Parent and Child Attitudinal Factors in a Model of Children's Print-Concept Knowledge.

The present study investigates the role of attitudinal variables, such as children's literacy interest and parents’ reading beliefs, in conjunction with home literacy activities (HLA), in predicting children's print-concept knowledge. The objective of the study is to test a theoretical model describing the relationship among these variables. This study involved 551 low-income preschool children. Structural equation modelling was used to test the model. The model was a good fit for the data when parental teaching of reading/writing was used as the measure of HLA. In the model, negative parent reading beliefs and parent teaching predicted print-concept knowledge. Results suggest that practitioners should consider not only the literacy activities children and parents participate in, but also their attitudes towards those activities.