ABSTRACT
This chapter is built on two major tenets: rst, that there is substantial evidence that home and family characteristics (including poverty, language, and educational experiences) have important effects on children’s early and later reading success; and second, that knowledgeable, thoughtful, and responsive teachers working with parents and with a rich and worthy curriculum can mediate these differences. We develop these central ideas within three sections. In the rst section, we distinguish between reading disability and reading dif culty (arguing that the children who are the focus of this chapter are more appropriately described as children with reading dif culty rather than reading disability), and we situate our discussion within the context of sociocultural and sociocognitive learning theories. In the second section, we consider the external factors that make children’s reading success more or less probable. In the third section, we focus on studies of instructional practices that re ect a view of parents as a learning resource. Finally, we summarize what is known and we use existing studies to speculate about the types of instruction and collaborative actions that could change the learning trajectory of children whose home experiences and resources set them apart from their higher-achieving (and, typically, more economically advantaged) peers.
