Experts Eschew Narrow Reading of Early-Literacy Study
By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo
Washington
A long-promised review of early-reading research concludes that teaching the alphabet and letter sounds in preschool strengthens children’s chances of success in learning to read later on.
But while the report of the National Early Literacy Panel is earning praise for providing a needed tool for improving early-literacy instruction, it is also stirring concerns that skills-driven instruction could become a dominant focus for 3- and 4-year-olds, much as it has for the early-elementary grades.
The review of empirical research, released here this month, is likely to inform policy and practice at a time when advocates of expanded preschool options are pressing for new state and federal policies and funding for such programs.
While most experts agree that basic alphabetic skills are essential for developing literacy, the panel’s conclusion that other widely prescribed strategies have less potential for ensuring children’s future reading proficiency challenges some long-held principles.
Early-childhood professionals have worked to create learning-rich environments in which art projects, rudimentary science experiments, and extended conversations aim to build young children’s oral language and background knowledge. The impact of those activities on later learning may not have the same level of quantitative evidence, some experts say, but they have strong, and often indirect or delayed influence on how well children understand what they read.
Predictors of Reading Achievement
Six moderate to strong skills predict overall literacy development:
• Alphabetic Knowledge: knowledge of names and sounds associated with printed letters
• Phonological Awareness: detecting, manipulating, or analyzing parts of words
• Rapid Automatic Naming of Letters/Digits: naming a sequence of random letters or numbers
• Rapid Automatic Naming of Objects/Colors: naming a sequence of random sets of pictures or objects
• Writing or Writing Name: writing letters in isolation or one's own name
• Phonological Memory: remembering spoken information for a short period of time
Five additional skills are moderate predictors of some aspect of later literacy development:
• Concepts About Print: knowledge of print conventions (read left to write) and concepts (book cover, author)
• Print Knowledge: combination of alphabetic knowledge, concepts about print, and early decoding
• Reading Readiness: combination of alphabetic knowledge, concepts of print, vocabulary, memory, and phonemic awareness
• Oral Language: producing or comprehending spoken language, including vocabulary and grammar
• Visual Processing: matching or discriminating visually presented symbols
SOURCE: National Early Literacy Panel
The panel’s report “places a very strong emphasis on the narrow range of skills related to decoding, phonemic awareness, and other memory kinds of skills, and places in a second-tier language and conceptual knowledge,” said David K. Dickinson, a professor of education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Vocabulary, oral language, and background knowledge, he added, may not demonstrate their value until 3rd or 4th grade when children need to comprehend more complex texts and information across subject areas.
“I’m not at all questioning the importance of those skills outlined in the report,” he said. “What concerns me greatly is that the message that might be taken by practitioners is to further narrow [instruction] and focus on the discrete skills.”
The panel convened in 2002 to review the research on early literacy and included a survey of thousands of potential studies. In its report, “Developing Early Literacy,” the panel identifies the skills it found to be precursors to later reading success, including alphabet knowledge, the understanding of the sounds associated with letters, vocabulary, and the ability to write individual letters and remember information. The most effective instruction for preschool children, therefore, works to build those skills.
“This report is going to require a certain amount of translation for practitioners to be useful,” said Timothy Shanahan, the chairman of the panel and a professor of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He served on the National Reading Panel, which conducted a similar review of K-3 research and whose 2000 report provided the framework for state and federal reading initiatives.
“The word that stands out for me from this report is multiplicity,” Mr. Shanahan said. “There is a range of kinds of activities that lead to those skills, including code-based stuff, vocabulary, and oral-language development.”
Insufficient Studies
Figuring out the balance of those elements, however, will likely prompt debate in the field. Although the report is based on a meta-analysis that combines the effects found in nearly 500 quantitative studies resulting from the panel’s literature search, many areas could not be studied because of a lack of empirical data.
The commonly recommended practice of reading to children, for example, was found to have a moderate effect on children’s oral-language development and knowledge of print features. The studies on shared reading were not adequate to judge whether those practices are sufficiently effective in building the foundations for reading proficiency, according to the panel.
The balance of research in favor of code-related interventions—there were far more empirical studies on teaching basic literacy skills, like naming letters, the results of which are easy to quantify—led to stronger findings in that area. Instruction that is “code-related,” meaning it builds knowledge of the alphabetic principle, had the greatest impact on children’s overall literacy skills, according to the panel’s analysis of 83 studies on that topic. That instruction was most effective when conducted with individual children or in small groups.
At a time when many states have been considering expansion of public preschool programs, the findings are intended to inform policymakers and educators seeking to improve early-literacy instruction, panel members said. During his run for the Oval Office, President Barack Obama proposed a $10 billion preschool program to better prepare children for kindergarten. The report and the high interest in the topic are likely to fuel discussions on how to infuse formal literacy instruction into programs for young children and how best to prepare educators to do so. But play time and nap time should not be substituted with structured activities that may not be age-appropriate, experts say.
