A Study of the Effects of Parental Involvement in the Teaching of Reading on Children's Reading Test Performance

Abstract

Summary. The reading attainment of working‐class children, as indicated by reading test performance, is lower than that of other children but there is some evidence that it might be improved if their parents are involved more in the teaching of reading by hearing their children read at home. A study was carried out of a reading at home parental involvement project in a primary school serving a working‐class area. The project was satisfactorily implemented and 76 children completed three years in it. Their reading test scores were compared to those of similar children who had passed through the school before the project. No significant improvement was found in test performance. The findings are discussed in relation to those of the Haringey Project (Tizard et al., 1982). It is hypothesised that the effects of this form of parental involvement may depend on the nature of home visiting which supports it, on the previous extent of parental involvement, or on whether the families concerned are from ethnic minorities. It is argued that there should be continued development and evaluation of parental involvement in the teaching of reading.

The Long Term Effectiveness of Parental Involvement in Reading: A Follow‐up to the Haringey Reading Project

“…Two recently reported studies (Hannon, 1987;Tizard, 1987), using somewhat different mixtures of ingredients from the Haringey Project, have failed to identify reading benefits resulting from parental involvement; both authors have speculated on why this should be so. Further research will undoubtedly be required before the reasons for these discrepant findings are understood.…”

Beginning Reading and Sending Books Home to Read: a case for some fine tuning[1]

“…Bronfenbrenner's (1986) claims about the developmental potential of the mesosystem implicated the quality and characteristics of information flow between settings. Some recent research has failed to replicate earlier studies showing significant positive relationships between hearing reading at home and reading achievement at school (Hannon, 1987;Tizard et al, 1987). These studies suggest that the clarity of the information and continued feedback to parents, plus the manner of tutoring, are significant conditions in the effectiveness of the practice.…”

“…A number of sophisticated correlational (Tizard et al, 1988) and experimental studies (Hannon, 1987;McNaughton, 1987) have examined the effects of reading class texts at home on beginning reading. They provide evidence for the predicted effects provided that the conditions noted above are met.…”

Preventing failure at school

“…To summarise, Macleod suggested that the beneficial results reported by the Haringey researchers may have been caused by one individual teacher's work. An unsuccessful attempt was made to replicate the findings reported by the Haringey team (Hannon, 1987), and this too has cast further doubts on the findings of this original study.…”