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Faculty Research Award Announcement

Pia Rebello Britto, Associate Research Scientist

Pia Rebello Britto, Ph.D.

Pia Rebello Britto, Associate Research Scientist, Child Study Center, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (Professor, Teachers College, Columbia University) and Terri Griffin (Assistant Professor at Manhattanville College) have been awarded the International Reading Association's 2008 Dina Feitelson Research award for their paper, “Maternal reading and teaching patterns: Associations with school readiness in low income African American families.” (Reading Research Quarterly, 41, 68-89). The Dina Feitelson award recognizes an outstanding empirical study on literacy published in English in a refereed journal.

The awarded study explored the congruence in reading and teaching patterns of low-income, young African-American mothers while interacting with their preschool aged children in their homes (N=126). Survey and standardized test data were collected on maternal education and language ability; and videotape data were collected, transcribed and coded on shared book reading and puzzle solving sessions, using validated coding procedures. Two reading patterns (Story-Readers and Story-Tellers) and three teaching patterns (Low Support and Low Teaching; Support and Low Teaching; and Support and Teaching) were identified based on maternal verbal and non-verbal interactions during these sessions. Children whose mothers were identified as Story-Tellers and the Support and Teaching group of mothers had better language skills than children whose mothers were not in these groups, controlling for maternal education and verbal skills.