THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARENTAL LITERACY LEVEL AND PERCEPTIONS OF EMERGENT LITERACY

The study examined parental perceptions of young children's literacy development and explored the relationship between parental literacy level and perceptions of the importance of literacy artifacts and events/experiences in preschoolers' literacy development. One-hundred-eight parents of beginning kindergartners were interviewed and given a test of literacy level. The interview had two open-ended items asking about why some children are successful in reading and writing in school and others are not and about what parents of preschoolers might do to help them learn to read and write better later in school. Likert items gauged views of the importance of literacy artifacts and events and interactions in the home during preschool years for later success in reading and writing. Statistical as well as interpretive analyses were used. On the whole, parents were very positive about the notion that literacy learning can begin during the preschool years. There was, however, a significant negative relationship between parental literacy level and perceptions of the importance of literacy artifacts and events; parents with lower literacy levels thought literacy artifacts and events were even more important than did parents with higher literacy levels. Further, low-literacy and high-literacy parents tended to have different perceptions of what is important for early literacy development. © 1991, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.