A Review on Antecedents and Consequences of Leisure Reading and Writing in Children

Abstract

It is desirable that children engage in reading and writing beyond school. What is known about various individual and environmental variables that may be related to children’s leisure reading and writing? And how strong is existing evidence? Our scoping review aims at mapping research on leisure reading and writing in first- to fourth-graders. Using content analysis, we extracted 135 research findings, among them only 6 on leisure writing. In most findings, leisure reading and writing were considered as consequences of variables like reading competence, motivation, and attitudes. Considerably fewer findings included leisure reading and writing as antecedents. We discuss the need for more longitudinal and experimental studies and a stronger focus on the connection between leisure reading and writing.

Newspaper Reading in Families with School-Age Children: Relationship between Parent–Child Interaction Using Newspaper, Reading Motivation, and Academic Achievement

“…The low number of children reading online newspapers may be due to less available newspaper content for the target audience. Although the benefits of leisure reading have been noted in literature [ 19 ], there is a relatively a low number of children who do not read in general. Infrequent readers should receive more parental encouragement to read newspapers as increasing reading amount can be achieved through physical access and discussion opportunities [ 44 ].…”

“…However, the research is relatively old and the surrounding context in which newspapers are read remains unclear. Engaging with reading outside the school setting has been found to promote literacy, reading competence, and motivation [ 19 ]. To implement newspapers as intervention measures in children’s learning environments, updated information on the use of newspapers by families with elementary school students as early readers of newspapers is warranted.…”