Home Literacy Environment and Literacy Acquisition

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the literature on home literacy environment and its association with literacy skills in different languages and contexts. Home literacy environment (HLE), an umbrella term that encompasses various activities parents engage in with their children, has been studied extensively by psychologists, linguists, behavioral geneticists, and educators. However, no systematic effort has been put into synthesizing this growing body of research in a coherent manner, making it difficult for researchers and various stakeholders to understand the key points of past research while keeping up with the latest research findings.

To address this need, the first part of the book provides an overview of the current literature on conceptualizations of HLE, covering prominent theoretical models, the measurement of HLE, the potential extension and generalizability of models across contexts, the intersections between home learning environment in literacy, numeracy, and other domains, and the genetic and environmental etiology of literacy development. The second section of the book hosts a wide variety of studies from all over the world, conducted in English-speaking countries (UK, U.S., Canada), Finland, Greece, Turkey, China, Japan, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries, and Chile and other Latin American and Caribbean countries, while it includes chapters with both typically-developing children and children at familial risk of dyslexia. The third section of this book offers a comprehensive collection of chapters on intervention studies examining the role of family literacy programs, dialogic reading, and onscreen digital access.

Together, the 22 chapters of this book elucidate the complex nature of HLE and provide future research directions and instructional recommendations on how parents and policymakers can improve home literacy practices around the world. As such, this book is valuable for researchers, educators, and other professionals, and the readership ranges from graduate students and scholars to parents and policymakers.