Parent-child joint reading of digital books in bilingual families in Malta

Abstract

We examined parent-child shared reading of Maltese and English e-books in four bilingual families. Analysis of the participant videos, questionnaires and semi-structured interview data revealed positive engagement of the participating families, substantiated with three main themes from the participants’ interview accounts: balanced use of e-books and print books, the importance of nurturing child's independence with e-book use, and the unique value of e-books for child's learning, especially in terms of repetition. A theoretically-driven analysis of the video data placed the e-books’ affordances in relation to six facets of children's individual engagement (personalized, sustained, shared, creative, affective and interactive), but it needed to be expanded with four additional facets of parent-child joint engagement (didactic, dialogical, self-directed and experiential).