“The report is all about code, because code is what has been studied, but what we know is that code alone is not going to solve our educational problems,” said Susan B. Neuman, a prominent early-childhood literacy researcher who served as assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education during President George W. Bush’s first term.
Ms. Neuman, who was asked to review a number of studies for the panel, said that some sound empirical research was not considered for the review because it did not fit the screening requirements. Many qualitative studies on effective instruction, she added, could help guide the field as well, but were not part of the panel’s review.
“My hope is that this report will be taken along with the findings of other reports that show the importance of developmentally appropriate practice to create comprehensive policies that promote early literacy,” Ms. Neuman said.
Translating the findings from research studies into practice will mean crafting lessons that teach skills through activities that appeal to 3- and 4-year-olds, said panel member Susan Landry, the director of the Children’s Learning Institute in the pediatrics department at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
“What we always have to keep in mind,” she said, “is that we are dealing with very young children, so the instruction needs to be playful and engaging.”
Vol. 28, Issue 18, Pages 10-11
Friday, January 30, 2009
6 Domains of Early Literacy to Inform Your Work
Can you tell I'm going through my backlog of emails today?
Decoding the National Report on Early Literacy
Christina Satkowski -
Last week, the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) released the results of its six-year effort to review and synthesize all available research about what works in preparing young children, from birth to age 5, to read. The fact that the report was released on the seventh anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act is no accident - the report serves as a reminder that early literacy programs work, and they are crucial if we are to achieve the law's goals of improving student achievement and narrowing achievement gaps.
This is strictly a research report, one that does not come with specific policy recommendations. But the findings are meant to inform policy. When the National Institute for Literacy released the report during a press conference last week, panel members weren't shy when asked for their own impressions of the policy implications of their research, and, of course, we have a few of our own.
To set the foundations for their study, the researchers looked at different measurements of pre-reading skills and identified six domains of early literacy that can serve as valid indicators of later reading skills.
* Knowing the names and sounds associated with printed letters (known as "alphabet awareness")
* Ability to detect and manipulate the auditory aspects of spoken language ("phonological awareness")
* Rapid auto-naming of a sequence of letters or digits
* Rapid auto-naming of objects or colors cued by pictures of the objects
* Ability to write individual letters and write one's own name
* Ability to remember spoken information for a short period of time
These 6 inicators are supplemented by a second set of skills that were found to have positive, though lesser, correlations with later reading skills. They include the ability to talk about a story and to distinguish the front of a book from the back, and they are just as important to a child's cognitive development as the six skills identified by the panel, but as this report showed, they are less predictive of later reading ability and fluency. Both skill sets should form the basis for standards and assessment of literacy skills in early education. As we discovered earlier, state guidelines for early education instruction vary greatly when it comes to what children are expected to know by age 5, and many states don't have any guidelines at all.
Using these indicators, the NELP researchers identified which types of early literacy intervention - namely, which teaching strategies -- most frequently produce positive results in experimental or quasi-experimental research. (They did not evaluate results from case studies or short-term trials.) They were also able to tie interventions to the specific domains of early literacy mentioned above. One finding that may surprise some is that popular programs involving adults reading books to children were found to have positive impacts on children's oral and general cognitive skills, but little correlation with improved performance in the six fundamental indicators of early literacy. More effective were programs that encouraged children to learn to decode words (seeing the relationship between sounds and letters within a word), along with educationally-intensive pre-kindergarten programs (like the Abecedarian Project).
In our view, what sets these types of intervention apart is that they are more heavily dependent on quality interactions between teachers and students. There is great potential in our early education teaching corps, but preschool teachers will need ongoing professional development (and can learn much from assessments like the Classroom Assessment Scoring System) to stay up-to-date with the best research-based instruction. Similarly, the report's findings underscore the need for more and better early education teacher preparation programs.
While most of the NELP's research focused on children aged 4 and 5, it included some studies on children aged 3 and under. These revealed that nearly all types of interventions have similar effects on early literacy regardless of age. The one exception was that language enhancement initiatives were found to have greater results among younger age groups. The broad scope of the NELP report reminds us that the conversation about early literacy is not only about pre-k. The fact that many research studies found positive impacts of parent-based intervention programs, especially when it came to boosting oral language skills and print awareness, is encouraging. Moreover, these findings remind policymakers and the public that parents are a child's first teachers, and the most effective early childhood programs need to be a family affair.
Finally, according to NELP, the most effective interventions occurred in small-group settings. This is an obvious reason for keeping teacher-student ratios low, and it has more subtle implications for classroom structure. Low teacher-student ratios, though often a good indicator of program quality, can't tell us how much one-on-one time students have with lead instructors or if activities are designed to maximize student engagement.
