Research Data Findings (8 pages): What practices are effective in engaging parents in supporting learning at home?

Report of Parent Involvement Project Findings

Vonda Jump Norman, PhD, Utah State University

April 2010

Teachers were recruited to participate in this parent involvement project. Families from 8 classrooms (5 Head Start classrooms and 3 Pre-kindergarten) agreed to participate. Teachers were asked to recruit willing parents and children, with the knowledge that children would be bringing home activities or ideas to increase parent involvement. The intervention occurred from mid-September through early December 2009.

Teachers recruited 83 parents to participate, with 54% the parents of female children and 46% the parents of male children. Fifty-nine percent of parents recruited are married, 30% are single parents, 6% are divorced, and 4% are currently separated. In terms of education level, 31% have a high school education or below, 50% have some college, and 19% have a college degree or higher. Before the intervention, parents rated their level of involvement in their child’s education as 2.93 on a 4.0 scale (not at all, very little, quite a bit, too much). Parent involvement in this project ranged from one family in one classroom to 25 families in another classroom. As stated above, 83 families agreed to participate in the project. 2 families moved before or during the intervention, and 3 parents did not complete the posttest, for a final retention rate of 93%. See Table 1 for more detail.

Table 1. Number of parents involved in each classroom and number not completing project.

Parents were asked how they were involved in their child’s education at the beginning of the 10 week intervention. Responses given are tallied in Table 2 and indicate that parents are mostly involved with helping their children around reading, learning the alphabet, working on numbers, counting, shapes, and colors, and helping children with homework. Parents also spend time talking to children about their time at school.

Table 2. Parents’ responses of their involvement in children’s education.

Parents were also asked how they would like to be involved in their children’s education, and the most common responses were any way possible/whatever the teacher recommends and work in the classroom. See Table 3 for further information.

Table 3. Parents’ responses of how they would like to be involved in their children’s education.