Extra-textual talk in shared book reading: a focus on questioning

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Extra-textual talk in shared bookreading: a focus on questioningAnn Anderson a , Jim Anderson b , Jacqueline Lynch c , Jon Shapirob & Ji Eun Kim ba Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy , University of BritishColumbia , Vancouver , Canadab Department of Language and Literacy Education , University ofBritish Columbia , Vancouver , Canadac Faculty of Education , York University , Toronto , CanadaPublished online: 29 Jul 2011.

To cite this article: Ann Anderson , Jim Anderson , Jacqueline Lynch , Jon Shapiro & Ji Eun Kim(2012) Extra-textual talk in shared book reading: a focus on questioning, Early Child Developmentand Care, 182:9, 1139-1154, DOI: 10.1080/03004430.2011.602189

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Extra-textual talk in shared book reading: a focus on questioning

Ann Andersona∗, Jim Andersonb, Jacqueline Lynchc, Jon Shapirob and Ji Eun Kimb

aDepartment of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver,Canada; bDepartment of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia,Vancouver, Canada; cFaculty of Education, York University, Toronto, Canada

(Received 22 March 2011; final version received 28 June 2011)

In this study we investigated the frequency and types of questions asked whenparents read with their four-year-old children, the relationship between thefrequency and types of questions parents and children asked, and the relationshipbetween these and the children’s early literacy knowledge. Forty dyads sharedtwo narrative texts and two non-narrative texts. Overall, there were relativelyfew questions asked during the shared book reading. Parents asked four times asmany questions as children and for the most part, questions appear to have lowcognitive demand. Genre had little effect on the frequency of questions and thetypes of questions asked, in contrast with other research that has showndifferences in interactions in shared reading of informational versus narrativetexts. In terms of gender, there was very little difference in both frequency andtype of questions. No significant relationships were found between the questionsasked in the shared book readings and measures of children’s early literacyknowledge (Test of Early Reading Ability 2 and alphabet knowledge). The studyis important in that it contributes to an emerging literature that suggests a moretenuous relationship between shared book reading and children’s early literacyknowledge than is sometimes assumed by educators.

Keywords: questioning; shared reading; early literacy

The purpose of this article is to report on a study in which we investigated the frequencyof questions and the type of questions asked when parents read with their four-year-oldchildren and the relationship between the frequency and types of questions and the chil-dren’s early literacy knowledge. The research questions guiding the study were: (1)What types of questions do parents and children ask during shared book reading andwith what frequency? (2) Does the genre of the book (expository or narrative) andthe gender of the participants affect the frequency and type of questions asked, andif so, how? and (3) Is there a relationship between the frequency and types of questionsasked and children’s early literacy knowledge?

We first locate the study in terms of the theoretical perspectives that inform it. Wethen provide an overview of the related literature on shared book reading. Next, wereport the results of the study. We conclude by discussing the results of the study in

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∗Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Early Child Development and CareVol. 182, No. 9, September 2012, 1139–1154

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terms of the extant literature and the significance of our findings and implications fortheory, practice and further research.

Perspectives and background

Social constructivist perspective

Our work is framed by a Vygotskian or social constructivist perspective that highlightsthe importance of social interactions in children’s cognitive and social development.Children learn about literacy through interaction with their parents and significantothers in their lives. Within this perspective, learning occurs in meaningful activitiesand events, including shared book reading. Vygotsky (1978) claimed that adults struc-ture shared activities so that children engage in more complex behaviours than theycould on their own by working within children’s zone of proximal development.That is, adults and significant others phrase questions and statements and providesupport in relation to children’s current knowledge, with the intent of extending chil-dren’s learning beyond where they are currently functioning but not to the extentwhere children feel frustrated in their learning. Parents can adjust the types of inter-actions to support children’s literacy knowledge, while also encouraging a higher-level of learning for children. For example, DeBaryshe (1992) found that adultstended to yield responsibility for the interactions as the child became more competentand able to function more independently. It is thought that children internalise direc-tives experienced in social interactions with adults and later apply them independently.

Literacy as social practices

Also informing our work is a literacy as social practices paradigm (e.g. Heath, 1983;Street, 1995). From this perspective, literacy is viewed not just as a set of cognitive andlinguistic skills transferable from one context to another but as complex social and cul-tural practices that vary contextually. Clay (1993) summarised this perspective, posit-ing that the meanings ascribed to literacy, the value placed on it, the ways that it ismediated and its functions vary from one context to another. Hence, the socio-culturalcontext influences the ways in which parents interact with their children in storybookreading or indeed, whether they engage in this practice at all. For example, a numberof studies have compared shared reading in different cultural and ethnic groups (e.g.Anderson-Yockel & Haynes, 1994; Hammer, Nimmo, Cohen, Draheim, & Johnson,2005). Generally, these studies show that although there are some similarities inshared book readings across groups, there are also differences.

