Sociocultural and educational factors for reading literacy decline in the Netherlands in the past decade

This study examined sociocultural and educational factors in explaining the reading literacy achievement of fourth-grade children (about 10 years of age) in the Netherlands during the past decade. Using 2001, 2006 and 2011 PIRLS data, a multilevel modeling analysis was conducted to examine levels and changes in reading literacy achievement over the years in relation to gender, SES, ethnicity, linguistic background and number of books in the home, and school SES as sociocultural factors, and early literacy activities and abilities, reading strategies instruction, time spent on reading and computer use as educational factors. A significant decline in reading achievement between 2001 and 2011 was evidenced with more than 80% of the variance being explained at the student level. All factors, except for early literacy abilities, reading strategy instruction and time spent on reading, showed statistically significant effects on reading literacy. All these effects applied to both literary and expository text genres, and to higher-order as well as to lower-order reading comprehension processes with two exceptions: computer use showed only an impact on expository texts and on the lower-order processing condition, and a rural school setting showed no impact on the literary text genre. Interaction effects showed that the decline in reading literacy achievement in the Netherlands in the past decade is related to the sociocultural factors of gender and student SES and to the educational factors of early literacy activities in the home and early literacy abilities established in the school.