Parental Reading Support Activities and Children’s Reading Achievement in Tanzania

Abstract

Parents’ activities to support their children in reading and their children’s reading skills was studied to 600 grade 2 children and their parents in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Parents completed a questionnaire on parental involvement activities, i.e. encouragement, reinforcement, modeling and instruction. Children’s reading abilities were tested with a reading test measuring word decoding, reading fluency and reading comprehension. Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices test was used to control for children’s IQ. Results showed that IQ was not related to children’s word decoding and reading fluency, but there was an association between IQ and some aspects of children’s reading comprehension. Although parents’ level of education correlated significantly with children’s reading, parents’ reading was not related to children’s reading. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a statistically significant, but weak association between parental reading support activities with all three aspects of children’s reading. The usefulness of an intervention to stimulate early literacy is discussed.