Parents as Tutors‐it Works!

Abstract

To determine what effects regular daily parental tutoring would have on pupil achievement in reading/language arts and math, pupil attitudes toward reading, pupil self concept and motivation, and parent attitudes toward the school, two classroom teachers, one teaching first grade and the other second grade, developed and implemented a program whereby the parents of children in the classes tutored their own children in reading/language arts and math skills at home for 20-30 minutes per day on a regular basis during 20 weeks of the school year. Twenty-five pupils at each grade level were matched with controls as to age, sex, race, socioeconomic status, and achievement in reading/language arts and math. At first grade level parental tutoring appeared to result in a significant increase in pupil achievement in reading/language arts and math, and parent attitudes toward the school. In second grade there were no significant differences between the treatment and comparison groups on the posttest measures; however, both groups made highly significant gains over their own pretest scores.

The Effect of Family Literacy Interventions on Children’s Acquisition of Reading From Kindergarten to Grade 3: A Meta-Analytic Review

“…Parents engaged in daily activities with their children, which involved phonics rules, basal readers, sight words, letter-sound correspondence, and recommended children’s books. These activities were designed to reinforce reading skills taught to children at school (Searls et al, 1982).…”

“…There were two studies for which Cohen’s d could not be calculated directly because the means and/or standard deviations for the intervention and control groups were not reported. For these studies, effect sizes were estimated from F statistics (Wilks & Clarke, 1988) or p values (Searls, Lewis, & Morrow, 1982). In the Wilks and Clarke (1988) study, the F statistic included 2 degrees of freedom in the denominator because there were three groups; this means that an overall effect could be estimated, but this would be based on all of the differences and not just the differences between the experimental and control conditions.…”

Family factors and student achievement: An avenue to increase students' success.

“…Achievement gains also have been demonstrated with home learning activities in subjects other than reading (Epstein, 1986;McKinney, 1975;Mullen, 1989;Searls et al, 1982). Parent involvement in home learning activities has been shown to yield positive effects on communication between home and school, and parents' attitude toward the school (Hannon, 1987;Searls et al, 1982;McKinney, 1975). Positive effects of home learning activities can be found with children of all abilities and from all social classes (Searls et al, 1982).…”

“…These activities take the form of parents encouraging children to read, children reading to their parents, or parents reading to their children. It appears that home reading activities increase reading achievement (Becher, 1984; Goldenberg, 1987; Hannon, 1987; Searls, Lewis, & Morrow, 1982; Shuck, Ulsh, & Platt, 1983). Studies indicate that children whose parents read to them on a regular basis (at least four times per week) for as little as 10 minutes are higher achievers in reading than are children whose parents do not read to them (Hoskins, 1976; Romotowski & Trepanier, 1977).…”

PROTOCOL: The Effectiveness of Parental Involvement for Improving the Academic Performance of Elementary School Children

“…Subsequent studies have been presented which support the findings from Coleman, et al (Duff & Adams, 1981;Henderson, 1987;1988). Even so, other studies have reported either mixed or no significant differences between experimental and control groups when measuring the effect of parental involvement on student achievement (Griffith, 1996;Heller, & Fantuzzo, 1993;Henry, 1974;Keith, Reimers, Ferman, Pottenbaum, & Aubrey ,1986;Ryan, 1964;Searles, Lewis & Morrow, 1982). Some of the discrepancy across studies relates to the nature of the data collection and research design.…”