Departing from the premise that little is known about the shared reading of e-books in bilingual families, members of the Centre for Literacy of the University of Malta conducted a study to find out more about this process, and determine whether the use of physical and digital e-books is balanced.
Prof. Charles Mifsud, Ms Rositsa Georgieva and Prof. Natalia Kucirkova have examined the parent-child shared reading of Maltese and English e-books in four bilingual families through the analysis of participant videos, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.
Data revealed positive engagement of the participating families, and the focus was on three main themes:
It is interesting to note that the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore the lack of print books at home and the families’ reliance on local libraries and schools for children’s reading material.
Unlike their parents, children prefer to read digitally, or at least they enjoy reading digitally as much as they enjoy reading on paper. However, in this study, families were clear and insisted that digital books are not to replace print books but rather to be integrated into their existing reading routines.
Also, despite the well-established routine of shared reading in the families interviewed, parents shared the concern about the need for children to use digital books independently. Tablets are used not just for the reading of e-books but also for research and playing games, and this raised the concern that the space to experiment would need to be shared with the same space for these other activities.
Families noted the several positive features of digital books, which they perceived as added value in terms of their interactivity, however resources in Maltese are far more limited.
The study, titled ‘Parent-child joint reading of digital books in bilingual families in Malta’, was published in the International Journal of Educational Research and on Science Direct. It can be read .
