| Research has shown that families influence the language and literacy development of young children. However, the style and nature of family literacy practices in low-income Latino homes, and the effect of these routines on children's early literacy learning, have remained largely unexplored. Using a mixed-method approach, this study attempted to understand how family literacy, defined broadly, related to low-income Latino children's subsequent language and literacy development. Specifically this study asked: (1) What are the family literacy patterns of a sample of Head Start Latino households in New York City? and (2) How does family literacy contribute to children's emergent literacy longitudinally? In the fall of the pre-school year, eighty low-income Latino mothers and their four-year-old children were visited in the home. Mothers were asked questions about their family literacy practices and asked to share a wordless picture book with their child. At the end of the year, children engaged in a variety of print-related literacy tasks and narrated a wordless book to the investigator. All narratives were audio taped, then transcribed and verified following a standardized format, and subsequently coded. Results of a cluster analysis identified three types of maternal booksharing styles: (1) storybuilder-labelers who co-constructed the story with their child by requesting narrative information, (2) storytellers who narrated a rich story with minimal requests of their children, and (3) abridged-storytellers who looked much like storytellers but provided a more concise story. Ordinary Least Squares Regression analyses demonstrated that mothers' booksharing style had predictive power over children's literacy such that a storytelling style positively predicted children's print-related literacy skills six-months later. Head Start had the greatest positive effects on children of abridged-storytellers. Results are discussed in terms of improving culturally appropriate research, practice and policy for early childhood and family literacy programming designed to meet the needs of young Latino children and their parents. |
