Child & Youth Care Forum | 2019
Parent–Educator Communication Linked to More Frequent Home Learning Activities for Preschoolers
Abstract
BackgroundParent involvement in children’s education has been linked to positive academic and behavioral outcomes. Home-based involvement is especially important for those who may face barriers to being involved at school. Teachers and school directors can encourage home learning activities, but research examining parent–educator communication for preschoolers is not as robust relative to school-aged children.ObjectiveWe address whether parent perceptions of parent–educator communication regarding preschoolers’ learning and development is related to the home literacy environment (HLE) and the home numeracy environment (HNE).MethodParticipants (n\u2009=\u2009262) were drawn from a statewide pre-kindergarten evaluation project aimed at providing early education programming to families with low incomes. The majority of the sample was employed full- or part-time (72.3%), had less than a Bachelor’s degree (88.3%), and children were racially/ethnically diverse (i.e., 39.5% Black, 14.7% Hispanic, 34.9% White, 10.9% other). Multiple regressions were used to examine the relation between parent perceptions of parent–educator communication and children’s home learning environments.ResultsFindings indicated that perceptions of parent–educator communication were positively related to the HLE, HNE, and specific learning activities (i.e., naming written letters, identifying letter sounds, reading number books, completing number activity books, learning simple sums, naming written numbers).ConclusionFindings suggest that efforts to improve parent–educator communication in this domain may yield benefits for children’s learning, although additional research is necessary to determine whether greater parent–educator communication regarding children’s learning and development results in more frequent home learning activities during preschool.