The name is absent

Proximal family processes

The most significant of these was home discussion. Parental involvement in the form
of home supervision is negatively related to achievement presumably because this
form of involvement is increased when a pupil is having difficulties².

2.3.2 The effects of prior parental education on educational
behaviours

Education may provide parents with important cognitive resources that enable them to
better support and facilitate their children’s learning. The EPPE project shows a
relationship between parents’ education and educational behaviours. They use an
index of cognitive stimulation in the home (HLE) which includes measures of reading
to children, encouraging playing with and teaching letters and numbers, teaching
songs and nursery rhymes, painting and drawing and visits to the library. The HLE
and mother’s qualifications are significantly correlated (r = .35), more so than
measures of parental SES.

The EPPE project’s findings have been interpreted as suggesting that what parents do
is more important than who they are. While mothers’ highest educational qualification
showed a strong, positive and consistent impact across all five cognitive outcomes
assessed, actual parenting behaviours, such as reading to children, were better
predictors of children’s outcomes. However, since part of the education effect is
mediated by these behaviours the fact that in an ordinary least squares regression the
coefficient on behaviours is greater than that on education does not mean that
behaviours are more important than education as the behaviours variable is an
additional indirect channel for education effects. The question requires a more
sophisticated analysis.

However, the result does indicate that these behaviours and aspects of the
environment are not just simple proxy measures for aspects of economic or cultural
wealth, but real independent forces. This is an important result with implications for
programmes such as Sure Start. For example, if this result is accurate, young mothers
with few qualifications, whose children typically show a higher incidence of low
attainment, can improve their children’s progress and give them a better start at school
by engaging in those activities in the home that foster children’s learning.

For the US, data from the National Household Education Survey and the Federal
Interagency on Child and Family Statistics (Trends, 2002) show that mothers’
education is consistently related to whether children are read to by a family member.
Young children are more likely to be read to if their mothers have completed higher
levels of education. For example, in 2001, 73% of young children whose mothers had
graduated from college were read to every day by a family member. In contrast, 60%
of children whose mothers only had some college education were read to every day,
compared to 49% whose mothers had only finished high school and 42% whose
mothers had not finished high school (see also Laosa, 1983).

² Note that there are also gender effects and ethnic differences here. Females report considerably more
home discussion than males and white families engage in significantly more home discussion than do
Asian and Pacific Island families.

33

<<   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   >>

More intriguing information