Consonant with a literacy as social practices perspective is Golden and Gerber’s(1990) characterisation of shared book reading as a semiotic event. As they explained,every shared reading event is unique, depending on the text being shared and theknowledge and experiences that the adult and the child each brings to the event.Indeed, in an earlier study with a relatively homogeneous group, Shapiro, Anderson,and Anderson (1997) found considerable variation in the ways that parents and theirpre-school children shared the same books.

Distancing theory

Although it is generally believed that adult/child interactions during shared readingexperiences contribute to children’s cognitive, language and literacy development

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(e.g. Pressley, 2006), there is less certainty about the relationships between the types ofinteractions and children’s development. One way of characterising storybook inter-actions is to attend to the cognitive distancing linked to types of interactions. Sigel(1970, 1993) postulated that certain events can be characterised as interposing cognitivedistance between a person and an event. High-level distancing utterances involveexplaining, evaluating and extending text, while low-level distancing utterances caninclude labelling, focusing on pictures and repeating text (Leseman & de Jong,1998). Bus and van IJzendoorn (1995) suggested that parents who engage childrenin higher-level thinking skills support children’s literacy learning by promoting skillsof hypothesising, predicting and so forth. Print interactions are also considered ahigh-level cognitive demand on children.

Related literature

Extra-textual talk

In the context of shared book reading, then, the interactions that go beyond the actualreading of the text are thought to be especially important for children’s cognitive,language and literacy development. From a social constructive perspective, parentsor caregivers scaffold children’s learning through this extra-textual talk, extendingthe text and co-constructing meaning with them (e.g. Davidse, de Jong, Bus,Huijbregts, & Swabb, 2011; Heath, 1983; Van Kleeck & Schuele, 2010).

Questioning

It is now generally acknowledged that questioning constitutes one of the ‘most com-monly used discursive forms’ (Zucker, Justice, Piasta, & Kaderavek, 2010) in class-rooms and homes (Heath, 1983). Zucker et al. (2010) hypothesised that questioning‘pushes learners to process language more deeply – with more mental effort – thandoes input’ (Swain, 2000, p. 99) or simply listening to a story for example. Thus, ques-tions are important in young children’s literacy learning.

One of the earlier studies to examine questions was that of Ninio (1980), who inves-tigated mother–child interaction during shared reading in two social class groups,middle class and lower class. In both groups, ‘What’s that?’ questions were most fre-quent followed by ‘Where is X’ questions. Social class differences were found in thatlow-socioeconomic status (SES) mothers talked less and provided less varied labels foractions and attributes than did the middle class mothers. As well, they asked fewer‘what’ questions and more ‘where’ questions. Ninio found that high-SES childrenhad a bigger productive vocabulary while low-SES had a bigger imitative vocabularythan their peers in the other group.

Many of the subsequent studies focusing on questioning in shared reading havefocused on its role in children’s vocabulary development. For example, Walsh andBlewitt (2006) assigned 35 three-year-olds to one of three conditions: vocabulary-eli-citing questions, non-eliciting questions and no questions (control). They found thatchildren’s novel word learning increased more in both questioning conditions than inthe control condition, suggesting that asking children questions that are not targetedat vocabulary during shared reading appears to promote vocabulary acquisition.They reasoned that the form of questioning in shared reading may not be importantin fostering vocabulary development. Ard and Beverly (2004) assigned 40

Early Child Development and Care 1141

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pre-school children equally to four groups, each with different conditions: repeatedjoint book reading, repeated joint book reading with questions, repeated joint bookreading with comments, and repeated joint book reading with comments and questions.Children in all four groups learned new words from the shared reading. The questionsand comments condition was the most efficacious; interestingly, the children in thecomments only group outperformed the children in the questions only group. In astudy with 25 pre-school teachers and 159 four-year-olds, Zucker et al. (2010) investi-gated the relationships between teachers’ literal and inferential questions and children’svocabulary learning. They found that the frequency of literal or inferential questions‘predicted vocabulary outcomes’ (p. 78). On the other hand, Blewitt and Rump(2009) reported that both low-demand (literal) and high-demand questions contributedto vocabulary development but high-demand questions helped deepen children’sknowledge of words.

