Parents’ and teachers’ strategies in hearing young children read

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Abstract
The principal way in which parents can be involved in the teaching of reading is by hearing their own children read at home. However, doubts have been expressed about their competence in this role. Despite its importance this is an under‐researched area. Most studies, whether experimental or naturalistic, have restricted themselves to teachers and to particular aspects of their performance considered to be of theoretical significance, usually their responses to children's miscues. Some studies have attempted a more comprehensive description of what teachers do but there has not been any comparable research into parents hearing reading. This research studied how 52 children, aged five to seven years, were heard to read in school by their class teachers and at home by their parents. They were participants in a parental involvement project at a primary school in a disadvantaged area of the north of England. Tape recordings were made of children reading in both settings. School reading sessions tended to be shorter than those at home and more subject to interruptions. Recordings were analysed in terms of the moves made by adults. A descriptive system of 21 categories of moves, found to have satisfactory inter‐judge reliability, was applied to the 104 sessions and some 3600 moves were identified. A strategy in hearing reading was defined as the balance between different categories of moves. Considerable similarities were found between the parents’ and teachers’ strategies in terms of the relative frequencies with which they made different kinds of moves. The most frequent moves for each group were providing words or giving directions about reading. A greater proportion of parents’ moves were in response to children's miscues; teachers were more likely to make moves at other times. The responses to miscues made by parents and teachers were fairly similar. Both occasionally used phonics techniques which for parents usually meant ‘sounding out’ words but for teachers meant a wider range of techniques. Both parents and teachers showed a concern for children's understanding but for the parents this was generally restricted to their responses to miscues. There were differences in the pattern of positive feedback, praise and criticism which may be due to differences in the social context of reading in the two settings. It is concluded that no justification exists for considering parents incompetent in hearing their children read. However, there is scope for reviewing the roles of both parents and teachers in this aspect of early childhood education, and this could be facilitated by further research.