There are also two important points to note about what the NELP report doesn't tell us. First, meta-analysis of this size always comes with a caveat about the weaknesses of the original studies. In this case, be aware of the lack of data disaggregated by socio-economic status (including students who are English-language learners) and the reliance on an overwhelming number of studies that focused on decoding in particular.
Second, literacy is only one piece of the larger early learning puzzle. Efforts to improve children's early literacy skills must be integrated with broader goals for children's development, such a their social and emotional growth and their exposure to new ideas and content. Strong early literacy programs should be coupled with strategies that emphasize the whole child.
Decoding the National Report on Early Literacy
Christina Satkowski -
Last week, the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) released the results of its six-year effort to review and synthesize all available research about what works in preparing young children, from birth to age 5, to read. The fact that the report was released on the seventh anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act is no accident - the report serves as a reminder that early literacy programs work, and they are crucial if we are to achieve the law's goals of improving student achievement and narrowing achievement gaps.
This is strictly a research report, one that does not come with specific policy recommendations. But the findings are meant to inform policy. When the National Institute for Literacy released the report during a press conference last week, panel members weren't shy when asked for their own impressions of the policy implications of their research, and, of course, we have a few of our own.
To set the foundations for their study, the researchers looked at different measurements of pre-reading skills and identified six domains of early literacy that can serve as valid indicators of later reading skills.
* Knowing the names and sounds associated with printed letters (known as "alphabet awareness")
* Ability to detect and manipulate the auditory aspects of spoken language ("phonological awareness")
* Rapid auto-naming of a sequence of letters or digits
* Rapid auto-naming of objects or colors cued by pictures of the objects
* Ability to write individual letters and write one's own name
* Ability to remember spoken information for a short period of time
These 6 inicators are supplemented by a second set of skills that were found to have positive, though lesser, correlations with later reading skills. They include the ability to talk about a story and to distinguish the front of a book from the back, and they are just as important to a child's cognitive development as the six skills identified by the panel, but as this report showed, they are less predictive of later reading ability and fluency. Both skill sets should form the basis for standards and assessment of literacy skills in early education. As we discovered earlier, state guidelines for early education instruction vary greatly when it comes to what children are expected to know by age 5, and many states don't have any guidelines at all.
Using these indicators, the NELP researchers identified which types of early literacy intervention - namely, which teaching strategies -- most frequently produce positive results in experimental or quasi-experimental research. (They did not evaluate results from case studies or short-term trials.) They were also able to tie interventions to the specific domains of early literacy mentioned above. One finding that may surprise some is that popular programs involving adults reading books to children were found to have positive impacts on children's oral and general cognitive skills, but little correlation with improved performance in the six fundamental indicators of early literacy. More effective were programs that encouraged children to learn to decode words (seeing the relationship between sounds and letters within a word), along with educationally-intensive pre-kindergarten programs (like the Abecedarian Project).
In our view, what sets these types of intervention apart is that they are more heavily dependent on quality interactions between teachers and students. There is great potential in our early education teaching corps, but preschool teachers will need ongoing professional development (and can learn much from assessments like the Classroom Assessment Scoring System) to stay up-to-date with the best research-based instruction. Similarly, the report's findings underscore the need for more and better early education teacher preparation programs.
While most of the NELP's research focused on children aged 4 and 5, it included some studies on children aged 3 and under. These revealed that nearly all types of interventions have similar effects on early literacy regardless of age. The one exception was that language enhancement initiatives were found to have greater results among younger age groups. The broad scope of the NELP report reminds us that the conversation about early literacy is not only about pre-k. The fact that many research studies found positive impacts of parent-based intervention programs, especially when it came to boosting oral language skills and print awareness, is encouraging. Moreover, these findings remind policymakers and the public that parents are a child's first teachers, and the most effective early childhood programs need to be a family affair.
Finally, according to NELP, the most effective interventions occurred in small-group settings. This is an obvious reason for keeping teacher-student ratios low, and it has more subtle implications for classroom structure. Low teacher-student ratios, though often a good indicator of program quality, can't tell us how much one-on-one time students have with lead instructors or if activities are designed to maximize student engagement.
There are also two important points to note about what the NELP report doesn't tell us. First, meta-analysis of this size always comes with a caveat about the weaknesses of the original studies. In this case, be aware of the lack of data disaggregated by socio-economic status (including students who are English-language learners) and the reliance on an overwhelming number of studies that focused on decoding in particular.
Second, literacy is only one piece of the larger early learning puzzle. Efforts to improve children's early literacy skills must be integrated with broader goals for children's development, such a their social and emotional growth and their exposure to new ideas and content. Strong early literacy programs should be coupled with strategies that emphasize the whole child.