Although most studies have examined the relationship between questions and chil-dren’s vocabulary, Horner (2004) investigated the effect that questions that werefocused on print during shared reading would have on children’s letter knowledge.Analysis revealed that children who had observed a model asking print-related ques-tions asked more such questions than children who had not seen this modelling.However, comparison of pretest and post-test results of letter knowledge tasksshowed that children who made print-related comments did not learn more lettersthan children who did not make print-related comments. Hindman, Connor, Jewkes,and Morrison (2008) likewise concluded that in their study involving 135 children,neither the parents nor teachers drawing children’s attention to letters and soundswere related to children’s letter or word knowledge. Yaden, Smolkin, and Conlon(1989) reported on two studies in which they examined children’s questions. Theyreported that about 50% of the questions asked by all of the children focused on theillustrations, with questions about story meaning next in frequency. The childrenasked few questions about print.

Genre and shared reading

Although many studies of shared book reading have involved narrative texts, someresearchers have examined the impact of genre. For example, Torr and Clugston(1999) compared differences in parents’ interactions when sharing narrative and infor-mational texts with their four-year-olds. They found more talk occurred in informa-tional texts than in narrative texts and that more cognitively demanding questions,more interactions involving technical terminology and reasoning, and more conditionalclauses occurred in reading non-narrative texts than in narrative texts. In a study with asample of 25 middle class parent–child dyads Anderson, Anderson, Lynch, andShapiro (2004) found that nearly twice as many interactions occurred in sharing theinformation books compared with narrative. These findings are consistent with thoseof Pellegrini, Perlmutter, Galda, and Brody (1990) and Stadler and McEvoy (2003).

Gender and shared reading

One of the earliest studies that examined the effects of parents’ gender on storybookreading concluded that there were no differences between mothers and fathers in thenature of the interaction strategies used with their children in storybook reading(Hayden & Fagan, 1987). Similarly, Worden, Kee, and Ingle (1987) found that


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mothers and fathers were similar in their interactions with the children although themothers’ verbal style was more consistent across the tasks than the fathers.

However, more recent studies have found differences between mothers and fathers’shared reading. For example, Anderson et al. (2004) found more frequent interactionson average when fathers read to children compared with mothers. When sharing narra-tive texts, fathers engaged in slightly more clarification and confirmation than didmothers whereas mothers engaged in slightly more elaboration than fathers. Fathersengaged in considerably more clarification and confirmation than mothers whenreading non-narratives. Schwartz (2004) audio-taped 27 mother–child dyads and 36father–child dyads as they shared a book once per week over three weeks. Fathersused significantly more interpretive strategies when reading to girls than whenreading to boys. Moreover, fathers interacted differently with children who wereolder than 28 months than they did with younger children. Barachetti and Lavelli(2010) also found that fathers tended to be more demanding in their questions andrequests than mothers. They attributed this difference to fathers being less in tunewith their children’s capabilities and interests than are mothers.

In summary then, questions tend to focus on illustrations and story meaning withvery little attention to print. Furthermore, the results of the studies are mixed interms of the impact of questioning on children’s early vocabulary knowledge and onprint. Text genre appears to influence interactions in shared book reading with moststudies reporting more interactions in informational or non-narrative texts than in nar-ratives. And finally, although some studies have found no differences between mothersand fathers interactions in shared reading, others have.

Method

The participants in this study were 40 parents and their three and four-year-old childrencomprising the following dyads: 15 mother–daughter, 15 mother–son, 7 father–daughter and 3 father–son. In our recruitment letters, we requested that ‘the parentor caregiver who usually reads to your child’ should be the one who participates.Each of the children involved in the study attended childcare facilities in an economi-cally, socially and culturally diverse area of a large Canadian city.

Four high-quality children’s books – Mr McMouse and Swimmy by Leo Lionni(1992, 1963), A new butterfly by Pamela Hickman and Heather Collins (1997) andHalloween by Gail Gibbons (1984) – were chosen by the researchers in consultationwith an expert in children’s literature. (See Appendix 1 for a description of thebooks.) Furthermore, we checked with the assistant manager of a large, local children’sbookstore to ensure that parents were regularly selecting these four books for their chil-dren and thus had contemporary appeal. We had also used these books in two previousstudies (Anderson et al., 2004; Shapiro et al., 1997) and they were appropriate for, andenjoyed by the families. The first two books of course are narrative texts, the latter twonon-narrative texts or informational books.

