Home scholarly culture, book selection reason, and academic performance: Pathways to book reading interest among secondary school students

Book reading has long been one of the fundamental components contributing to individuals’ cognitive development and societies’ sustainable development. Although many studies have been conducted to explore the predictors of book reading interest among children, little is known about the underlying mechanism that helps children become interested in reading books. Thus, this study attempt to demonstrate: 1) how secondary school students’ book-reading interest is driven by home scholarly culture (parental book reading) and preferred book selection reason (by recommendation or personal preference), and 2) how students with distinct academic achievements are differently influenced. Three major findings were obtained performing Bayesian analysis on a dataset of 4,966 Vietnamese secondary students: (i) Reading interest is positively associated with a book recommendation and parental book reading activity; (ii) High-achieving students are most likely to be more interested in reading a book if they can choose preferred books according to personal preference; (iii) Parental book reading activity can promote book reading interest with both recommendation and understanding children’s personal preferences. From these results, we advocate for a more personalized educational approach in policymaking, curriculum design, and home intellectual culture based on students’ ability and perception.