Mother-child joint writing in low SES Sociocultural factors, maternal mediation, and emergent literacy

Emergent literacy was studied as related to sociocultural factors, particularly to maternal mediation of writing. Forty-one low socioeconomic status (SES) children, 5;5-6;0 years old, and their mothers participated. The child's emergent literacy was assessed by word writing and recognition, phonological awareness, and orthographic awareness. To assess mediation of writing, children were asked to write words and names, and their mothers were asked to help them. Maternal mediation was analyzed in terms of the steps in the encoding process that the mother intervened in, her reference to Hebrew orthography, and her mediation in printing letters. Child's literacy was found to be related to SES, maternal literacy, literacy tools at home, and maternal mediation. Hierarchical regressions indicated that child's literacy tools contributed to all emergent literacy skills, beyond SES and maternal literacy. The quality of mediation predicted word writing and recognition and phonological awareness after controlling for all sociocultural factors. A qualitative analysis illustrated the range of maternal mediation within or below the child's ZPD. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.