The role of parental attitudes, home literacy environment, and migration background in preschool children's emergent literacy skills

Abstract

Developing proficient literacy skills is important for school success. This study examined the link between parental attitudes towards reading and preschool children's emergent literacy skills in German, focusing on children with and without migration background. It explored whether the Home Literacy Environment (HLE) mediated this relation while controlling for child age, sex, cognitive skills, and family socioeconomic status. The study involved 500 children (Mage = 60.97 months) assessed three times across a year. The results showed that parental attitudes towards reading influenced emergent literacy skills only through the HLE. Migration background had an indirect effect, with the HLE mediating its impact on literacy development. These findings highlight the critical role of the HLE in fostering literacy skills, provide a plausible explanation for individual differences in German emergent literacy skills for children with and without migration background, and suggest that interventions targeting parental attitudes and HLE may effectively support literacy development.