Major and Classification
Psychology
Faculty Mentor
- Eugenia Mora-Flores, Ed.D.
Department
- Education
McNair Project
Home Literacy Practices: A Study of the Self-Reported Practices and Literacy of Children in Urban Los Angeles
This study aims to identify the effects of Spanish-speaking immigrant parents’ home literacy practices on their children’s literacy in English. The participants in this study will be Latino third-grade students from urban Los Angeles and one Spanish-speaking parent of each. Data collection included parent and student surveys and an analysis of the survey information’s relationships to the students’ standardized reading scores from the third grade. The research focused on five sub-questions: (a) Is there a connection between Spanish-speaking immigrant parents’ backgrounds and students’ reading performance?; (b)Which of the aspects of the Spanish-speaking immigrant parents’ backgrounds are most closely related to the students’ reading performance?; (c) Is there a relationship between parents’ and students’ self-reported home literacy practices?; (d) Which self-reported home literacy practices influence students’ reading performance?; and (e) Do employing home literacy practices in either English or Spanish relate to reading scores in the same way. The findings allow for the identification of effective home literacy practices and their correlations to parental background. This research may also offer support for strategies being implemented with the aim of closing the academic achievement gap between native English-speaking children and the children of Spanish-speaking immigrants.