Parents hearing their children read: a review. Rethinking the lessons of the Haringey Project

Summary

This paper reports a review of over 40 studies of parents hearing their children read at home. It draws a distinction between ‘parent training’ studies and ‘parent listening’ studies. The former involve explanation and modelling, as well as monitoring and correction of parent teaching behaviours. The latter involve only explanation, but without monitoring and correction.

It is argued that the success of the widely known and influential Haringey Project, a parent listening study, has been quite misleading. Four other parent listening studies in the Haringey tradition have failed to show significant effects on children's reading test scores. By contrast, a substantial number of parent training studies involving parents of poor readers have produced significant effects. The only parent listening studies to show this kind of success have involved families of poor readers.

It is argued that the widespread practice of schools sending home books for parents to hear their children read does little to help children most at risk of reading failure: low competence readers whose parents do not realize how much benefit their help can be, or who do not know how to help. The parent training studies have shown how to bring about substantial improvements in poor readers’ interest in and enthusiasm for reading and their reading competence.