Data collection occurred over two sessions, the first of approximately 40 minutesduration, the second taking about 30 minutes. In the first session, we collected demo-graphic information, as well as information about literacy practices at home, includingthe frequency of shared book reading. During the initial session and prior to recordingthe shared book readings, we also administered the Test of Early Reading Ability 2(TERA 2) and a letter recognition task (upper and lower case letters). The TERA 2has three subtests: (1) Alphabet, that measures children’s knowledge of the alphabet


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and letter–sound knowledge; (2) Conventions, that measures familiarity with conven-tions of print such as book orientation, print orientation and directionality and (3)Meaning, that measures children’s ability to comprehend written material (Reid,Hresko, & Hammill, 1989, p. 7).

Addressing the issue of reliability of the TERA-2, Reid et al. (1989) reported, ‘theaverage internal consistency reliability coefficient alpha for Form A and Form B are:Form A: Age Three: 98; Age Four: 94; Age Five: 89; Form B: Age Three: 91; AgeFour: 93; Age Five: 92’ (p. 25). Test–retest reliability when ‘the raw scores forForm A were correlated with those for Form B and the influence of age was partialedfrom the resulting coefficient. . .was .79’ (p. 26). In terms of validity, Reid et al. (1989)indicated that

the TERA-2 scores of 63 children, aged 49 to 72 months, were correlated with their per-formance on the Basic School Skills Inventory – Diagnostic (BSSI-D) Reading subtest.The correlation coefficients were partialed to control for the effects of age, resulting in thefollowing coefficients: Form A, .61; form B, .52. These coefficients are significant beyondthe .01 level. In a separate study, the TERA-2 scores of 34 students ages 6 to 9 were cor-related with their scores on the Paragraph Reading subtests of the Test of Reading Com-prehension. The partial correlation procedure was used to control for the effects of age,resulting in the following coefficients: Form A ¼ .36, For B ¼ .34 (p ¼ ,.05). (p. 28)

The two, shared reading sessions with each dyad were separated by several weeks.To control for book order, a counter balanced design was used in terms of books readwith one narrative and one informational text being shared in each session.

Each session was videotaped to capture both the verbal and non-verbal (e.g. ges-tural) interactions as Golden and Gerber (1990) point out, in shared storybookreading, parents and children use ‘a variety of paralinguistic, kinesthetic and proxemiccues’ (p. 204) as they construct meaning. Parents were requested to ‘Share this bookwith (child’s name) as you normally would’. Although all the families read inEnglish, two Mandarin-speaking dyads and one Spanish-speaking dyad engaged insome extra-textual talk in their first language, which we had translated into Englishby native Mandarin and Spanish speakers, respectively. In the majority of book read-ings, the parent read the text to the child. However, in the case of one family, the daugh-ter read with assistance from her mother as they shared the narrative texts. In the case ofanother family, the son was reluctant to participate in the shared reading of one of thenarrative texts so the mother talked about the illustrations and paraphrased aspects ofthe text.

Each of the book-sharing episodes was transcribed in its entirety. We next dividedthe transcribed data into ‘message units’ defined as ‘meaningful statements or ques-tions’ (Kontos, 1981, p. 10). Then we highlighted all the questions present in theextra-textual talk and used a descriptive coding system (see Appendix 2) similar tothat developed by Shapiro et al. (1997) to code the type (or function) of each question.After the initial coding of the data, a second rater then recoded the data. Discrepanciesbetween the two raters were then resolved through discussion and reanalysis until con-sensus was achieved. We next report the results of the analysis.

Results

Of course, questions are but one aspect of extra-textual talk. To provide the reader withsome context, we first describe the total amount of talk that occurred across the


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sessions. All of the parent–child dyads engaged in some extra-textual talk, althoughminimally so in some cases. For example, with 5 of the dyads, there were four orfewer instances of extra-textual talk, while there were more than 100 instances ofsuch talk with 21 of the dyads. Similar diversity in terms of the amount of extra-textual talk was also reported by Shapiro et al. (1997). On average, slightly moreextra-textual talk took place within the information book readings. The focus of thisstudy, however, is on the frequency and type of questions which arose during theextra-textual talk and we now turn our attention there.

Distribution of questions across book readings

The number of questions asked across the dyads ranged from 0 to 130. In about one-quarter of the book readings, the dyads asked four or fewer questions. On the otherhand, in one quarter of the sessions, the dyads asked 29 or more questions; indeed,in three book readings, 85 or more questions were asked. Thus, in terms of questioning,there was a great deal of diversity across the book readings.

