Providing Training to Fathers in Early Literacy Through Community-University Partnerships

Abstract

In the United States, mothers participate in literacy activities with their young children more often than fathers; however, fathers have recently begun to assume a larger portion of this role. This work describes Project DADS, a parent involvement-training project that serves fathers and other male caregivers interested in participating in early literacy activities. Project DADS provides seminars under community-university partnerships in the areas of early social interaction, school-home involvement, reading books, prewriting and writing, environmental print, storytelling, and technology. This article describes a recent community-university partnership and the preliminary results of training conducted under this partnership for 19 fathers in New Mexico. It also briefly describes the Project's father-training efforts in developing community-university partnerships in California.