Exploring Caregivers’ Multimodal Interactions During Shared Reading of Informational Picturebooks at Home

From the time they are born, children develop emergent literacy in home and community settings (Teale et al., 2018). One of the ways caregivers support children's emergent literacy is by reading together—shared reading. Previous research has shown that caregivers exhibit interactional differences between reading informational picturebooks with children and reading fictional picturebooks (J. Anderson et al., 2004; Baldwin & Morrow, 2019; Price et al., 2009). Caregivers ask more questions and provide further explanations to children in reading informational picturebooks compared to reading fictional picturebooks. To explore this difference, this dissertation analyzed how caregivers’ knowledge of reading informational picturebooks are shared with children in caregiver-child interactions during shared reading activities. Drawing on sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) and bioecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2007), caregiver-child interactions were interpreted as social interactions facilitated by an immediate family member within emergent literacy contexts. This dissertation investigated three families’ practices of shared reading of informational picturebooks through a qualitative case study. The three families’ surveys, reading logs, observations of reading informational picturebooks, and caregiver interviews were collected and analyzed. Findings demonstrate how caregivers utilized features of informational picturebooks while multimodally interacting with their child. Caregivers mostly incorporated visual features of informational picturebooks, and rarely organizational and supporting tools. Multimodal interactions between caregivers and children are observed across the shared reading practices which emphasize the nature of multimodal interactions. The findings contribute to understanding caregivers' and children’s multimodal interactions when reading informational picturebooks and how caregivers’ knowledge and experiences are embedded in their interactions. This dissertation identifies areas for literacy researchers to pursue in future research and suggests potential implications for encouraging caregivers’ use of informational picturebooks.