Types of questions parents and children ask

The first research question was: What types of questions do parents and children askduring shared book reading and with what frequency? As indicated in Table 1, themajority of questions parents asked were knowledge and confirmation questions,with clarification questions being third most frequent. As perhaps might be expected,children most frequently asked clarification questions, presumably to get informationto enable them to comprehend the text being read. Children’s knowledge questionsand confirmation questions were next in order of frequency. Interestingly, whenreading information books parents asked almost four times as many association ques-tions as they did when reading narrative texts. However, it should be noted that parentsasked more association questions when reading Halloween than in A new butterfly, bothof which are informational texts. Of course, association questions are considered cog-nitively demanding and in this study, information texts engendered these more so thanthe narrative texts. Parents and children asked very few prediction questions although,as might be expected, they asked more prediction questions in narrative than in infor-mation texts. Thus, these results suggest that although children asked fewer questionsoverall than their parents, they tended to ask for clarification from their parents, whereasthe parents tended to ask about their children’s knowledge of what was being read. Inaddition, the genre of the book appeared to influence the type of questions that childrenand parents asked.

Several other trends should be noted here as well. Daughters asked five times asmany questions as sons in information texts and although the difference was not as pro-nounced, they also asked more in narrative texts. As might be expected, children askedfew higher level or more cognitively demanding questions; instead, as indicated before,their questions seemed to help them garner the information they needed to maintaincomprehension of the texts as they were being shared.

Frequency of low cognitive and high cognitive demand questions

We categorised knowledge, confirmation and management questions as low cognitivedemand questions and clarification, explanation, prediction, association and attitudinal


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Table 1. Frequency of the types of questions asked during shared book-readings.

Book sessions Knowledge Confirmation Clarification Explanation Association Prediction Attitudinal Management

Narrative 250 224 196 9 21 13 32 32Mother 184 (5.75)∗ 164 (5.13) 102 (3.18) 2 (0.06) 14 (0.44) 6 (0.19) 28 (0.88) 22 (0.69)Father 40 (3.64) 42 (3.82) 21 (1.91) 2 (0.18) 7 (0.64) 7 (0.64) 4 (0.37) 4 (0.37)Parent 224 206 123 4 21 13 32 26Daughter 15 (0.63) 9 (0.38) 57 (2.38) 5 (0.21) 0 0 0 5 (0.21)Son 11 (0.58) 9 (0.48) 16 (1.45) 0 0 0 0 1 (0.09)Child 26 18 73 5 0 0 0 6Information 377 252 179 36 86 3 50 36Mother 262 (6.89)∗ 180 (4.74) 80 (2.11) 14 (0.37) 51 (1.34) 3 (0.08) 40 (1.05) 31 (0.82)Father 65 (4.64) 48 (3.43) 23 (1.64) 5 (0.35) 25 (1.79) 0 9 (0.64) 2 (0.14)Parent 327 228 103 19 81 3 49 33Daughter 26 (0.93) 16 (0.57) 65 (2.32) 17 (0.61) 3 (0.11) 0 1 (0.04) 2 (0.07)Son 24 (1.00) 8 (0.33) 11 (0.46) 0 2 (0.08) 0 0 1 (0.04)Child 50 24 76 17 5 0 1 3

Note: ∗Bold text highlights totals and average number of question type per session (mean) discussed.

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questions as high cognitive demand questions. In both narrative and information read-ings, there were almost twice as many low cognitive demand questions as high cogni-tive demand questions (see Table 2). Indeed, 65% of the questions involved the moreimmediate tasks of identifying, recognising and/or confirming information in the textsor illustrations, while 35% of the questions served to expand on or extend what wasbeing read. Interestingly, when questions were clustered into high cognitive demandand low cognitive demand categories, there was little difference between the twogenres.

Gender and genre effects on questioning

The second research questions was, Does the genre of the book (expository or narra-tive) and the gender of the participants affect the frequency and type of questionsasked, and if so, how? As shown in Table 3, on average, parents asked five timesmore questions than children. Parents and children on average asked slightly morequestions in information books (16.1 and 3.4) than in narrative books (15.1 and 3).Thus, in terms of the average number of questions asked, genre appeared to haveonly a minor effect.

Interestingly, there was variation in the number of questions asked within the samegenre. For example, on average, parents asked 18.5 questions in Swimmy comparedwith 11.2 in Mr McMouse. Likewise, children asked twice as many questions in Hal-loween as they did in A New Butterfly.

