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Accelerating Early Language and Literacy Skills Through a Preschool-Home Partnership Using Dialogic Reading: a Randomized Trial

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Abstract

Background

This study tested a preschool-home partnership intervention, in which early childhood teachers encouraged the parents/caregivers of preschoolers to engage in dialogic reading at home. This was an experimental test of Bronfenbrenner’s hypothesis that parental involvement in early care and education programs should promote child development, as well as a test of a train-the-trainer approach to the dialogic reading intervention.

Objective

The current study focuses on testing the causality of parent involvement: (1) homework assigned to parents/caregivers will improve the early language and literacy skills of their 2 ~ 3-year-old children; (2) gains by children in the intervention group with low pre-test language and literacy score, low family literacy score, and high parents/caregivers’ extent of using dialogic reading strategies at home will show larger gains in literacy scores than their counterparts.

Methods

A sample of 12 early care and education programs, 18 early childhood teachers, 87 two–to three-year-old children and their parents/caregivers were followed for 18 ~ 20 weeks after assignment to the intervention group or the control group.

Results

The impacts of the six-week parent involvement intervention continued to grow during the six-week follow-up phase, and represented substantial gains of the intervention group in four aspects of early language and literacy skills.

Conclusion

This study provides evidence that a simple homework assignment intervention can be an effective tool to promote child development when parents/caregivers are engaged. The intervention also had ongoing influence on children’s early language and literacy skills, even after the intervention period had ended.

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Funding

Prior to beginning the training and data collection with actual children, this study received IRB approval from the Education IRB of UW-Madison (Protocol number SE-2008–0689).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Nevada- Reno/Cooperative Extension, 8050 Paradise Road #100, Las Vegas, NV, 89123, USA

    YaeBin Kim

  2. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Dave Riley

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  1. YaeBin Kim
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Correspondence to YaeBin Kim.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

See Fig. 

Fig. 1
figure 1

CONSORT 2010 flow diagram

Full size image

1

Appendix 2

Books Used in Dialogic Reading at Early Care and Education Programs and Home: Carle, E. (1998); Kasza, K. (1996); Keats, E. J. (1976); Murphy, J. (1992); Rockwell, A. (1993); Wadsworth, O. A., & Keats, E. J. (1995).

Appendix 3: HLM Random Intercept Modal

A two level HLM random intercept model was applied. At level 1, children’s pre-test language scores and parents’ marital status were entered as predictor variables. Parents’ marital status was a dummy variable.

Level-1 Model:

Yij = β0 + β1j*(Pretest) + β2j*(Marital status) + Rij.

At level 2, homework or no-homework condition as a dummy variable was entered into the model.

Level-2 Model:

β0j = γ00 + γ01*(Treatment) + U0j Ȥ

β1j = γ10

β2j = γ20

Yij= γ00 + γ10*(Pretest) + γ01*(Treatment) + γ20 * (Marital status) + U0j + Rij.

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Kim, Y., Riley, D. Accelerating Early Language and Literacy Skills Through a Preschool-Home Partnership Using Dialogic Reading: a Randomized Trial. Child Youth Care Forum 50, 901–924 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-021-09598-1

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