Parent's Involvement in Children's Education
As we continue our conversations about building community through communication, I thought you might find some inspiration in this article. Enjoy! Mary O'
PS--It's Beth and Kari's month to provide activities in the Rec Area. My thanks to all of you who have made this work! I hear that everyone is enjoying the rotating activities. Be sure to post a thank you to your colleagues on this blog :)
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Parent's Involvement in Children's Education
Author: Alex Martin
ABSTRACT
The importance of parental involvement as an accelerating and motivating factor in their children’s education is a worldwide-accepted fact. This research project provides an in depth explanation along with specific reasons, the importance of parents’ involvement in their children’s education. It also discusses the parenting techniques, their types and their consequences if neglected. It also describes the ways to measure the outcome of the positive parental involvement. Furthermore, it mentions the teachers involvement and the difficulties faced by the teachers in getting parents involved in their children’s (this is further supported by the examples of two teachers who with their deliberate efforts won the parents over to devote their maximum attention towards their children), single-parent involvement, children’s own efforts to improve their academic levels and joint home-school based interventions. A detailed analysis of the different main ideas is given, based on the findings from other research surveys and projects.
INTRODUCTION:
Parental involvement can be seen to fall into three types: 1) Behavioral, 2) Intellectual and 3) Personal. The research explores the effect of multi-dimensional participation of parents and the resulting progress of children in their studies when different parental resources were dedicated to them. Actively participating parents help their children in their academic development by going to schools and participating in open houses. By keenly observing the behavior of their children they can rightly judge the kind of behavior or the allocation of resources required by their children. Such caring parents can also motivate teachers to become more attentive towards a particular student, thus maintaining the cycle of parent-teacher involvement. Encourage Building up cognitive and perception abilities in a child are a major concern in the upbringing of the child. The way the parents involve their children in cognitive learning is by exposing them to different cognitively stimulating activities and materials such as books, electronic media and current events at home. This helps the child to practice all sorts of language comprehending skills at the school. The results show a remarkably positive behavior at the school and with peers.
Two parenting processes namely the Supportive Parenting (SP) and Harsh Parenting (HP) helped a lot in the research of parental involvement in their children’s education. By adjusting the levels of supportive parenting, different levels of successful outcomes were observed. Supportive parenting in even kindergarten students yielded positive results. Four measures of supportive parenting were used in the study, they were:
1. Proactive teaching.
2. Calm discussion in disciplinary encounters.
3. Warmth.
4. Interest and involvement in peer activities.
The assessments were conducted when children entered kindergarten and when they reached grade 6. There was a factor noted to hinder children’s development: family adversity. It was the result of a multipurpose negative process that included the risk of low socio-economic status, single-parenting and family stress. Child maladjustments were found to be more common in families with such adversities. No matter how much negative impacts were cast, SP was found to overcome the risks associated with family adversity. SP was strongly related to adjustment procedures in grade 6 children who had single parent family or experienced low socio-economic status (SES) in their early childhood.
In a way to socialize their children, parents adopted the techniques of calm discussion and proactive teaching. They helped lessen the behavioral problems by carrying long discussions with their children, cultivating in them a sense of respect, calmness and peace of mind. Mothers also participated actively in reducing the peer stress among their children. It is also a widely accepted fact that supportive parenting plays an important role in the children’s development of empathy, prosocial behavior and emotional competence. On the negative side, the absence of supportive parenting may be related to the development of internal problems such as anxiety and depression.
Lack of the necessary parental care and attention is the main factor for the subsequent rise in the percentage of juvenile delinquency (crime among children). The absence of parental instructions causes children to develop irreversible behavioral and emotional problems. They in order to seek attention, resort to crimes thinking that in this way they could fulfill their wishes. They may revert to uncontrolled violence if not kept an eye upon. Such criminal activities cannot be brought to a halt until their distressing symptoms of low self-esteem, depression, dysphonic mood, tension and worries, and other disturbances are relieved. And the importance of parents’ role in this regard cannot be over-emphasized.
