Reciprocal Relationship between Parents’ School- and Home-Based Involvement and Children’s Reading Achievement during the First Year of Elementary School

Abstract

Reading is an essential competence students learn in school. One question is how parents can support their children and their reading competence, particularly at the beginning of elementary school. Guided by this question, this study investigated the longitudinally reciprocal relationship between parental school- and home-based involvement with children’s reading competence. We also tested whether school- and home-based involvement mediated the relationship between structural context variables (e.g., migration background) and reading competence. A total of 254 parent–child dyads answered a questionnaire at two measurement points, i.e., at the beginning and the end of the first grade in elementary school. Home-based involvement and reading competence were negatively, reciprocally related to each other. Furthermore, we found a negative association between reading competence at the beginning of grade 1 and the relative change in school-based involvement at the end of grade 1. No mediation effects of school- and home-based involvement in the relation between structural context variables and reading competence were found. This paper provides a deeper understanding of the complex interrelations of the family–school partnership during the first school year.