Vol. 27 No. 2 (2025): n° 2 luglio-dicembre 2025
Dossier “La lettura ad alta voce e silenziosa nei contesti di educazione formale, informale e non formale”

Reading to Children, Reading with Children: Parents’ Interactional Practices Fostering Children’s Participation in Shared Book-Reading at Home

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  • Vittoria Colla,
  • Renata Galatolo
Vittoria Colla
Università di Bologna
Renata Galatolo
Department of the Arts - University of Bologna
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/rief-18159

Published 2026-01-02

Keywords

  • shared book-reading,
  • parent-child interactions,
  • pre-school children,
  • children participation,
  • Conversation Analysis

How to Cite

Colla, V., & Galatolo, R. (2026). Reading to Children, Reading with Children: Parents’ Interactional Practices Fostering Children’s Participation in Shared Book-Reading at Home. Rivista Italiana Di Educazione Familiare, 27(2), 119–136. https://doi.org/10.36253/rief-18159

Copyright (c) 2025 Vittoria Colla, Renata Galatolo

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Research has long demonstrated the positive effects of parent-child shared book-reading on children’s development. However, despite their pedagogical relevance, parent-child shared reading activities remain underexplored as real-life, interactive achievements. Applying Conversation Analysis to a corpus of 13 video-recorded parent-child shared-reading sessions collected in three Italian households, this exploratory study analyzes how shared book-reading is carried out in everyday family life. Through a selection of case studies, it illustrates three practices whereby parents prompt their pre-school children’s participation in shared book-reading. The article offers insights to enhance parents’ awareness about narrative interactions with their children and aims to improve shared reading practices.

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