The name is absent

Proximal family processes

This endogeneity or reverse causality problem also applies to other useful results,
such as those of Rowe (1991). Rowe indicates that regardless of family SES, age and
gender reading activity at home has significant and positive influences on measures of
students’ reading achievement and attitudes towards reading. There was a strong
interdependence between students’ attitudes towards reading and reading activity at
home, both of which had significant positive influences on reading achievement.

Senechal et al. (1998) splits literacy experiences with parents into informal and formal
experiences. Informal literary activities are those which focus on the message
contained in the print, whereas formal exposure centres more on the print itself, for
example talking about letters, providing names and specific sounds. Following this in
a five-year longitudinal study Senechal and LeFevre (2002) assessed the relative
importance of parent storybook reading with children and parents’ reports of teaching
on children’s language, later written language skills and reading acquisition.

Exposure to storybooks was used as the measure of informal literary activities and
parental reports of how frequently they taught their child about reading and writing as
the formal measure. Their findings highlight the importance of home learning, both
formal and informal, on later literacy abilities, suggesting clear links from home
literary experiences, through early literacy skills to fluent reading. It is interesting and
somewhat surprising however, that parents’ reports of teaching (i.e. formal) and
storybook exposure (informal) were uncorrelated.

Cognitive environments and learning stimulation in the home

Growing up in a home rich in cognitive stimulation and educational opportunities not
only influences literacy development but also has a lasting impact on a child’s desire
to learn (Gottfried et al., 1998). The EPPE research documents the importance of a
young child’s home learning environment. EPPE research uses an index of cognitive
stimulation in the home (the Home Learning Environment, HLE) which includes
measures of reading to children, encouraging playing with and teaching letters and
numbers, teaching songs and nursery rhymes, painting and drawing and visits to the
library. While distal factors such as mother’s educational level and family SES are
highly significant, the Home Learning Environment exerts a significant and
independent influence on attainment at 3-plus years of age, as well as later at entry to
primary school (rising 5s) and progress during this pre-school period (see also
McGroder, 2000). Thus, conditioning on parents’ level of education and SES, family
characteristics such as the number of siblings, whether English is their first language
and child gender are considered. The HLE is the strongest variable in predicting
cognitive and non-verbal skills as well as all four measures of social/behavioural
development assessed (co-operation/conformity, peer sociability, confidence and anti-
social behaviour).

The home environment is clearly conceptually relevant to academic intrinsic
motivation, i.e. the pleasure found in school learning. Availability of cognitive
stimulation in the home such as exposure to learning-oriented opportunities and
activities would be expected to stimulate children’s orientation toward enjoyment of

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