A randomized trial examining the effects of parent engagement on early language and literacy: The Getting Ready intervention

Abstract

Language and literacy skills established during early childhood are critical for later school success. Parental engagement with children has been linked to a number of adaptive characteristics in preschoolers including language and literacy development, and family-school collaboration is an important contributor to school readiness. This study reports the results of a randomized trial of a parent engagement intervention designed to facilitate school readiness among disadvantaged preschool children, with a particular focus on language and literacy development. Participants included 217 children, 211 parents, and 29 Head Start teachers in 21 schools. Statistically significant differences in favor of the treatment group were observed between treatment and control participants in the rate of change over 2 academic years on teacher reports of children’s language use (d = 1.11), reading (d = 1.25), and writing skills (d = .93). Significant intervention effects on children’s direct measures of expressive language were identified for a subgroup of cases where there were concerns about a child’s development upon entry into preschool. Additionally, other child and family moderators revealed specific variables that influenced the treatment’s effects.

Desenvolvimento da linguagem e sua relação com comportamento social, ambientes familiar e escolar: revisão sistemática

“…Few studies addressing the aspects of school environment and social behavior were found. Some of those studied the physical environment of early childhood education, whereas the others addressed the importance of language skills for school readiness; but only one study considered the quality of the school environment and its relationship with child language (18) . The same occurred with the aspects of behavior; only one survey aimed to verify the relationship between children's behavior and language development (19) .…”

“…Only one of the studies selected used a qualitative approach (20) . With respect to study type, there was predominance of publications with higher level of evidence: one randomized clinical trial (18) and seven longitudinal studies (19,(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26) . The others were three cross-sectional studies (27)(28)(29) and two literature reviews: one narrative (30) and one integrative (31) .…”

“…Table 2 shows five researches: one clinical trial (18) , three cross-sectional studies (27)(28)(29) , and one qualitative descriptive survey (20) .…”

“…Five studies were found in the theme of language and family and school environments (18,20,23,29,31) .…”

Effect of socioeconomic status disparity on child language and neural outcome: how early is early?

“…As described earlier, we have chosen to focus on SES effects on language at young ages as "language is one of the most powerful symbolic systems through which children learn to understand and interpret their physical, social, and conceptual worlds" (44). In turn, these language skills, strongly associated with academic success, are known to differ by SES, with lower SES children performing less well than higher SES (4-6,44-49).…”