Gender did affect the frequency of questions in that on average, mothers askedabout one-third more questions than fathers in both informational and narrative texts.Although in general, the children asked relatively fewer questions than the parents,the trend in gender differences held in that daughters asked about twice as many ques-tions as sons. Because fewer fathers (N ¼ 10) than mothers (N ¼ 30) participated in thestudy, some caution is called for in interpreting these findings as further study is neededbefore generalising these trends.

Relationship between questions and children’s literacy knowledge

The third research question was, Is there a relationship between the frequency and typesof questions asked and children’s early literacy knowledge? To answer this question,partial correlations to control for age were computed between questions (high cognitivedemand and low cognitive demand) and children’s scores on the TERA 2 and the alpha-bet recognition task. High cognitive demand questions were not significantly related tochildren’s knowledge of the alphabet or their scores on the TERA 2. Similarly, low cog-nitive demand questions were not significantly related to children’s knowledge of thealphabet or their scores on the TERA 2 (see Table 4).

Table 2. Number of low cognitive versus high cognitive demand questions.

Genre Low cognitive demand High cognitive demand

Narrative 506 (65.1%) 271 (34.9%) 777

Information 665 (65.4%) 354 (34.6%) 1019

1171 625 1796


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Discussion

Although other studies have examined extra-textual talk in shared book reading, thisstudy contributes to that literature in that it is one of the few studies that have examinedthe frequency and type of questions that parents and children asked. Moreover, rela-tively little is known about the relationships between questioning in shared bookreading and children’s early literacy knowledge. Questioning is thought to contribute

Table 4. Partial correlations.

Low cognitive demand questions High cognitive demand questions

Alphabet (r) 0.059 0.255

Alphabet (p) 0.723 0.117

TERA II (r) 0.021 0.063

TERA II (p) 0.905 0.715

Table 3. Number of questions parents and children asked during book readings.

Book Parent Mother Father Child Daughter Son

Swimmy Total 426 359 67 65 41 24

Range 0–119 0–119 0–30 0–11 0–11 0–7

Mean 18.5 19.9 13.4 2.8 3.4 2.2

Median 14 14 12 2 2 2

McMouse Total 223 164 59 63 50 13

Range 0–36 0–36 0–28 0–13 0–13 0–6

Mean 11.2 11.7 9.8 3.2 4.2 .8

Median 7 7 8 1 1 1

Narrative Total 649 523 126 128 91 37

Range 0–119 0–119 0–30 0–13 0–13 0–7

Mean 15.1 16.3 11.5 3 4 2Median 8 8 9 2 1.5 2

Mode 0 0,7 0,12 0 0 0

Halloween Total 419 293 126 120 101 19

Range 0–74 0–74 0–45 0–53 0–53 0–8

Mean 16.1 15.4 18 4.6 7.2 1.6

Median 10.5 10 21 1 3.5 1

A New Buterfly Total 419 368 51 56 31 25

Range 0–84 1–84 0–25 0–6 0–6 0–6

Mean 16.1 19.4 7.3 2.2 2.2 2.1

Median 10.5 15 6 1.5 1.5 1.5

Information Total 838 661 177 176 132 44

Range 0–84 0–84 0–45 0-53 0–53 0–8

Mean 16.1 17.4 12.6 3.4 4.7 1.8Median 10.5 11.5 6.5 1 2.5 1

mode 0,2 2 0 0 0 1

Note: Bold text highlights means discussed.


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to children’s cognitive, language and literacy development and thus it is important toexamine that aspect of shared book reading. Furthermore, as Heath (1982, 1983)posits, parents’ questions serve to acculturate (or not acculturate) children into the dis-course patterns that they will experience and need to learn at school.

The results of this study are consistent with a socio-cultural perspective of learning(e.g. Vygotsky, 1978). For example, parents asked many more questions than children,drawing attention to concepts and ideas, ensuring children’s understanding, andencouraging children to make connections beyond the texts. Furthermore, childrentended to ask clarification questions or knowledge questions, also consistent with asocio-cultural perspective. That is, the parents in their role of more knowledgeablesupporter provided children with the information and knowledge necessary forcomprehension.

