Justice and the Politics of Difference

Abstract

Educators frequently recommend that children read aloud to parents at home in the belief that the activity will positively contribute to children's literacy growth.From a research perspective, however, little is known about these at-home reading experiences.Using a social constructivist theoretical perspective, the present study investigated the relationships between children's reading ability, children's sex, mothers' educational level, and mothers' helping behaviors during children's at-home oral reading practice.Seventy-six mother-child pairs from a suburban, middle-class community participated in the project.Accelerated and at-risk third grade readers took home a tape recorder and a third grade science text to read aloud to mothers.The conversations were audiotaped, professionally transcribed, and then coded.Results of the study indicated that the conversations between at-risk readers and their mothers were marked by the frequent use of error correction interventions, while the conversations between accelerated readers and their mothers were marked by children's extensive verbal involvement.A pattern of richer language interaction was also seen in the conversations of mothers and daughters when compared to those of mothers and sons.High school educated mothers used significantly more error correction interventions than did college educated mothers despite the fact that there were equal numbers of accelerated and at-risk readers in each of the educational groups.Additionally, college educated mothers asked significantly more high level questions than did high school educated mothers.Implications for practice are discussed.(Contains 58 references and 5 figures of data; appendixes contain the coding scheme and guidelines for using the scheme.)