No Place like Home: The Role of Home Literacy Environments in Early Literacy Development in Ghana

• In Event: Developing the quality of and access to school education for young children

Proposal

PURPOSE
Most research on early literacy in low-income countries focuses heavily on school settings. We thus know little about how children’s home literacy environments (HLEs) relate to their literacy development (Zuilkowski et al., 2019). In contrast, studies in more industrialized, high-income countries such as the United States increasingly report a positive link between children’s HLEs and literacy outcomes (e.g., Arya et al., 2014; Baroody & Diamond, 2012; Burris et al., 2019; Chow et al., 2017) Many of these studies conceptualize HLE as three related, but different dimensions: (a) the availability of literacy resources at homes such as picture books, storybooks, e-books, and other everyday text materials such as newspapers, (b) a family’s beliefs about literacy―the implicit value placed on and communicated about literacy in the home, and (c) literacy-focused activities―literacy activities children are engaged in and around the home such as shared reading, direct literacy instruction, or demonstration of literacy behavior (Easton & Lee, 2020). The current study examines the first and third dimensions of children’s HLEs in Ghana, expanding the extant early literacy literature in low-income country contexts. As such, we examine how the availability of literacy resources and family’s literacy-focused interactions at home relate to children’s oral language and foundational reading skills development.


METHODS
The present study involves 2,868 children in grades 1 and 2 in 199 public primary schools in Ghana. The 199 schools were selected randomly from a pool of 5,400 public schools across 16 regions of Ghana. Within each school, six to eight children were randomly selected in each grade level. Boys and girls were equally represented in each grade.

Learners’ data were collected through a battery of background survey questionnaires, the Expressive Language Model (ELM) in English, and the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) in English and eleven Ghanaian languages supported by Ghana Education Services as instructional languages in the education system (Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi, Fante, Ewe, Ga, Dangme, Dagaare, Dagbani, Gonja, Kasem, and Nzema). The background survey questionnaires gathered information on children’s individual and family characteristics, including gender, age, language spoken at home, types of reading materials available at home, family members the child lives with, literacy interactions the child exchanges with each member reported such as the family member reads in from of the children and reads to the children and vice versa.

ELM assessed four aspects of oral language skills, including (1) receptive vocabulary―listening to simple words read aloud and choosing a corresponding image for each word, (2) expressive vocabulary―describing an image shown with a proper English word, (3) story retelling― listening to one short story and one relative longer story read aloud and repeating them in one’s own words and finally, (4) inference making―listening to the two stories read aloud and interpreting their meanings. EGRA assessed three aspects of foundational reading skills such as (1) letter sound knowledge―identifying sounds and names of letters quickly and accurately, (2) on-word reading―reading unfamiliar or pseudo words quickly and accurately, (3) oral reading fluency―reading a short passage quickly and accurately, and (4) reading comprehension―interpreting the meaning of the passage read. Multiple regression analysis was conducted while controlling key demographic traits such as age, gender, family’s socioeconomic status, physical disability status, and the like.

RESULTS
Results show that greater availability of reading resources at home is consistently and positively associated with all aspects of oral language and reading skills measured in this study. The magnitude of such a positive relationship is particularly evident in children’s vocabulary knowledge, story retelling, alphabet sound, and name knowledge in English and the local Ghanaian language. Regarding literacy-focused interactions at home, we found parents’ and siblings’ reading behaviors positively relate to children’s oral language and reading outcomes. For instance, children who report observing their parents read at home in the previous week score higher on the EGRA letter sound knowledge item in the Ghanian language than those who do not by three words per minute. Children who report being read by their parents score higher on the two ELM story retelling items and the EGRA oral reading fluency and comprehension items in English relative to those who do not (β = 0.134**, 0.115***, 2.281*** and 0.029**, respectively). The scope of such positive relationships is even greater for sibling effects. As such, children who report observing any of their siblings read in the previous week score higher on the ELM receptive and expressive vocabulary items, the ELM long story retelling item, the EGRA oral reading fluency item in English, as well as the EGRA verbal reading fluency and comprehension items in the local Ghanaian language (β = 0.152*, 0.413**, 0.083**, 1.247**, 1.208***, and 0.006* respectively). Similarly, children who report being read by their siblings score higher on the two ELM vocabulary items, the short story retelling item and the short story meaning-making item, as well as the EGRA letter sound knowledge items in both languages (β = 0.151**, 0.584***, 0.087**, 0.039*, 1.757**, and 2.070** respectively).

CONCLUSION
There are several implications of this study. First, the richness of print materials in the home is predictive of children’s literacy development beyond merely signaling the family’s wealth. This finding can encourage the domestic government and international donors in Ghana to support families to secure ample reading resources for children in all Ghanaian households. Second, separating families’ literacy behaviors from literacy resources underlines that families can foster children’s literacy acquisition beyond school investment. At the same time, the result also shows active literacy interactions among siblings independently promote early literacy development beyond parental influence. This finding is promising in Ghana and potentially in other low-income countries with low adult literacy rates. Illiterate parents may have limitations in their direct literacy instruction or behavior demonstration, even when they may be eager to support children’s learning. In this situation, the parents encourage siblings to support one another with their literacy learning and practices. Taken together, this study contributes to promoting children’s literacy acquisition in various school settings, including homes going beyond schools.

Authors

• Patrick Asuming, University of Ghana Legon, Accra

• Mohammed Amin Dawuda, University for Development Studies

• Jeongmin Lee, University of Notre Dame

• Dennis Chirawurah, University for Development Studies