Consistent with previous studies (e.g. Cairney & Ashton, 2002; McArthur,Adamson, & Deckner, 2005), there was considerable diversity in the shared readingexperiences across the dyads. With some dyads, there was very little extra-textualtalk and very few questions; with other dyads, there was much extra-textual talk andmany questions during the shared reading. These findings are in line with Goldenand Gerber’s (1990) characterisation of shared reading as a semiotic event shaped bythe two participants and the particular text. For example, parents asked more questionsin reading Swimmy compared with Mr McMouse, both of which are narrative texts.

Consistent with distancing theory, parents in this study did ask some questions thatwere cognitively demanding. However, these were comparatively infrequent andparents tended to ask more less cognitively demanding questions. We anticipatedthat higher level or more cognitively demanding questions would be more frequent.Van Kleeck, Gillam, Hamilton and McGrath (1997) speculated that parents tend toengage in low cognitive demand interactions because they give children a feeling ofsuccess and this might have been the case with the parents here. Nevertheless, vanKleeck, Alexander, Vigil and Templeton (1996) found that mothers, as well as label-ling, used cognitively demanding discourse structures with infants and one perhapswould expect more frequent use of higher level, cognitively demanding questionswith the three- and four-year-olds in this study. Indeed, Zucker et al. (2010) foundthat about 57% of the questions that the pre-school teachers asked four-year-oldswere at the inferential level (i.e. high cognitive demand). In contrast, about 35% ofthe questions parents in the present study asked were high cognitive demand, althoughit is important to remember the different contexts (pre-school versus home) in the twostudies.

Text genre had only minor effects in terms of the frequency of questions and it didnot affect the ratio of high level or more cognitively demanding questions comparedwith lower level or less cognitively demanding ones. An exception was that parentsasked more than four times as many association questions in information texts thanin narrative. Although no research that we were able to review looked specifically atquestioning, previous research (e.g. Pellegrini et al., 1990) suggests that more cogni-tively demanding interactions occur in informational texts. Thus, the findings of thisstudy are not consistent with previous research with the exception of the relative pro-minence of association questions.

On the other hand, the results of this study indicate that there were gender differ-ences in questioning in shared book reading. Earlier studies (e.g. Hayden & Fagan,1987; Worden et al., 1987) that examined gender differences found that mothers’and fathers’ interactions during shared reading did not differ. More recent studies


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(e.g. Anderson et al., 2004; Barachetti & Lavelli, 2010) indicate that mothers andfathers differed in terms of the interactions. It should be pointed out that the Haydenand Fagan study drew from one kindergarten class and thus the sample was relativelyhomogeneous whereas the families in the present study were from a number of differentpre-schools and childcare centres and thus reflected greater diversity. Thus, the currentstudy is consistent with the more contemporary research that suggests gender differ-ences in shared book reading do exist.

The literature on extra-textual talk suggests that the relative dearth of higher level ormore cognitively demanding questions might impact negatively on the children’s cog-nitive, language and literacy development. However, the results of this study indicatethat there were no significant relationships between the types of questions asked andchildren’s early literacy knowledge. Neuman (1996) challenged the dominant perspec-tive that only certain types of interactions in shared reading benefit children, positinginstead the position that children accrue considerable benefits from exposure to printthrough book reading, irrespective of the interactions that occur. Nevertheless,further research that examines the relationship between questioning and early literacydevelopment is warranted.

Many of the studies on shared book reading have drawn samples (or participants)from homogeneous social or cultural groups or they have compared shared bookreading between or among two or more intact cultural groups. The current study,however, included parents and children from a number of different cultural, linguisticand social groups, although all of the dyads shared the books in English and all of theparents indicated that they read to their children in English at home as a regular routine.Indeed, the sample, though not randomly selected, was chosen to be a representative ofthe larger context in which it occurred. The differences found between this study andprevious ones might be attributable to the differences in sampling. Moreover, researchwith a larger, representative sample is also warranted. In previous studies (Andersonet al., 2004; Shapiro et al., 1997), we have reported considerable diversity in sharedbook reading even within fairly homogeneous samples. This diversity is also apparentin this study. Although there are some trends as we reported here as elsewhere, weconcur with Golden and Gerber’s (1990) characterisation of shared book reading asa semiotic event wherein a number of factors interact to shape what occurs whenparents and children read together. Thus, every shared reading event will be somewhatidiosyncratic. In that regard, we tend to agree with Neuman (1996) who challenged theperspective that is dominant in the literature that only certain types of interactions inshared book reading benefit children.

