Reading in Motion: Book Supply, Book Use and Assessment of Habit of Reading

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Exposure to books has been demonstrated to contribute to the development of young children’s emergent literacy abilities, including letter recognition and the more general concept of print. Reading with an adult generates more language input than toy play and other adult-child activities (Duursma, Augustyn & Zuckerman, 2008; de Bondt, Willenberg & Bus, 2020). At home, when reading with children, caregivers use more sophisticated language models than during other times in the day. Reading books may be particularly promising in families with lower socioeconomic status, as these families tend to provide less linguistic interaction during caretaking than wealthier families. Both at school and at home, books in the hands of students allow children to practice critical decoding and fluency skills, build vocabulary, foster reading comprehension, and develop a love and habit of reading. The provision of high-quality reading materials, teachers being able to effectively use books to provide effective instruction, and students being able to engage in extra practice and support for reading in and outside of school is critical to children’s development of reading skills.
Beyond the clear connection between reading and literacy, language acquisition, and cognitive development, ample evidence indicates that book reading supports many additional benefits. Children and adults reading together (i.e., book sharing) promotes intergenerational shared experience because reading together involves important adults in the child’s life (teachers, caretakers, etc.) in an activity that fosters joint attention and focused interaction. Through exploring stories, children build self-esteem and empathy as they learn more about their own narratives. They also increase their awareness of peer relationships and coping strategies alongside general world knowledge. Caregivers often also experience a decrease in caregiver stress and an improved caregiver-child relationship through regular book-sharing interactions. This effect is consistent regardless of race or socioeconomic status. Book sharing is also linked to decreased levels of depression for adolescent mothers.
This panel pulls from both applied and theoretical research to contribute to the literature on the provision and use of books, especially for children who may be most vulnerable, and in this way, directly addresses the CIES 2023 conference theme of improving education for a more equitable world. Four papers provide insights about book supply, book use, and, finally, how we can measure effective reading of books through the development of a habit of reading assessment tool.
The first paper will examine the real cost of printing books and the variance across multiple contexts taking into consideration contextual differences and challenges within the publishing industry. This paper draws upon purchase order data from implementing partners and analysis of local publishing ecosystems in order to fill a gap in information that has not been widely available to the public previously.
The second paper will investigate findings on results from a new multi-country donor-driven online platform that aims to to increase equitable access to learning through support for families in low and low middle income countries (LMIC) during and post COVID-19. Amidst the global learning crisis made significantly worse by the pandemic, the new platform team is now implementing an unprecedented effort to support families and communities to develop children’s oral and written language skills, develop reading materials in underserved/mother tongue languages, improve the efficiency of book production, and strengthen procurement processes to reduce costs and facilitate the distribution of tens of millions of books for children ages 0-12 in many home languages. The platform targets families with low literacy levels, the use of national/mother tongue languages at home, and little access to technology.
Paper three recognizes that while much justified effort and investigation has focused on the publication of books and on the supply chain to get books into classrooms and the hands of children, there has been much less focus on the actual usage of books themselves. The evidence specifically addressing how books are used in these spaces and the effectiveness of these strategies to promote and increase book use is relatively thin, particularly for LMICs and low-literacy caregivers (Knauer, Jakiela, Ozier, Aboud & Fernald, 2020). Moreover, obstacles that limit book use in both the classroom and at home abound. Obstacles specific to the school use include a lack of access to books (Dowdall, Murray, Hartford, Melendez-Torrez, Gardner & Cooper, 2020; Lee & Zuilkowski, 2015), unclear book replacement policies, and suboptimal classroom conditions (Opoku-Amankwa, 2010). Low-literacy levels among some caregivers, time constraints, and a weak or non-existent culture of reading are persistent challenges within the home. This paper explores and presents promising practices and strategies for increasing the use of books within both classrooms and home environments.
Paper four moves further into understanding individual use of books and testing a tool that can be used to assess habit of reading. Despite the well-established link between students’ habit of reading and their literacy skills (Baharuddin, et al. 2015; Schmidt and Retelsdorf, 2016; Verplanken and Orbell, 2003), there is still a lack of consensus on how to measure reading habits. Among the measures that do exist, few go beyond the frequency and time spent on reading to also account for important underlying individual factors such as reading motivation (Davidson and Jukes, 2015; Schmidt and Retelsdorf, 2016; Wagner, 2002). At the same time, resource-strapped education systems in the Global South face challenges to effectively promote children’s reading habits such as a lack of high-quality, contextually relevant reading materials available in schools, large classroom sizes, and teacher capacity constraints, among others (Kim et al., 2016). To fill this gap, the implementer [Author] administers child-friendly libraries in nine countries worldwide. The library programs are adapted to each country context, but are generally organized around six elements, which include: 1) creating print-rich literate environments; 2) provision of developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant reading materials; 3) dedicated time within the schedule for children to engage in reading activities in the school library; 4) capacity training on library management, reading activities, community engagement and project sustainability; 5) family and community engagement activities; and 6) government engagement to design, implement and sustain the quality of the school libraries (Author, 2019).

Sub Unit

• Global Literacy SIG

Chair

• Karla Giuliano Sarr, EnCompass LLC

Individual Presentations

• Digital doorways: Perspectives and experiences on a global platform to increase equitable access to reading materials in underserved languages - Penelope Bender, NA

• Beyond supply: Strategies to promote book use in the classroom and at home - Amy Mulcahy-Dunn, EnCompass LLC; Emma Venetis, EnCompass LLC; Karla Giuliano Sarr, EnCompass LLC

• Development of a Habit of Reading Tool – Experience from a large-scale pilot in Vietnam in 2022 - Pinaki Joddar, Room to Read; Rebecca Alice Westbrook, Room to Read

Discussant

• Joanie Cohen- Mitchell (Cohen), USAID/E3/office of Education