This study investigated the effect of parent involvement on the academic achievement of middle school students and examined the role of parent and student gender in that relationship. The study also explored the effects of out-of-school activities on eighth-grade students' academic achievement. Data were derived from the National Educational…

The basic socializing and nurturing institution in the United States is the family, which can be considered America's smallest school. This report assembles a variety of measures that are available to indicate what happens outside the school and within the home that is related to educational achievement. Information comes from large-scale surveys…

A longitudinal study examined the contributions of early language ability, home characteristics, and emerging knowledge about literacy to children's later decoding and comprehension ability. The study followed 127 children from the beginning of kindergarten to the end of grade 3 (when 83 were left). Subjects attended schools in a small, rural,…

In 1991 World Book and the National Elementary School Principals conducted a study of over 8,700 elementary school principals concerning attitudes they felt were important about the parental role in education. The current study compares the perceptions of principals with the opinions of parents through a national random telephone survey of 830…

A study was conducted to determine if family configuration was a factor in students' perception of parental behaviors that support schoolwork. A total of 439 public school and 399 parochial school students in grades 6 through 12 were surveyed. Results showed that students from intact, two-parent homes perceived greater parental concern and support…

This practicum was designed to address the need for the intermediate and upper grade level English as a Second Language (ESL) students to become independent learners in the literacy process. The subjects, 13 boys and 3 girls from Pakistan, Philippines, Jordan, Israel, Korea, Turkey, and Thailand were dependent on the teacher when they had…

This paper reports results from two dissertation studies and several pilot and case studies examining the effects of early enrichment on children's language and cognitive development. Early enrichment in these studies included home visits with parents, typically beginning before the child reached 6 months of age, and continuing until the child was…

This study analyzed children's picture books in order to determine the extent to which they reflect the changing roles of fathers in the family. Thirty books with a father as a main character and a publication date between 1980 and 1990 were randomly selected. Six possible father roles were determined. These were housekeeper, caregiver, companion,…

This handbook describes ways that families, schools, and child-care centers can work together to achieve Vermont's state goals for early childhood education. The following topics are presented: (1) the goals and principles guiding Vermont's early education program; (2) the role of kindergarten in a child's educational career; (3) the need to shift…

As part of a series of tri-annual studies of youths' substance use and abuse behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge, begun in 1975, this report provides normative and trend data for the 1981-82 study. The research issues which were the foci of this study are: present status and important trends of youths' substance use, attitudes, and knowledge;…

The home's supportive setting, which has the potential to encourage children to share their thoughts and feelings through spoken language, is the basis of the home's strength as a communicative context. Teachers can help extend this sharing of meaning by creating classroom environments in which written language experiences and microcomputer-based…

Early findings are reported from the Michigan State University Vulnerability Study, a study of differences in parents and children of families with an alcoholic father and matched, community control families with a non-alcoholic father. Male preschool children in the alcoholic homes were the target group, because they are 6 to 10 times more at…

Preliminary results from a longitudinal study designed to systematically examine the family life of children reared in a home with an alcoholic father are reported. Analysis is restricted to 15 families from a larger study in which the target child was a 3-year-old male. Parents completed the Beck Depression Inventory, the Progress Evaluation…

On the premise that it is important to examine parental attitudes as children enter the middle grades since it is at this point that decision shaping students' subsequent course taking patterns are made, this study examined the degree to which parents were involved in the assignment of their children to mathematics courses in the seventh grade.…

This study of the home background of successful Asian-Americans found that specific aspects of home socialization can exert a positive effect on school adjustment and achievement. The study consisted of 90-minute structured interviews conducted with 15 Asian-American students (Harvard undergraduates or secondary school summer students--roughly…