The role of type of activity in parent–child interactions within a family literacy programme: comparing prompting boards and shared reading

To examine what kinds of parent–child interactions are elicited by different literacy-related activities, an exploratory study was conducted with 19 mother–child dyads. Although prompting boards are widely incorporated in pre- and primary school curricula, and in various family literacy programmes, scientific knowledge supporting their use is lacking. Within the context of the Dutch family literacy programme ‘Early Education at Home’ [Dutch Youth Institute. (2012). Early education at home. http://www.nji.nl/nl/Producten-en-diensten/Methodieken-en-instrumenten/VVE-Thuis-(3-6-jaar)], we compared levels of abstraction in parent–child interactions during prompting boards to an activity that has been researched extensively: shared reading. Our results show that children’s contributions to the interactions are significantly larger during prompting board activities than during shared reading. Utterances of a higher level of abstraction were generally more prevalent during shared reading. However, we also found that mother’s inference making utterances–the highest level of abstraction–were more characteristic of prompting board discussions. Implications for research and practice are discussed.