Exploring the Conditional Indirect Associations of Reading Confidence with Achievement: Evidence from PIRLS 2021 Türkiye by Frequency of Speaking Turkish at Home

Abstract

Context:

Early reading achievement is shaped by students’ skills and by the motivational, socioeconomic, and institutional conditions in which literacy learning occurs. In Türkiye, this issue is salient because schooling is constitutionally monolingual, although many fourth-grade students report speaking a language other than Turkish at home. This home–school language mismatch raises questions about how reading confidence, socioeconomic status, and school academic climate are associated with achievement across levels of exposure to Turkish.

Purpose:

This study examines how students’ confidence in reading, school emphasis on academic success, and socioeconomic status are associated with fourth-grade reading achievement in Türkiye. It also investigates whether the estimated indirect association between reading confidence and achievement through school emphasis on academic success varies by socioeconomic status. Analyses are conducted separately across four groups defined by students’ frequency of speaking Turkish at home: always, almost always, sometimes, and never.

Research Design:

The study uses cross-sectional data from the PIRLS 2021 Türkiye national sample. After screening, the analytic sample included 5,421 fourth-grade students: 3,836 who always spoke Turkish at home, 698 who almost always did so, 743 who sometimes did so, and 144 who never did so. Reading achievement was analyzed using five PIRLS plausible values; the focal predictors were reading confidence, school emphasis on academic success, and home socioeconomic status. Hayes’s PROCESS Model 59 was estimated within each home-language subgroup, with coefficients combined across plausible values and interpreted as conditional associations.

Conclusions:

Reading confidence was positively associated with achievement across all four home-language groups, with the largest coefficient among students who never spoke Turkish at home. School emphasis on academic success also showed positive direct associations with achievement, suggesting that academic climate is especially relevant in linguistically constrained contexts. The estimated indirect pathway through school emphasis on academic success was detectable in the “sometimes” subgroup, while a comparable but less precise estimate appeared in the “never” subgroup. Socioeconomic status remained strongly associated with achievement, especially among students with less frequent exposure to Turkish at home. The findings support combining reading-confidence supports, academically focused school climates, and language-responsive policies for students navigating home–school language mismatch.