ASSESSING PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT MODEL AND CHILDREN’S MALAY LANGUAGE READING SKILLS IN MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY: THE PANDEMIC CHALLENGE

Abstract The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has marked significant changes in parental involvement in learning with young children. Parents juggled multiple roles at home, requiring them to be resourceful and ‘present’ during their child’s learning. The current study examines parental involvement dimensions on children’s reading skills in the Malay language among six-year-old children. The analyses were based on 310 dyads from one east state in Malaysia. All respondents were selected based on stratified random sampling from private kindergartens in Malaysia. The study examined parental reports on five dimensions including parents teaching efficacy beliefs, authoritative parenting practice, teacher guidelines, communication with kindergarten management and home reading literacy activity. Children’s reading skills were assessed with three components: identifying uppercase and lowercase, reading syllables and reading words. The results revealed that despite multiple movement control orders, most six-year-old Malaysian children could grasp and showed commendable results in three reading skills assessments. Parents showed a moderate level of teaching efficacy which resulted in a negative contribution to children’s reading skills. Nevertheless, this study suggested that with authoritative parenting practices and consistent communication with the management and teachers, the children’s reading skills would be maintained and developed consistently, despite parents and teachers juggling multiple expectations, roles, and attitudes of young learners during the pandemic.