In an effort to describe parental involvement, many researchers use a term “Transition”(Lombardi, Joan). “Transition” is used to describe the time period in which children move from home to school, from school to after school activities, from one activity to another within a pre-school, or from pre-school to kindergarten. The untiring endeavors of teachers in the phenomenon of transition cannot be ignored. They prepared the children and their parents to face the problems of adjusting to elementary school programs that had different psychology, teaching styles and structure than the programs offered at the kindergarten level. In the elementary level schools the teachers had to face serious challenges in motivating the parents to take interest in their children’s activities. The teachers adopted different methods to involve the parents in day-to-day classroom and home activities. They used to send notes, invitation of parent-teacher meetings, invitation of parental guidance sessions and training sessions, continuously directing the parent’s attention towards their children. Patricia Brown Clark suggests that it is very important to keep the line of communication between teachers and parents open, so that the parents can interact with the teachers and get up to date information of their children’s school activities. One way to involve parents is to schedule school events and arranging classroom activities such as volunteering for libraries, acting as classroom aides or efficiently organizing lunch breaks. The teachers also opt for making phone calls at the children’s houses to keep in touch with the parents and getting to know the extent to which they are contributing towards the welfare of their children. Apart from the above activities, the teachers also assign home activities for both the parents and their children so that the parents remain indulged in their children and the children get to study at home. However, it was a bad and disappointing experience for the teachers when many of the parents failed to respond as expected. Many of the parents were so overwhelmed with their official work that they could hardly take out some time for their beloved children.
Moreover, for some parents their schoolings were not positive and character-boosting experiences, therefore they preferred to keep a distance from their children’s school as well. This made it really difficult and at times impossible for teachers to bring the parental involvement to the desired level. Nevertheless, the activities of two teachers proved greatly fruitful in making parents involved in their children. They were Carlos Valdez, an art teacher and 8th grade class sponsor, and Mike Hogan, the school’s band director. They did it by involving parents in music festivals and other school ceremonies. They proved to be great examples for the future teachers to come.
If the children’s academic development programs are to prove successful they must share two characteristics:
1) Developmentally appropriate practice:
A child’s academic progress is clearly reflected by the appropriate practice he/she administers while in school life. During transitions from pre-school to kindergarten, a child if given the exact developmentally appropriate practice tends to learn a great deal of language and playing skills. He develops a keen interest in exploring his environments and interacting (without hesitation) with his adults.
2) Supportive services:
These include the assistance that the school provides to low-income family students. The services include health care, childcare and community care. This strengthens the relation between school and children and creates a sense of security and confidence among the children. They get to learn that their communities are a part of their school since the school’s supportive services strive to help community development.
It is commonly believed that children are good self-teachers. Their self-initiated strategies help improve their expression, creativity, intellectual capabilities and extra-curricular skills. This idea is proved by the documentation of young children’s work provided by Reggio Emilia :
“The Reggio Emilia educators highlight young children’s amazing capabilities and indicate that it is through the unity of thinking and feeling that young children can explore their world, represent their ideas, and communicate with others at their highest level.”(Edwards, Pope. C, Springate, Wright.K)
The climax rests in the fact that how the parents would know that their sincere involvements are really proving worthwhile for their children. The answer lies in the attitude of the children. The degree of parental involvement can be judged by a child’s attitude towards his school subjects, his academic desires and achievements. There is a direct relationship between academic achievements and the attitude towards school. Schunk in 1981 had the following idea of aspiration or academic desires:
“Level of aspiration is defined as one’s subjective probability that he or she will reach a certain level of education.”(Abu, H. & Maher, M)
As a result children who received adequate parental concern were found to be much more confident in their academic desires and achievements than those who could not get the right amount of parental concern. The individual involvement of mothers and fathers also plays a vital role in the behavioral development of a child. Students from one-parent household were observed to show less positive attitude towards schools and studies as compared to students from two-parent households. One study aimed at investigating parental concern showed that despite mothers’ sincere endeavors, the role of fathers could not be ignored and both served as an important foundation for the future progress of the child. This can be proved from the following fact:
According to a recent report from the National Center for Educational Statistics (1997), compared to their counterparts, children with involved fathers are more likely to have participated in educational activities with their parents (e.g., to have visited a museum or a historical site with their parents in the past month), and are more likely to have access to multiple types of resources at home as well (as measured by the proportion of parents who belong to community or professional organizations, or regularly volunteer in the community). (Flouri, E. And Buchanan, A, Pg.142)
Also, the parental involvement has been discussed and implemented in terms of interventions or prevention programs, which are nothing but safety measures taken to assure healthy and perfect upbringing of the child. The study uses school-based and home-only intervention programs to find out the extent of intellectual capabilities found in children from different family backgrounds. The success of one school-based interventions can be proved from the following fact, which was a part of “Education Service Improvement Plan 2001-2005” of Edinburgh:
----The Scottish Executive Discipline Task Force, which studied the causes of poor behavior among pupils in schools produced a report of 'Better Behavior - Better Learning' in June 2001. The report included 36 recommendations for action, which were then turned into an Action Plan in 2002. Many of these have implications for the Education Authority. (Craig Millar Instep Project)
PS--It's Beth and Kari's month to provide activities in the Rec Area. My thanks to all of you who have made this work! I hear that everyone is enjoying the rotating activities. Be sure to post a thank you to your colleagues on this blog :)
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Parent's Involvement in Children's Education
Author: Alex Martin
ABSTRACT
The importance of parental involvement as an accelerating and motivating factor in their children’s education is a worldwide-accepted fact. This research project provides an in depth explanation along with specific reasons, the importance of parents’ involvement in their children’s education. It also discusses the parenting techniques, their types and their consequences if neglected. It also describes the ways to measure the outcome of the positive parental involvement. Furthermore, it mentions the teachers involvement and the difficulties faced by the teachers in getting parents involved in their children’s (this is further supported by the examples of two teachers who with their deliberate efforts won the parents over to devote their maximum attention towards their children), single-parent involvement, children’s own efforts to improve their academic levels and joint home-school based interventions. A detailed analysis of the different main ideas is given, based on the findings from other research surveys and projects.
