Home Literacy Environments in Latin America

• In Event: Home Practices and Beyond: Looking at Media, Numeracy, Literacy, and Authentic Practices in Diverse Populations

Abstract

There is a large body of literature on home literacy practices, but its majority is theorized based on data and observations collected from a mostly white, middle-class European American population (Dynia, Purtell, Justice, Pratt & Hijlkema, 2019; Sénéchal & Lefevre, 2014), while extensive research documents that literacy practices have different meanings for members of different social groups; in which different practices emerge from the functions of literacy that are valued and used (e.g., Heath,1983; Compton-Lilly et al., 2012). Despite these insights, the nature of the HLE as it pertains to children living in Latin America is comparatively understudied. Because of the complex, multidimensional nature of the HLE, differences exist in definitions of its scope, and the inventories used to measure it (e.g., Burgess et al., 2002; Dynia et al., 2019; Hammer, 2003), and few measures available in Spanish (González et al., 2011). In our study, we use the available literature to inform our research, but we do not assume it applies to other cultural settings (Dynia et al., 2019), and used a bilingual researcher-developed home literacy survey (Duran et al, nd.). We conducted an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to explore the dimensions of HLE present in a sample of Latin American Spanish-speaking families (n=774) with preschool-aged children living in Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United states. Originally, the HLE questionnaire was hypothesized to be a four-dimension model, but our EFA procedures suggested a six-dimensional model: (1) access to print (4 items) asked caregivers the frequency in which either themselves or their children read or look at a newspaper independently; (2) adult literacy activities (8 items) asked caregivers about the frequency in which adults engage in a series of activities such as send a text message, and write a to-do list; (3) barriers to reading (16 items) asked about caregivers perceptions of engaging in shared-reading activities such as seems difficult or boring to read with my child; (4) parent and child literacy activities (18 items), of those 9 items represented both child-parent activities (e.g., reading with child and coloring with child), 6 items included child independent activities (e.g., pretend to write, look at a book), and one item about literacy materials in the home; (5) press for achievement (2 items) that looked at the frequency in which caregiver talks to child about letters and letter-sounds; and (6) technology related items (3 items) asked for the frequency in which a child uses technology such as an smartphone to play or read. Our results connect to emergent HLE research from Latin America (e.g., Dynia et al., 2019; Nieto et al., 2019) in which we observed that literacy activities (both parent-child activities and child activities) were loaded across three factors (e.g., access to print and parent and child literacy activities) when these have been identified as separate constructs in other literature (Farver et al., 2006). There was substantial variability in the frequency of activities and beliefs reported.

Author

• Ruby Batz, University of Nevada Reno
  Presenting Author