Conclusion

We believe that the results of this study are important for several reasons. First, it con-tributes to an emerging literature (e.g. Hindman et al., 2008; Senechal, Lefevre,Thomas, & Daley, 1998; Stadler & McEvoy, 2003) that demonstrates a moretenuous relationship between shared book reading and children’s early literacy devel-opment than has been previously thought. Second, the results indicate that there weredifferences between how mothers and fathers share books, an area that is worthy offurther investigation. Third, while information books engendered more interactionthan did narrative texts, the proportion of high cognitive demand questions wassimilar across genres. And finally, the results again demonstrate the diversity inshared reading across families.


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Of course, as educators, we tend to see shared book reading as a site for children’sliteracy learning. But many families do not believe that the purpose of reading bookswith children is to teach them to read. Indeed, the families that Audet, Evans,Williamson, and Reynolds (2008) worked with rated ‘enjoying books’ and ‘beingwith the child’ as more important reasons to share books with their children than‘fostering reading’ and ‘promoting development’. Furthermore, as Hindman et al.(2008) pointed out, ‘shared book reading is only one of many strategies by whichadults prepare young children for reading’ (p. 346).

AcknowledgementsThis study was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaResearch Grant (410-99-0200). We sincerely thank the families for their participation.

Notes on contributorsAnn Anderson is a professor in mathematics education in the Department of Curriculum andPedagogy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her research and teachingfocus on children’s mathematics learning in the early years.

Jim Anderson is a professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at theUniversity of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. His research and teaching focus onearly literacy/family literacy.

Jacqueline Lynch is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education, York University,Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include early and family literacy.

Jon Shapiro is a professor of language & literacy education at the University of British Colum-bia, Vancouver, Canada. His research interests include affective aspects of literacy developmentand instruction and parentchild interactions during book reading episodes.

Ji Eun Kim is a doctoral student in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at theUniversity of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her research interests are early literacydevelopment, family literacy, and discourse analysis.

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Appendix 1. Descriptive summary of each book

Swimmy (298 words)This narrative book is a story of a tiny black fish which escapes being eaten by a tuna fish andwanders through the sea seeing wonderful things. When he again meets up with a school of tinyred fish like himself, he teaches them to swim close together to scare off the big fish. The illus-trations are mainly water colours with some stamping.

Mr McMouse (844 words)This narrative book is about a city mouse that takes on the identity of a man and runs away to thecountry where he meets field mice, who will permit him to stay if he passes three tests. When heand his new friends save the others from a cat, they are rewarded for their bravery. The illus-trations are colourful paper collages.

A New Butterfly (343 words)This information book uses a cumulative verse structure which begins ‘This is the tree thatConnie climbs’ and regularly adds a new feature like ‘this is the leaf. . ., this is the egg . . .’and so on. As such, this main text tells how a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis. In addition,illustrations and text under flaps are used to demonstrate particular aspects in more detailsuch as naming bugs that live under the bark, telling how a caterpillar molts and so on.

Halloween (482 words)This information book recounts the many traditions of Halloween from a historical perspectivesuch as the derivation of the name Hallowe’en from All Hallows Evening, the legend of Jack of


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the Lantern as well as more modern day events associated with the celebrations such as trick ortreating, party games, and haunted house tours. In addition to the main text, single words (e.g.Boo) and short phrases (e.g. Go away, Jack) also appear in the illustrations throughout.

Appendix 2. Codes and examples from the data set

Question: talk which was structured grammatically or intonated as a question.

Knowledge: sought identification, or recall ofcharacters or events in the book

What does it say here? (Halloween)Where is the pebbles? (Mr McMouse)

Confirmation: sought agreement/disagreementor solicited a yes/ no.

Can you see a bee? (A New Butterfly)The cat has fallen asleep, right? (MrMcMouse)

Clarification: sought information about thecharacters and events.

Like a straw? (A New Butterfly)What are they then? (Swimmy)

Explanation: sought elaboration of concepts orevents

How did the word jack-o-lantern comeabout? (Halloween)Why is he out of breath? (Mr McMouse)

Association: sought to connect events in bookwith personal experiences

You see these in our garden, right?(ANew Butterfly)Remember we looked at water- colors theother day? (Swimmy)

Prediction: sought speculation about what iscoming or might happen

And then what happens? (Halloween)What’s this book about? (Swimmy)

Attitudinal: sought feelings toward book, oraesthetic responses to the book

Which is the one you like best? (A NewButterfly)Did you like that story? (Mr McMouse)

Management: sought to assess attention, turntaking, or timing

Here, can you see this? (Halloween)I turn the page? (Swimmy)


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Documents

Extra-textual talk in shared book reading: a focus on questioning