INTRODUCTION:
Parental involvement can be seen to fall into three types: 1) Behavioral, 2) Intellectual and 3) Personal. The research explores the effect of multi-dimensional participation of parents and the resulting progress of children in their studies when different parental resources were dedicated to them. Actively participating parents help their children in their academic development by going to schools and participating in open houses. By keenly observing the behavior of their children they can rightly judge the kind of behavior or the allocation of resources required by their children. Such caring parents can also motivate teachers to become more attentive towards a particular student, thus maintaining the cycle of parent-teacher involvement. Encourage Building up cognitive and perception abilities in a child are a major concern in the upbringing of the child. The way the parents involve their children in cognitive learning is by exposing them to different cognitively stimulating activities and materials such as books, electronic media and current events at home. This helps the child to practice all sorts of language comprehending skills at the school. The results show a remarkably positive behavior at the school and with peers.
Two parenting processes namely the Supportive Parenting (SP) and Harsh Parenting (HP) helped a lot in the research of parental involvement in their children’s education. By adjusting the levels of supportive parenting, different levels of successful outcomes were observed. Supportive parenting in even kindergarten students yielded positive results. Four measures of supportive parenting were used in the study, they were:
1. Proactive teaching.
2. Calm discussion in disciplinary encounters.
3. Warmth.
4. Interest and involvement in peer activities.
The assessments were conducted when children entered kindergarten and when they reached grade 6. There was a factor noted to hinder children’s development: family adversity. It was the result of a multipurpose negative process that included the risk of low socio-economic status, single-parenting and family stress. Child maladjustments were found to be more common in families with such adversities. No matter how much negative impacts were cast, SP was found to overcome the risks associated with family adversity. SP was strongly related to adjustment procedures in grade 6 children who had single parent family or experienced low socio-economic status (SES) in their early childhood.
In a way to socialize their children, parents adopted the techniques of calm discussion and proactive teaching. They helped lessen the behavioral problems by carrying long discussions with their children, cultivating in them a sense of respect, calmness and peace of mind. Mothers also participated actively in reducing the peer stress among their children. It is also a widely accepted fact that supportive parenting plays an important role in the children’s development of empathy, prosocial behavior and emotional competence. On the negative side, the absence of supportive parenting may be related to the development of internal problems such as anxiety and depression.
Lack of the necessary parental care and attention is the main factor for the subsequent rise in the percentage of juvenile delinquency (crime among children). The absence of parental instructions causes children to develop irreversible behavioral and emotional problems. They in order to seek attention, resort to crimes thinking that in this way they could fulfill their wishes. They may revert to uncontrolled violence if not kept an eye upon. Such criminal activities cannot be brought to a halt until their distressing symptoms of low self-esteem, depression, dysphonic mood, tension and worries, and other disturbances are relieved. And the importance of parents’ role in this regard cannot be over-emphasized.
In an effort to describe parental involvement, many researchers use a term “Transition”(Lombardi, Joan). “Transition” is used to describe the time period in which children move from home to school, from school to after school activities, from one activity to another within a pre-school, or from pre-school to kindergarten. The untiring endeavors of teachers in the phenomenon of transition cannot be ignored. They prepared the children and their parents to face the problems of adjusting to elementary school programs that had different psychology, teaching styles and structure than the programs offered at the kindergarten level. In the elementary level schools the teachers had to face serious challenges in motivating the parents to take interest in their children’s activities. The teachers adopted different methods to involve the parents in day-to-day classroom and home activities. They used to send notes, invitation of parent-teacher meetings, invitation of parental guidance sessions and training sessions, continuously directing the parent’s attention towards their children. Patricia Brown Clark suggests that it is very important to keep the line of communication between teachers and parents open, so that the parents can interact with the teachers and get up to date information of their children’s school activities. One way to involve parents is to schedule school events and arranging classroom activities such as volunteering for libraries, acting as classroom aides or efficiently organizing lunch breaks. The teachers also opt for making phone calls at the children’s houses to keep in touch with the parents and getting to know the extent to which they are contributing towards the welfare of their children. Apart from the above activities, the teachers also assign home activities for both the parents and their children so that the parents remain indulged in their children and the children get to study at home. However, it was a bad and disappointing experience for the teachers when many of the parents failed to respond as expected. Many of the parents were so overwhelmed with their official work that they could hardly take out some time for their beloved children.
