Roel van Steensel

How Effective Are Family Literacy Programs?: Results of a Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis examines the effects of family literacy programs on children’s literacy development. It analyzes the results of 30 recent effect studies (1990–2010), covering 47 samples, and distinguishes between effects in two domains: comprehension-related skills and code-related skills. A small but significant mean effect emerged (d = 0.18). There was only a minor difference between comprehension- and code-related effect measures (d = 0.22 vs. d = 0.17). Moderator analyses revealed no statistically significant effects of the program, sample, and study characteristics inferred from the reviewed publications. The results highlight the need for further research into how programs are carried out by parents and children, how program activities are incorporated into existing family literacy practices, and how program contents are transferred to parents.

Assessing reading comprehension in adolescent low achievers: Subskills identification and task specificity

On the basis of a validation study of a new test for assessing low-achieving adolescents’ reading comprehension skills – the SALT-reading – we analyzed two issues relevant to the field of reading test development. Using the test results of 200 seventh graders, we examined the possibility of identifying reading comprehension subskills and the effects of task specificity on test reliability. Regarding the former, we distinguished three subskills indicating different levels of understanding (‘retrieving’, ‘interpreting’, ‘reflecting’). However, confirmatory factor analyses did not support the presence of these subskills. Task specificity refers to the situation that different tasks within a test are not uniformly difficult for individual test takers, which constitutes a form of error negatively influencing test reliability. However, Generalizability Theory analysis showed that such task-specific effects did not occur: the reliability of the SALT-reading was primarily affected by error associated with the score variance within tasks.

Potentials and Challenges of Family Literacy Interventions: the question of implementation quality

Literacy interventions in the family context have great potential to promote reading development in children. However, the results of meta-analyses indicate that family-based approaches tend not to be as effective as expected. Although the effectiveness of family literacy interventions can be assumed to hinge largely on the quality of their implementation in families, this aspect has attracted surprisingly little research attention to date. This article identifies, analyses, and discusses aspects of implementation quality that may enhance or diminish the effectiveness of family literacy interventions. Data from two evaluation studies of programmes for kindergarten- and school-age children were used to examine three types of implementation variables (intensity and quality of parent-child activities; support and training provided for parents; participation). The results indicate possibilities for how implementation quality in all three areas can be improved. Implications for future family literacy programmes as well as for evaluation and implementation studies are discussed.

The role of word decoding, vocabulary knowledge and meta-cognitive knowledge in monolingual and bilingual low-achieving adolescents' reading comprehension

In this study, we analysed the relationships between word decoding, vocabulary knowledge, meta-cognitive knowledge and reading comprehension in low-achieving adolescents and examined whether the strength of these relationships differed between Grade 7 and 9 students and between monolingual and bilingual students. Tests were administered to 328 students in Dutch prevocational education. Multilevel analyses showed positive effects of vocabulary and meta-cognitive knowledge on reading comprehension that were consistent across grades and across monolinguals and bilinguals. Additionally, we found a positive effect of word decoding for seventh graders, but no effect for ninth graders. There was also a positive effect of bilingualism on reading comprehension when vocabulary differences were controlled. This finding suggests that for bilingual students, reading comprehension is hampered by limited second-language vocabulary knowledge and that these students will profit more from an increase in vocabulary knowledge than their monolingual peers. The results underline the importance of vocabulary and meta-cognitive instruction for low-achieving adolescents.

The tacit dimension of parental mediation

Studies into the way parents mediate their children’s (digital) media use are challenging. A reason for this is that parents are not always aware of what they do and why, as their choices do not necessarily involve rational decision-making. In the present study we adopted the notion of “tacit knowledge” (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Polanyi, 1966) to explore how and why parents of young children mediate digital media use. In-depth interviews were conducted with 24 Dutch parents from 15 families who were selected to represent a range of socioeconomic backgrounds and different family compositions. Through qualitative analysis we first distinguished three mediation styles of “regulation”, “guidance” and “space”. Furthermore, we revealed seven values that drive parental mediation: three core values of “balance”, “freedom” and “protection” that are foundational in the sense that they explain why parents mediate; three orientational values of “qualification”, “Bildung” and “health/fitness” that explain to which end parents mediate; and one additional value of “flexibility” that accounts for parents’ exception-making. Finally, we showed that the most important emotions associated with these values were anger and disapproval (with balance and protection) and love and joy (with orientational values); fear was mentioned occasionally (in relation to protection).