Migration Background, Social Background, and Reading Competence: The Role of Language Spoken at Home, Kindergarten Attendance, and Digital Games

Project Members: TUM (Dr. Mirjam Weis , Julia Mang, Prof. Dr. Kristina Reiss)

In this project, we examine the relation between migration background as well as social background with reading competence in more detail. The group of adolescents with migration background and with a low socioeconomic status can be understood as a risk group that in general shows significantly lower reading competences than groups without migration background or with a higher socioeconomic status. This project aims to gain new insights on which roles the language spoken at home as well as with peers, the age of entry to institutional childcare, and the use of digital games play to explain these group differences. In addition to reading competence, we consider students‘ reading self-concept.

Based on PISA 2018 data, we analyze if there are differences in the risk group regarding students‘ reading competence and self-concept in comparison to the non-risk group. As factors, which might partly explain these differences, we include the language spoken at home as well as with peers, the age of entry to institutional childcare, and the use of digital games. Further, we take possible influences of gender and cognitive basic competences into account. Analyses for the German sample as well as international analyses for states with comparable educational systems are conducted.

The aim of this project is to contribute to a better understanding of the multicausal discrepancies in the reading competences between risk and non-risk groups to finally pave the way to focused interventions for risk groups.