research

National Literacy Trust: Study

August 24, 2018

The National Literacy Trust has an online resource entitled Words for Life that provides tips, downloadable activities, and other resources for parents to encourage them to read to their children. At the launch of the Words for Life resource, the Trust shared findings from a study. In an article about the research, the Trust shared that:

Nearly a third (29%) feel the most important influence on their childrenâ€™s communication and language skills lay with someone other than themselves
15% cite teachers as having the biggest influence on these skills
One parent in seven (14%) does not spend any time on a daily basis supporting their childrenâ€™s literacy development, for example by singing nursery rhymes or reading with them
Yet, the good news is that nine out of ten (91%) parents would like to spend more time helping their child develop their literacy skills.

The article also shared a testimony fromÂ Natalie Cassidy, a mother, who wrote:

Having my own daughter enjoy reading, writing and sharing her experiences with me and her dad is extremely important to me. Every night I read with her and we sing all the time! Reading has to be made fun, books are fabulous for the imagination and to help little personalities grow. Every parent should join the library, or buy just one book and share the joy of literature with their children. Happy reading!

Be sure to check out the Words for Life site. To visit the parent site for National Literary Trust, click here. To read my review of Scholastic research on the importance of reading aloud, click here.

Homeschool Families in China

December 29, 2016

Last year, Milton Gaither wrote a review of a study entitled “A Qualitative Study of Educational Needs of Homeschooling Families in China.” The study includes law case studies involving five home educating families in China. These families chose homeschooling for a variety of reasons including disillusionment with “the drill-and-kill pedagogy of Chinese schools” and frustration with “the lack of freedom and individual initiative in Chinese schools.”

While homeschooling is still officially illegal in China “home education is growing, especially among the urban middle classes.” The study goes on to mention a website – China Homeschooling Association – that helps to organize 200 or so spontaneous groups that have formed around the country. The study also mentions that “since 2010 the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Yunnan Province has hosted a National Homeschooling Conference.Â In 2013 it was joined by the International Homeschooling Symposium in Beijing.”

The study cites an estimate that there might be as many as 18,000 children being educated at home in China and reasons that these numbers reflect a value-change “from the utilitarian instrumental rationality of examination-oriented education to the ultimate value rationality of the child’s free comprehensive development.”

From Gaither’s review of the study:

A large percentage of Chinese home educators tend to create more cooperative, even fully communal arrangements rather than the single-family homeschooling common in the United States (though this exists in China as well).

To read all of Gaither’s review and appraisal of the study, click here.

Pew Research: Mothers Support Each Other On Social Media

November 17, 2016

According to recent research from the Pew Research Center, mothers are heavily engaged on social media and are especially likely to give and receive support on social media.

81% of parents who use social media try to respond to good news others share in their networks, including 45% of social-media-using parents who â€œstrongly agreeâ€ that they do so. Some 53% of mothers say they â€œstrongly agree,â€ compared with 33% of fathers who say that.

74% of parents who use social media get support from their friends there.²Â Digging into the data, 35% of social-media-using parents â€œstrongly agreeâ€ that they get support from friends on social media. Fully 45% of mothers who use social media â€œstrongly agreeâ€ that they get support from friends on social media, compared with just 22% of fathers.

71% of all parents on social media try to respond if they know the answer to a question posed by someone in their online network.

58% of parents who use social media try to respond when a friend or acquaintance shares bad news online. Mothers are particularly likely to â€œstrongly agreeâ€ that they try to do this â€“ 31% say so, compared with 21% of fathers.

Here’s an image from Pew regarding how parents interact with social media to find information relevant to their parenting:

The report also shares that among the various social media platforms, parents are much more likely to use Facebook (while non-parents use Instagram.) In terms of community, here’s an interesting finding: “Parents are more likely to be Facebook friends with their parents than non-parents, 53% vs. 40%. They also are more likely to be friends with their neighbors on the network, 41% vs. 34% of non-parents.”

My takeaway from the research? While social media doesn’t appear to be a consistently reliable place to get parenting advice, it has strong potential for providing support to parents. In other words, parents that #trustparents (themselves and fellow parents) and who support each other can benefit from strong online bonds. Here’s the link to the full report.

