria 7.69 4.05Belgium (French) 5.64 4.41Bulgaria 5.50 3.52Croatia 3.40 0.41Czech Republic 2.44 1.10Denmark 1.02 2.49FinlandFrance 3.33 2.38Germany 4.50 0.05Hungary 3.06 1.30Ireland 3.65 2.10Italy 6.94 2.49Lithuania 3.50 2.30Malta 5.64Netherlands 2.55Poland 6.13Portugal 4.42 1.99Romania 8.07Slovak Republic 3.96Slovenia 2.40Spain 5.57 2.90Sweden 4.80 3.46
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