Moreover, for some parents their schoolings were not positive and character-boosting experiences, therefore they preferred to keep a distance from their children’s school as well. This made it really difficult and at times impossible for teachers to bring the parental involvement to the desired level. Nevertheless, the activities of two teachers proved greatly fruitful in making parents involved in their children. They were Carlos Valdez, an art teacher and 8th grade class sponsor, and Mike Hogan, the school’s band director. They did it by involving parents in music festivals and other school ceremonies. They proved to be great examples for the future teachers to come.
If the children’s academic development programs are to prove successful they must share two characteristics:
1) Developmentally appropriate practice:
A child’s academic progress is clearly reflected by the appropriate practice he/she administers while in school life. During transitions from pre-school to kindergarten, a child if given the exact developmentally appropriate practice tends to learn a great deal of language and playing skills. He develops a keen interest in exploring his environments and interacting (without hesitation) with his adults.
2) Supportive services:
These include the assistance that the school provides to low-income family students. The services include health care, childcare and community care. This strengthens the relation between school and children and creates a sense of security and confidence among the children. They get to learn that their communities are a part of their school since the school’s supportive services strive to help community development.
It is commonly believed that children are good self-teachers. Their self-initiated strategies help improve their expression, creativity, intellectual capabilities and extra-curricular skills. This idea is proved by the documentation of young children’s work provided by Reggio Emilia :
“The Reggio Emilia educators highlight young children’s amazing capabilities and indicate that it is through the unity of thinking and feeling that young children can explore their world, represent their ideas, and communicate with others at their highest level.”(Edwards, Pope. C, Springate, Wright.K)
The climax rests in the fact that how the parents would know that their sincere involvements are really proving worthwhile for their children. The answer lies in the attitude of the children. The degree of parental involvement can be judged by a child’s attitude towards his school subjects, his academic desires and achievements. There is a direct relationship between academic achievements and the attitude towards school. Schunk in 1981 had the following idea of aspiration or academic desires:
“Level of aspiration is defined as one’s subjective probability that he or she will reach a certain level of education.”(Abu, H. & Maher, M)
As a result children who received adequate parental concern were found to be much more confident in their academic desires and achievements than those who could not get the right amount of parental concern. The individual involvement of mothers and fathers also plays a vital role in the behavioral development of a child. Students from one-parent household were observed to show less positive attitude towards schools and studies as compared to students from two-parent households. One study aimed at investigating parental concern showed that despite mothers’ sincere endeavors, the role of fathers could not be ignored and both served as an important foundation for the future progress of the child. This can be proved from the following fact:
According to a recent report from the National Center for Educational Statistics (1997), compared to their counterparts, children with involved fathers are more likely to have participated in educational activities with their parents (e.g., to have visited a museum or a historical site with their parents in the past month), and are more likely to have access to multiple types of resources at home as well (as measured by the proportion of parents who belong to community or professional organizations, or regularly volunteer in the community). (Flouri, E. And Buchanan, A, Pg.142)
Also, the parental involvement has been discussed and implemented in terms of interventions or prevention programs, which are nothing but safety measures taken to assure healthy and perfect upbringing of the child. The study uses school-based and home-only intervention programs to find out the extent of intellectual capabilities found in children from different family backgrounds. The success of one school-based interventions can be proved from the following fact, which was a part of “Education Service Improvement Plan 2001-2005” of Edinburgh:
----The Scottish Executive Discipline Task Force, which studied the causes of poor behavior among pupils in schools produced a report of 'Better Behavior - Better Learning' in June 2001. The report included 36 recommendations for action, which were then turned into an Action Plan in 2002. Many of these have implications for the Education Authority. (Craig Millar Instep Project)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Not Only a Wake-Up Call for Pediatricians...
From the University of Rochester Medical Center
Nearly One-Third of U.S. Parents Don't Know What to Expect of Infants
Once a baby is born, an astonishing number of parents are unsure of what to anticipate as their child develops.
Almost one-third of U.S. parents have a surprisingly low-level knowledge of typical infant development and unrealistic expectations for their child’s physical, social and emotional growth, according to new research from the University of Rochester. The findings, which suggest that such false parenting assumptions can not only impair parent-child interactions, but also rob kids of much-needed cognitive stimulation, will be presented Sunday, May 4, at the Pediatric Academic Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“There are numerous parenting books telling people what to expect when they’re pregnant,” said Heather Paradis, M.D., a pediatric fellow at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “But once a baby is born, an astonishing number of parents are not only unsure of what to anticipate as their child develops, but are also uncertain of when, how or how much they are to help their babies reach various milestones, such as talking, grabbing, discerning right from wrong, or even potty-training.”
