The framework for the Program for International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and for the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reading domain can be summarized as follows: “While PISA is concerned with the literacy needs of students as they make the transition from the world of school to the world of work, PIRLS addresses progress at the equally important stage when students move from learning to read to reading to learn” (Mullis, Kennedy, Martin, & Sainsbury, 2006, p. 102). Both PIRLS, at the fourth grade level, and PISA, with 15 year-old students, measure students´ ability to comprehend what they read to fulfil personal goals and to participate in society.
The goal of these international assessments is to provide participating countries information about the reading literacy performance of their students. In addition, and because they are “further complemented by information on students’ socio-demographic and dispositional characteristics, their home environment as well as teaching and learning contexts in classes and schools” (Lenkeit, Chan, Hopfenbeck & Baird, 2015, p. 103), they provide a rich basis for research and evidence-based policies. Yet, PISA has considerable more impact on policymaking and more visibility in research publications, despite the fact that PIRLS offers the same possibilities for research and for drawing policy implications (Lenkeit, Chan, Hopfenbeck & Baird, 2015).
The report “Let’s Read them a Story: The Parent Factor in Education” (OECD, 2012) is an example of how the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which implements PISA, derives policy messages from analyses of PISA data. Using family socio-demographic characteristics and information about the home environment, that is also available in PIRLS but rarely used (Lenkeit, Chan, Hopfenbeck & Baird, 2015), this OECD report has a strong message. That is, in PISA 2009 students who were read to when very young were found to be better readers at age 15 (OECD, 2012). Similarly, research with primary school children has shown that parental book reading during the preschool years positively impacts future reading. In particular, Sénéchal, Ouellette, and Rodney (2006) found that young Canadian children’s vocabulary knowledge, acquired from parental book reading, predicts reading in grade three.
Sénéchal’s home literacy model (2012) postulates that during the preschool years both code-based teaching by parents, like naming alphabet letters, and shared reading contribute to later reading achievement and this view is consistent with theories of reading development. More specifically, during the learning to read phase fast word-identification skills serve as the foundation for text comprehension (Perfetti, 1992), but as the ability to decode words develops other factors such as vocabulary knowledge support reading to learn (Chall & Jacobs, 2003). In fact, “… research indicates that reading with comprehension depends on understanding at least 95% of the words of the text” (Adams, 2009, p.172). This understanding of the meaning of words develops when preschool-age children are exposed to book reading and explore the meaning of print. Later, this oral comprehension will assist them in comprehending what they will read by themselves (Sénéchal, 2012).
PIRLS provides a unique opportunity to investigate whether a positive association between home reading and achievement is present in different European countries and, if so, whether similar patterns to those found for PISA are present at a younger age, in grade four. Given that current European initiatives stress the importance of promoting a literate home culture during the early years (Araújo & Costa, 2015), we aim at answering the following research questions: Are children who were read to before primary school better readers in fourth grade, as measured in PIRLS? Are the patterns found for PIRLS similar to the ones found for 15-year old students in PISA?
