Research Note: Latina/o families and reading

What is the relationship between family characteristics and Latina/o children's engagement in reading? The Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA) investigated this question. The results are contained in their report Family Matters Related to the Reading Engagement of Latina/o Children. The results of this study emphasize the need to consider social and cultural factors when asking questions about how and why children read. The researchers found five important aspects of Latina/o daily living (immigration, culture and language, nurturance, instrumental, and workload). Of these, nurturance is related to how much children valued reading, culture and language to how children viewed themselves as readers, and workload was inversely related to how much children valued reading. Family Matters Related to the Reading Engagement of Latina/o Children is available online at www.ciera.org/library/reports/index.html.

Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA), University of Michigan School of Education, Rm. 2002 SEB, 610 E. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1259, 734.647.6940 (phone), 734.615.4858 (fax), www.ciera.org (web), ciera@umich.edu (e-mail).