Abstract
The home is the first environment in which children's earliest learning and development takes place. Researchers have typically focused on the home literacy environment (HLE) to explain activities parents engage in that support children's literacy and language development. More recently, the home mathematics environment (HME) has gained more attention following the HLE. However, with more research emphasizing children's executive function (EF) skills for later academic success and encouraging science education for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) occupations, two more domain-specific home learning environments have emerged: the HEFE (Home EF Environment) and the HSE (Home Science Environment). The focus of this chapter is on delineating the interconnectedness and distinctness of these four domain-specific home learning environments, their relatedness to child outcomes, and identifying important future directions. The chapter ends with future directions and recommendations for the field to continue working to conceptualize the home learning environment.
TopIntroduction
The home is the first environment in which children’s earliest learning and development occurs (Martini & Sénéchal, 2012; Morrison, 2009; Pomerantz et al., 2007). This is evident as differences in the nature of the home learning environment (i.e., how families interact with young children, the types of activities and materials available) are associated with differences in children’s skills and knowledge even before entering school (Castro et al., 2015; Melhuish et al., 2008; Sirin, 2005). Researchers have thus, studied the various ways the home environment promotes and fosters children’s early skill development, and they have begun to narrow in on four domain-specific areas of research including the Home Literacy Environment (HLE), the Home Mathematics Environment (HME), the Home Science Environment (HSE), and the Home Executive Function Environment (HEFE). However, the research across these four potential domain-specific interactions in the home learning environment is disparate (e.g., Hornburg et al., 2021; Niklas et al., 2021). With little to no basis for comparison, this leaves the field with a substandard understanding of the ways in which specific parent-child interactions are both interconnected and distinct from one another in promoting school readiness. To provide parents with specific recommendations to structure their children’s early learning environment and identify specific implications for policy practices, researchers need to stop focusing on siloed domains to determine the best conceptualization of the home learning environment to address the gaps in our knowledge and foster children’s school readiness skills.
In this chapter, we (1) provide a synthesis of the work in these four subdomains of the home learning environment, (2) discuss the interconnectedness and distinctness across the subdomains, and (3) suggest directions for future research to push the field forward to synthesize the conceptualization of the home learning environment.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Home Literacy Environment: Activities present in a child’s home that foster or enhance their early literacy development.
Home Learning Environment: A place in which specific activities can take place to enhance a variety of children’s school readiness skills.
Interconnectedness: The quality of being similar to other approaches.
Home Science Environment: Activities present in a child’s home that foster or enhance their early science development.
Distinctness: The quality of being different from that of the other approaches.
Home Mathematics Environment: Activities present in a child’s home that foster or enhance their early mathematics development.
Home Executive Function Environment: Activities present in a child’s home that foster or enhance their early executive function development.