"Cuéntame Cuentos" (Tell Me Stories)

The “Cuéntame Cuentos” project seeks to co-design and pilot test an intervention that promotes literacy practices among Latino families and their preschool children (3- to 5-year-olds). This project combines theoretical and practical insights about learning and literacy within the context of an interactive reading comprehension app that members of our research team have previously developed and continues iterating on. One issue this project tackles is that it is not clear whether popular research-supported approaches to literacy development such as dialogic reading are a strengths-based approach for Latino communities. That is, although work has found that dialogic reading is effective for mainstream (e.g., middle-income, White), it is not clear if these approaches leverage the strengths of minoritized communities (e.g., low-income, ethnically diverse). To this end, this project is exploring how to effectively complement dialogic reading with the elaborative reminiscing practices that have been shown to elicit in Latino parents and their children the kind of actions that are known to foster literacy development. 

During Fall 2022, we collected pilot test data through participant-logged in-app information, focus group interviews, and design thinking activities that all formed part of our co-design efforts with Latino families. Our goal with these co-design efforts was to take a culturally responsive, equity-based, and technology-enhanced approach to promoting literacy among Latino families.

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We are currently conducting a study to evaluate the resulting app and intervention on their abilities to: (a) increase parental book-sharing and reminiscing practices from pre- to post-intervention, (b) help children experience gains in literacy skills, and (c) aid parents in developing attitudes towards reading that lead to increased quantity and quality of conversations with their children.

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"Cuéntame Cuentos" is funded by the Learning Research & Development Center and is a collaborative effort between the FACETLab, the Food4Thought Lab, and our participating co-design families. Within the lab, Jordan Barria-Pineda works on the project.