DOCUMENT RESUME ED 136 967 PS 009 247 AUTHOR Goodson, Barbara Dillon; Hess, Robert D. TITLE Parents as Teachers of Young Children: An Evaluative Review of Some Contemporary Concepts and Programs. SPONS AGENCY Bureau of Educational Personnel Development (DHEW/OE), Washington, D.C. PUB DATE May 75 NOTE 242p.4 Itevised Edition EDRS PRICE MF-$0.83 HC-$12.71 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Child Rearing; Family Environment; Family School Relationship; Intelligence Quotient; Intervention; Low Income Groups; Parent Attitudes; Parent Child Relationship; *Parent Education; *Parent Participation; *Preschool Education; *Preschool Programs; *Program Descriptions; *Program Evaluation ABSTRACT This paper examines and summarizes information about the success of parent-centered educational intervention programs for disadvantaged preschool children. Historical shifts in the role of the family and the community in education are traced and four types of parent participation educational programs are identified. They are:(1) parents 'as policy makers (2) parents as more effective teachers of their own children (3) parents as supporting resources for the school and (4) parents as better parents. More than 20 program descriptions are presented which include demographic data, assumptions underlying the program, program goals for the children and the parents, details of program operation, distinctive features of the program, hypotheses tested by the program and evaluation results. Evaluation data from all the programs are combined to provide an assessment of the overall effectiveness of parent training programs. Analysis of these data indicate that the programs consistently produced significant immediate gains in children's IQ scores, seemed to show long-term effects on children's IQs and their school performance, and seemed to alter in a positive direction the teaching behavior of parents. A reference list of program addressgs is also included. (JAB) *********************************************************************** Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished * * materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and this afIcts the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original. *********************************************************************** 1975 U S DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. MOSER EDUCATION & WELFARE REVISED NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO. DUCE!) EXACTLY AS RECEIVED PROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGIN- ATING IT POINTS OP vIEW OR OPINIONS STTED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRE SENT OCFaCIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY PARENTS AS TEACIURS OF YOUNG CHILDREN: AN EVALUATIVE REVIEW OF SOME CONTEMPORARY CONCEPTS AND PROGRAMS Barbara Dillon Goodson Stanford University Robert D. Hess Stanford University Mhy 1975 2 PREFACE -The growth of programs designed to involve parents in the-education of their children is part of a national effort to intervene educationally in the lives of children in low-income areas. Many of the progrars de- , veloped in the last decade in this overall endeavor have been experimental and exploratory--based on experience and on assumptiOns about the nature of early education and the ways it is affectc4 by the social environments of the young. There has been relatively little systematic review of the effectiveness of various program alternatives and of different curricula. This summary is an attempt to offer ,a resource for those who are interested in one type of interven'ion--preschool programs in which parents play a central role. :The summary was prepared for use in the Urban/Rural School Development Program, a project for school-community collaboration supported with funds from the Bureau of Educational Personnel Development, U.S. Office of Educa- It has Laore general application, however, and may be useful for a wider audience. The effort and cooperation of many persons went into this report. Directors of the parent traininuprograms,were especially helpful in sup- plying materials describing their programs and in making comments on pre- liminary drafts of relevant sections of the report. We hope the descrip- tions of individual programs are accurate. Those distortions that remain are our responsibility. We hope!they are few and minor. Several people deserve specific mention. Louise Manning helped edit early drafts of the report; Debbie Younggren helped organize and type early drafts; Martha Puff assisted in ito production, typing, and coordination through later stages. Elizabeth Lucchesi and Jay Thorp produced the final typed versiau, and Betty Smith gave us useful editorial suggestionson the final draft. 3 iii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Types of Parent Participation inEducation Historical Shifts in the Role ofFamilY and Community in Education 4 The Upstream Struggle for Greater ParentParticipation 6 Previous Efforts to Educate Parents 8 Assumptions Underlying the Program 10 The Conceptual Outline for Reviewing thePrograms 11 A Cautionary Note . 13 PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS AND EVALUATIONS 15 THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PARENT TRAINING PROGRAMS 201 Overall Effects of the Programs on the Children 201 Immediate Outcomes on Intelligence Tests 203 Long-Term Outcomes 203 Conclusions 215 Differential Effects of the Programs on Children's IQ Scores. 216 Effects of Program Format 219 Effects o! Content of the Parent Components 221 Effects of Teacher/Parent Ratio 223 Effects of Structure and Specificity in the Parent Components 224 Within-Program Evaluation of the Effects of the Parent Components 225 Conclusions 226 Overall Effects of the Program on 'arents 227 Immediate Outcomes in Parent Attitudes 228 Immediate Outcomes in Parent/Child Interactions 229 Immediate Changes in the Home Environment 231 Other Changes in Parents 232 Differential Effects of the Programs on Parents 232 CONCLUDING STATEKENTS 233 APPENDIX 237 REFERENCES 241 LIST OF TOLES 17 1. List of Programs and Their DevelCpers ....... 2. Predictors of Program Effectiveness 217 LIST OF FIGURES 1. Immediate Gains on Standardized Intelligence Tests . 204 2. Timing of Follow-up Testing for Programs That Carried Out Testing . 209 3. Changes in Intelligence Test Scores in Follaw-up Testing 210 4. Summary of Gains by Experimental and Control Groups (Grouped by Pretest IQ) 239 5. Follow-up Changes in IQ by Magnitude of Pre- Posttest Gains . 240 vi INTRODUCTION The spirit of innovation and social reform that characterized pre- school educational programs in the sixties is giving way to the consoli- dation of programs -in educational and legal structures. Through publication of materials, workshops, conferences, and guidelines, the experience gained from experimental efforts iS being used to develop early educational pro- grams and install them in school districts through local, state, and fed- eral programs. The politicization of early education and child care has created pressures on state and federal legislative bodies to formalize training, credentialling, and guidelines into legal requirements. The experimental and "special" programs of Ole sixties are apparently becom- ing budget line items of the seventies.i This incorporation of programs into bureaucratic and organizational structures seems to have been motivated more by a conviction about the importance of early intervention and child care than by the success of' the programs themselves. Definitive evaluation studies are not yet avail- able, and the general tone of preliminary studies has typically not been positive. Consolidation and evaluation do not necessarily go hand in hand. Concurrently, however, there has been pressure to assess the effectiveness of early intervention programs. This interest stimulated several major evaluations and reviews of programs (White et al., 1974; Eronfenbrenner, 1974; Cicirelli, 1969) and numerous conferences and publications. Evaluation of the overall effectiveness of programs has usually been the primary focus in large-scale studies (the Head Start planned variation studies are an exception). There have also been demands for evaluation of the relative effectiveness of alternative types of curricula.and instruc- tional strategies used within major intervention formats. This review is is oriented toward a particular type of intervention with low-income fam- ilies--preschool programs, often home-based, in which parents have a cen- tral role. This intervention strategy was developed as an alternative to child-centered, school-based efforts. In this paper, we examine and sum- marize information about the success of intervention programs that are focused on parents. One major feature of social experiments of the 1960's was the involve- ment of families and communities in a variety of pLtterns of conflict and collaboration with schools. The extent of the home-involvement movement is not documented and probably cannot be, since many local programs oper- ate without public recognition and with little printed material or records to make an inventory possible. On the basis of information acquired in the course of this review, it appears likely that preschool programs in which pirents have a central role number in the hundreds. 1This trend is illustrated by the findings of a forthcoming