The Study
This two-part study analyzed the thoughts of kindergarten and first grade parents and teachers concerning story book reading at home and evaluated the outcomes of two instructional intervention programs. The programs were developed as a consequence of the findings of the first part of the study and were designed to bridge the gap between parental understanding, skills and reading at home practices and teacher assumptions and expectations. Patricia A. Edwards, professor of teacher education at Michigan State University, directed this study.

The Findings
Although parents wanted their children to succeed in school, they felt ill-prepared to assist them. Many felt embarrassed, scared, angry and helpless since they did not really understand what story book reading meant and were not competent readers themselves. They did not know how to interest and involve their children in a story or connect items in a book with their children’s life. When parents didn’t read to their children as they were asked to do, teachers assumed the parents were disinterested in their children’s education; instead, parents were simply unfamiliar with the task teachers gave them. During the 23 session Parents as Partners in Reading Program, parents learned how to share books with their children and came to realize the importance of their partnering with the teacher to help their children perform better in school. The literacy learning course enabled teachers to understand that “read to your child” is a very difficult and complex task for parents who have low literacy skills; the course also helped teachers recognize that cultural environments differ and must be recognized and acknowledged.

What It Means to You
If children in your elementary school (s) are having serious literacy problems, you may need to develop programs to bridge the gap between home and school-based literacy practices. Blaming the parent or the school for failure in students’ literacy achievement is counter-productive. Since reading to children is the parent involvement activity that teachers request most frequently, it is important that parents be given an opportunity to develop the requisite skills so they can respond appropriately. Children’s cultural environments may differ markedly from the school setting or cultural environment of your teachers; therefore, teachers may need to become better acquainted with the literacy environments of children outside of school. Learning about multiple literacy environments will enable your teachers to better support parents as both seek to improve children’s literacy achievement.

For More Information
Consult Edwards P.A. (1995). “Combining Parents’ and Teachers’ Thoughts about Storybook Reading at Home and School.” In L M. Morrow (ED.), Family Literacy: Multiple Perspective to Enhance Literacy Development (pp. 54-60). Newark, DEL: International Reading Association.

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