Shared Book Reading in Families: Exploring Engagement Between Children and Parents

Shared book reading is considered an early literacy activity that can facilitate language and literacy skills in children. A shared book reading session consists of three agents namely the parent/adult, the child, and the reading material. The interactive nature of shared book reading is critical to a quality shared book reading session. Previous research studies on shared book reading have focused on monolingual families mostly compared to bilingual families. This is the first study that focused on parent-child engagement during shared book reading in Sinhala and English languages in both print and digital texts. This study consisted of 7 parent-child dyads including children aged 4-7 years old. This study used a case study mixed methods to explore how parent-child engagement occurred in relation to language presentation and text representation. The findings of the study revealed that parents focused more on language comprehension than word recognition skills in children regardless of the language and type of text. Moreover, the passion for reading in both parents and children, language competency in parents and children, parental knowledge, and skills in relation to children’s early literacy skills had a significant influence on parent-child engagement during shared book reading. Overall, there were no major discrepancies in parent-child engagement during shared book reading in print and digital texts. The findings of the study could be used to guide the design of community-based parental training programmes on how to develop early literacy skills in children and to design reading materials in various text types which could facilitate the interactive nature of shared book reading

Does the type of text, affect parent-child behaviour during shared book reading ? A case study in a bilingual family

Background: Shared book reading (SBR) can be identified as, the adult-child interaction which facilitates the active engagement of children in comprehending and responding to a text which is read aloud (Pentimonti et al., 2021). SBR facilitates early literacy skills leading towards becoming a skilled reader and can be promoted in the home and at school (Morris et al., 2021). SBR research has mainly focused on print text, however, with the development of differing technologies, the use of digital text as part of SBR has become a part of the education and family landscape (Bråten et al., 2020).Aims: To examine parent-child behaviour during SBR in print text and in digital textMethods: Video recorded SBR sessions of one parent-child dyad was analysed using pre-defined behaviour types.Results: The immediate talk was frequently occurred among both parent and child. Talk related to features of text type was more significant in print text than digital text. The only behaviour observed in SBR in English with digital text was the talk related to features of digital text made by parent. The child didn’t indicate any pre-defined behaviour during SBR in English digital text.  Conclusions: Parent-child behaviours during SBR in print text, is prominent than in digital text. Raising awareness among parents about the equal importance of the role of both print and digital texts during SBR, leading towards the development of literacy skills is essential