Raising Readers: stimulating home-based parental literacy involvement in the first, second, and third grade

Since the 1980s, the view that parental involvement is a key factor in children’s educational success has gained ground in the United States, Western Europe, and beyond. Research has demonstrated that home-based involvement at the start of children’s formal literacy education, revolving around helping children to develop reading habits, is the most effective form of parental involvement. This dissertation is an investigation into the stimulation of parents’ home-based literacy involvement. For three school years (from 2015-2016 to 2017-2018), a Dutch version of the parental involvement module included in the originally American educational program Success for All (SfA) was implemented in the first, second, and third grades of six Dutch primary schools. The aim was to gain insight into the workability and effectiveness of this module when it comes to promoting parents’ home-based literacy involvement, children’s enjoyment of reading, and children’s reading skills. Although we conclude that there is room for improvement, the results provide important insights. The most noticeable of those are: 1) we have demonstrated that non-Western migrant parents are more frequently and more interactively involved in their children’s literacy development than Dutch parents, and that, with the help of the intervention, they maintain this as the child gets older; 2) we have distinguished three dyadic reader profiles, allowing for the development of more tailor-made home reading materials in the future, and 3) we have gained a deeper understanding of children’s needs regarding at-home reading, thus empowering educational professionals to better inform parents on this subject.