Mother-Child Joint Writing as a Learning Activity

Abstract

We discuss a model of three contextual layers relating to early literacy development. These layers assessed mothers' beliefs and the nature of their actual literacy interactions with their children. The layers (from the farthest to the nearest) are: mothers' general pedagogical beliefs regarding literacy, mothers' specific estimation of their children's early literacy, and the nature of the actual mother-child writing interactions. We tease apart the relative contribution of these layers in predicting early literacy. In general, mothers value literacy knowledge and literacy activities at home and these pedagogical beliefs predicted children's literacy. The mothers' estimation of their children's literacy contributed to all literacy skills beyond the contribution of mothers' pedagogical beliefs. The mothers varied widely in the nature of their writing guidance. Writing mediation measures correlated significantly with the children's early literacy skills and predicted the children's literacy after controlling for the mothers' pedagogical beliefs and estimation of the children's literacy. We discuss the merits of writing interactions in light of the increasing significance attributed to early literacy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)