Moms and dads often misinterpret behaviors – some parents expect too much of babies too soon and grow frustrated; others underestimate their child’s abilities, preventing them from learning on their own.
Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study’s Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), Paradis and her colleagues analyzed the average parenting knowledge of a nationally-representative sample of parents of more than 10,000 9-month-old babies born in 2001. These parents first answered an 11-point survey designed to distinguish informed parents from less-informed parents (asking questions such as “Should a 1-year-old child be able to tell between right from wrong?” and “Should a 1-year-old child be ready to begin toilet-training?”). Those who scored 4 or fewer correct answers were considered to have low-level knowledge of typical infant development.
Paradis and colleagues then compared these knowledge scores to both scores from (1) a 73-point videotape analysis of the same families’ parent-child interactions while teaching a new task, and (2) from these parents’ self-reports of how often they engaged their child in enrichment activities (e.g. reading books, telling stories, or singing songs).
The analysis revealed that 31.2 percent of parents of infants had low-level knowledge of infant development, and that this low-level knowledge correlated with lower parental education level and income. Still, even when controlling for maternal age, education, income and mental state (e.g., depression), low-level knowledge of infant development still significantly and independently predicted parents being both less likely to enjoy healthy interactions with their infants during learning tasks and less likely to engage their children in regular enrichment activities.
“This is a wake-up call for pediatricians,” Paradis said. “At office visits, we have a prime opportunity to intervene and help realign parents’ expectations for their infants, and in turn, promote healthy physical, social, and emotional development for these children. On the other hand, we still have more work cut out for us – additional research is needed to explore how these unrealistic expectations form in the first place.”
I'm wondering how you will use this information to inform your work...From my viewpoint of teacher as researcher, I would expand this beyond infancy in terms of parental expectations for their children.
Nearly One-Third of U.S. Parents Don't Know What to Expect of Infants
Once a baby is born, an astonishing number of parents are unsure of what to anticipate as their child develops.
Almost one-third of U.S. parents have a surprisingly low-level knowledge of typical infant development and unrealistic expectations for their child’s physical, social and emotional growth, according to new research from the University of Rochester. The findings, which suggest that such false parenting assumptions can not only impair parent-child interactions, but also rob kids of much-needed cognitive stimulation, will be presented Sunday, May 4, at the Pediatric Academic Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“There are numerous parenting books telling people what to expect when they’re pregnant,” said Heather Paradis, M.D., a pediatric fellow at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “But once a baby is born, an astonishing number of parents are not only unsure of what to anticipate as their child develops, but are also uncertain of when, how or how much they are to help their babies reach various milestones, such as talking, grabbing, discerning right from wrong, or even potty-training.”
Moms and dads often misinterpret behaviors – some parents expect too much of babies too soon and grow frustrated; others underestimate their child’s abilities, preventing them from learning on their own.
Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study’s Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), Paradis and her colleagues analyzed the average parenting knowledge of a nationally-representative sample of parents of more than 10,000 9-month-old babies born in 2001. These parents first answered an 11-point survey designed to distinguish informed parents from less-informed parents (asking questions such as “Should a 1-year-old child be able to tell between right from wrong?” and “Should a 1-year-old child be ready to begin toilet-training?”). Those who scored 4 or fewer correct answers were considered to have low-level knowledge of typical infant development.
Paradis and colleagues then compared these knowledge scores to both scores from (1) a 73-point videotape analysis of the same families’ parent-child interactions while teaching a new task, and (2) from these parents’ self-reports of how often they engaged their child in enrichment activities (e.g. reading books, telling stories, or singing songs).
The analysis revealed that 31.2 percent of parents of infants had low-level knowledge of infant development, and that this low-level knowledge correlated with lower parental education level and income. Still, even when controlling for maternal age, education, income and mental state (e.g., depression), low-level knowledge of infant development still significantly and independently predicted parents being both less likely to enjoy healthy interactions with their infants during learning tasks and less likely to engage their children in regular enrichment activities.
“This is a wake-up call for pediatricians,” Paradis said. “At office visits, we have a prime opportunity to intervene and help realign parents’ expectations for their infants, and in turn, promote healthy physical, social, and emotional development for these children. On the other hand, we still have more work cut out for us – additional research is needed to explore how these unrealistic expectations form in the first place.”
I'm wondering how you will use this information to inform your work...From my viewpoint of teacher as researcher, I would expand this beyond infancy in terms of parental expectations for their children.
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