Raising the literacy levels of young children is a major concern in many countries for which various programmes have been suggested. One of these is family literacy programmes. In previous meta‐analyses wide variability in effects has been found and it has been suggested that this is partly caused by variability in implementation quality. This review aims to look at the implementation quality of family literacy programmes and its relationship with programme effectiveness. A search in relevant databases resulted in 46 studies. We found substantial, but variable information on implementation quality. Almost all studies provided information on parents’ quantitative engagement in programmes, but fewer studies reported about characteristics of parent training, quality of engagement and transfer to daily life. Overall, the included studies that did provide information showed frequent use of intervention strategies and degree of participation was generally high. Parents increased their use of the learned techniques and engaged in more literacy activities outside programme time. However, few of the included studies analysed the relationship between implementation quality and programme effects and these studies provided mixed results, making it difficult to draw conclusions. Of critical note is the poor quality of the selected studies. Many had serious methodological flaws. Some of the measures used are not necessarily reliable indicators of implementation quality and results were at times presented with little precision. More robust evaluations of the effects of implementation quality are therefore needed.

Background: Various conversational contexts elicit stimulating parent-child interactions to a different degree. Shared reading, a scripted activity, is reported to elicit most abstract speech compared with other activities (e.g., toy play). Parental socioeconomic status (SES) is another key predictor of abstract talk. Shared reading can attenuate differences in abstract speech between SES groups. In the current study, we compared abstraction of parent-child interactions during nonscripted prompting board and shared reading activities. A prompting board is a complex picture around a certain theme, depicting a scenario (i.e., a picture suggesting a sequence of events), and is meant to elicit child speech. Method: We observed 44 parent-child dyads (87% mothers; child M age : 63 months) from various socioeconomic backgrounds during prompting board and shared reading discussions and coded interactions for level of abstraction. Results: Prompting boards were found to elicit both more, and more highly abstract speech (particularly inferencing) than shared reading, and children contributed more often to the conversation. Additionally, most speech on the lowest level of abstraction occurred during prompting boards (e.g., labelling and locating). Shared reading elicited more talk on intermediate levels (e.g., describing aspects of objects and characters and making comparisons to the child's life). Moreover, high-SES parents and children produced more highly abstract speech and less labelling and locating compared with low-SES dyads during both activities. Shared reading did not attenuate SES differences in abstract interactions. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

It is hypothesized that variability found in the effects of family literacy programs results from differences in implementation by parents. In this study, the implementation and effects of a Dutch program were examined in a sample of 207 kindergarteners (mean age at pre-test: 64 months). No main intervention effects on children’s literacy development were found. The quality of implementation proved to be higher for high-SES and native Dutch (speaking) parents than for low-SES, ethnic-minority parents with other home languages. Parent SES, ethnic-minority status, and home language did not moderate the program effects on child language scores and the program failed to impact targeted parental attributes, namely, the home literacy environment and parent self-efficacy. Finally, children’s development proved unrelated to implementation variables. Our results stress the importance of delivery for adequate implementation.

This guide accompanies the following article: S. De la Rie, R.C.M. Van Steensel & A.J.S. Van Gelderen, Implementation quality of family literacy programmes: a review of literature, Review of Education, DOI:

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