Why Jane likes to read and John does not. How parents and schools stimulate girls’ and boys’ intrinsic reading motivation

Abstract

Student's intrinsic reading motivation is key to their reading proficiency and spills over to other domains of development. Prior studies show that girls are more intrinsically motivated to read than boys but little is known about how reading socialization in families and schools relate to gender inequality in reading motivation. This study investigates a) how reading socialization activities in families and schools relate to girls’ and boys’ intrinsic reading motivation and b) whether schools can compensate for poor family reading socialization especially among boys. Analyses are performed on a sample from PISA 2018 containing 28,747 students in 1,581 schools. Results reveal that girls benefit more from family reading socialization and a good disciplinary climate in classrooms than boys. Boys benefit more than girls from a competitive learning climate in school and teachers’ active stimulation of reading engagement. The latter particularly stimulates the intrinsic reading motivation of boys who received little family reading socialization.