ABSTRACT
Reading and writing are essential cultural tools in modern, technologically oriented cultures. Parental mediation, through which children are introduced to this code, constitutes a central factor in literacy development (Kagicibasi, 1996; Rogoff, 1990). Differences in the quantity and quality of parental literacy mediation reportedly are related to differences in young children's
competencies in this area (Adams, 1991; Reese & Cox, 1999; Rogoff, 1990), Research on parental mediation in literacy-promoting contexts has focused mainly on the area of joint storybook reading (Allison & Watson, 1994; Burgess, 1997; DeBaryshe, 1993; DeBaryshe & Binder, 1994; Hale & Windecker, 1993; Mackler, Baker, & Sonnenschein, 1999; Reese & Cox, 1999; Senechal, 1997), Parent-child joint storybook reading (nature and amount) was assumed to set the stage for future differences in children's literacy and academic achievements (Teale, 1981),
Bus, van I1zendoorn, and Pellegrini (1995) and Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) reviewed more than three decades of empirical research pertaining to the relationship between storybook reading and the development of literacy skills, These authors concluded that reading to children accounted for 8% of the overall variance in language, emergent literacy, and literacy skills, From this finding, it is apparent that a large amount of the variance remains to be explained, and other factors, such as joint parent-child activities, could be critical, Children share with their parents a variety ofliteracy-related activities that may enhance their literacy skills (Teale, 1986; Tudge & Putnam, 1997), of which storybook reading is one. Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) suggest that further research may find that other early literacy experiences have a powerful relationship with literacy development.
