neutral or negative perspective to pursue social interaction for the completion of reading tasks, for the acquisition of knowledge, for the interpretation of an author’s perspective, or simply for enjoyment of the world of literature (Baker, Afflerbach, & Reinking, 1996). Television watching has also been found to be a predictor of reading literacy. While Van der Voort (2001) found evidence that suggests that television may be responsible for the decline in time spent on reading today, it was not concluded that reading was necessarily better than TV watching (or vice versa). Rather, a balanced mix of reading and television watching was called for. In earlier research, moreover, Koolstra, van der Voort, and van der Kamp (1997) found a small negative effect of watching entertainment programs and a positive but nonsignificant effect of watching informative programs on reading comprehension. Finally, the time children spend using a computer in industrialized societies has been found to also have some less than straightforward consequences for their reading literacy. Tapscott (1998) has suggested, for example, that the acquisition of computer literacy may facilitate the learning of school-aged children in other areas. Alternatively, Lankshear et al. (1997) have argued that the increased use of computers may distract and “deskill” children (i.e., decrease their learning and practice of basic reading and writing skills in addition to handwriting skills). Based on the results of a small-scale trial, Radi (2002) found frequent computer use to impede the
development of reading comprehension skills (i.e., language literacy). The majority of the parents in the study reported that their children spent more time on the computer than reading printed text. Radi concluded that a healthy balance between computer use and the reading of printed text is necessary to develop both the computer and language literacy skills needed in society today.
With respect to the child’s home, the extent to which reading opportunities are provided and reading is encouraged in the home are often cited as important predictors of reading attitudes and reading literacy achievement (Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Grimmett & Mc Coy, 1980; Purves, 1973; Baker, Scher, & Mackler, 1997; Spiegel, 1981). The literary activities of parents with their children during the preschool years and thereafter have been found to be highly relevant for the development of reading literacy in addition to the provision of opportunities to read in terms of reading climate and the presence of such reading materials as books, comics, and magazines (Bus, 2002; Rowe,1991). Factors such as parental reading attitudes and reading activities have also been found to influence the reading attitudes of children (Baker et al, 1997; Wigfield & Asher, 2002).
With respect to the school, the amount of literacy instruction appears to play an important role in the development of reading literacy skills. For all of the countries participating in the IEA Reading Literacy Study in 1991, those schools that were more effective were found to have more instructional hours than those schools that were less effective (Postlethwaite & Ross, 1992). Many researchers are also convinced that explicit strategy instruction is essential for children to discover and develop the strategies that are vital for further learning and development (e.g.,
Aarnoutse & Schellings, 2003; Pressley, 1998). Decoding skills play a crucial role in learning to read and must therefore be taught prior to the training of reading literacy skills (Hoover & Gough, 1990; Perfetti, 1992). The teaching of reading
comprehension requires active participation and engagement on the part of learners (Allington & Johnston, 2000) and, according to Verhoeven and Snow (2001), teachers should arrange tasks and activities in such a manner that they are easily accessible and create settings that maintain children’s engagement. Access to books at school is also critical. The nature of the school population has also been found to influence the literacy performance of students. Of all the school variables studied by Overmaat, Roeleveld, and Ledoux (2002), for example, the number of high-risk students was found to influence student performance the most. In addition, smaller classes allow teachers to devote more time to the individual student and have thus been found to play a crucial role in learning to read (Pritchard,1999).
Finally, differences in gender, parental education, and home language play an important role and should therefore be controlled for in the prediction of reading literacy. Girls have been found to outperform boys in many reading literacy studies (e.g., Badian, 1999; Overmaat et al., 2002; Wagemaker, 1996). Numerous studies have shown students with high-educated parents to outperform students with low- educated parents (e.g., Hecht, Burgess, Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 2000; Overmaat et al., 2002). Finally, students who speak the language of instruction at home have also been found to outperform students who speak another language at home (e.g., Overmaat, Roeleveld, & Ledoux, 2002; Van Elsacker, 2002).
In sum, the level of reading literacy that children develop appears to depend on a number of variables associated with the child, the child’s family, and the school. Differences in reading achievement may also occur across countries, however, and a multiple-group, multiple-factor approach to the study of reading literacy development must therefore be adopted. If the family, school, and country embedding of factors is ignored (i.e., the nonindependence of observations is not recognized), serious problems can arise with the interpretation of the relevant results. And for this reason, the conduct of multilevel analyses is clearly called for.
In the present study, the following research question was examined: Which characteristics at the levels of the student, class, and school explain the differences observed in the reading literacy performances of students from different industrialized societies? Multilevel analyses were conducted for three reasons. First, multilevel analyses explicitly model the manner in which students are grouped within classes, schools, and countries, which means that statistically correct and efficient estimates of the regression coefficients for prediction of reading literacy can be obtained. Second, multilevel analyses provide the correct error terms, confidence intervals, and tests of significance by using clustered information. Third, multilevel analyses make it possible to explore the extent to which variation across classes, schools, and countries can be accounted for by different level factors, while also taking the variation at the other levels into account (Goldstein et al, 1998). For the prediction of