Chen coauthors article on family environment and early literacy

Xiaoning Chen, North Central College visiting associate professor of education, recently coauthored an article titled “Family learning environment and early literacy: A comparison of bilingual and monolingual children” in Economics of Educational Review.

The article, a collaborative work between Chen, Li Feng of Texas State University and Yunwei Gai of Babson College, explores the relationship between family learning environments and activities of bilingual and monolingual children from 9 months of age to kindergarten entry.

Chen and her colleagues used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort for the analysis sample. They included in the study 1,300 bilingual children and 5,150 English monolingual children, finding that bilingual children generally lag behind in both resources and frequency of family learning activities. Through their work, the authors showed that early reading score differences between bilingual and monolingual children can be explained by differences in resources and early family learning environments.
 
Chen joined North Central’s faculty in 2013. She earned her B.A. from Nanjing Normal University, China, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Purdue University.