(In my next post, I’ll look at what the report has to say about parents’ thoughts on their children on social media.)

Don’t Forget The Families

October 24, 2015

The Search Institute has a 2015 study entitled Don’t Forget the Families: The Missing Piece in America’s Effort to Help All Children Succeed. The study looks at how family relationships are a critical, but often overlooked, key to children’s development. The study examined 1,085 parenting adults of 3- to 13-year-olds from across the United States, finding that:

the quality of parent-child relationships is 10 times more powerful than demographics (race, ethnicity, family composition, and family income) in predicting whether children are developing critical character strengths they need for success in school and life. These strengths include being motivated to learn, being responsible, and caring for others.

The study provides a framework of five essential actions for parents. Kids need parents to:

Express Care: Show that you like me and want the best for me.
Challenge Growth: Insist that I try to continuously improve.
Provide Support: Help me complete tasks and achieve goals.
Share Power: Hear my voice and let me share in making decisions.
Expand Possibility: Expand my horizons and connect me to opportunities.

These numbers in Figure 2 indicate that parents are quick to express care while not as quick to share power or expand possibilities. These numbers were consistent across all backgrounds with no differences resulting from race, education, household income, etc..

Parents instinctively desire to help their children succeed and guide their children in their development. Yet, the authors of the study point out, parental engagement initiatives are often focused on how parents can support institutions of learning like schools but can â€œoverlook the one thing about which parents care deeply and that can powerfully benefit their childrenâ€™s development: relationships in the home.â€ The authors, expanding on this understanding of families as crucial to child development and learning, write:

There is a rich but perhaps untapped reservoir of relational power across the economic and cultural spectrum in the United States. With intentionality, it has even more potential to address the challenges that young people face while also nurturing in them key character strengths that are foundational for success in life.

This is a great body of research that affirms why it makes sense to #trustparents and to empower families. To read the whole report and access additional resources, click here. I’ve written a series of blog posts on Parental Engagement: here’s a post with more research,Â a post with tips for parents, and here is a link to access the whole series.

#TrustParents

Study: Teachers Don’t Trust Parents

September 7, 2015

Do parents trust their children’s teachers? Do teachers trust their student’s parents? A study presented at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference in Paris suggests that the trust is often a one-way street.

From the study:

“In both the US and the UK, parents were found to display higher levels of trust for teachers than the teachers do for parents. Parent trust is especially high at primary school but reduces when children go up to secondary school.”

Trust is important. In fact, trust isÂ an important component of learning. Increasingly, educators are noticing and writing that parents matterÂ and that it is imperative to build parental engagement in schools. Parents trust teachers and they need to trust themselves. But more importantly teachers need to trust parents. By trusting parents and working with them teachers can maximize the educational benefit for the students.

#TrustParents

Teens #TrustParents More than the Internet with Health Questions

July 20, 2015

Teens have many questions about their health. What makes a balanced diet? How do I get rid of acne? What are some tips for dealing with anxiety?

When it comes to answering those questions, new research from the Center on Media and Human Development School of Communication at Northwestern University shows that 96% of teens have gotten health information from their parents and 84% of teens have searched for health information on the internet. But does the Internet provide satisfactory answers to teen’s questions? Well, the study found that only 24% of teens are satisfied with online health information.

So who might be a more trustworthy source, according to teens?

The 24 percent who say they are ‘very’ satisfied with online health information falls far short of the percent who are very satisfied with information from their parents (57 percent), health providers (54 percent) or health classes at school (38 percent),” the study reported. Results were based on a survey of 1,156 adolescents aged 13 to 18.

In an article from the New York Times, Marguerita Lightfoot, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said,

â€œEveryone thinks teens donâ€™t talk to their parents, but if theyâ€™re really worried about their symptoms, theyâ€™ll go to them,â€

In what may be a surprise to some people, only 13% of teens have used the internet as a research tool for things they felt uncomfortable talking to their parents about.

One takeaway from this research is that even in the internet age parents remain influential. Teens now get information from the internet but they still rely on and #TrustParents.