The results of this study show several things: one, the child's temperament regarding willingness to learn at home is "mediated" by his or her mother's level of self-efficacy; two, stress in the family impacts the child's home learning because of stress's effect on mother's self-efficacy; three, low income parents have economic and ethnic hurdles to overcome in order to reach a point of self-efficacy, but those parents that can overcome those challenges have been demonstrated to show "...some sense of competency or confidence" (e.g., self-efficacy) to be able to facilitate a quality home-learning environment that truly can prepare the child for learning in school. Interventions that help parenting skills are important, the authors assert, because self-efficacy may be "a critical characteristic of healthy families who provide stimulating and nurturing contexts for young children" (Machida 183)
Fantuzzo, John, McWayne, Christine, & Perry, Marlo A. (2004). Multiple Dimensions of Family Involvement and Their Relations to Behavioral and Learning Competencies
For Urban, Low-Income Children. School Psychology Review, 33(4), 467-480.
A survey involving 144 city-based Head Start children sought to determine which of several aspects of family involvement in early education had the greatest impact on children's...
The outcome showed that "Home-Based family involvement emerged as the strongest predictor of child outcomes" in school (McWayne, et al., 467). There is no doubt that families living in a poverty environment struggle with more issues than those in higher socioeconomic classes. And this study purports that not enough research has gone into the linkage between low-income parental involved and their preschool children's outcomes academically.
The data-based study by Fantuzzo and associates shows that basic home-based activities like reading to the child, asking a child about what happened in school (and pressing the child to say more than just "It was okay"), and providing a special place in the home for learning activities, had a positive effect on the child's approach to learning. Moreover, higher levels of home-based learning activities translated to "significantly lower levels of classroom behavior problems" (Fantuzzo 474). More home involvement by the mother proved to be helpful "...on measures of language and literacy in kindergarten and first grade" (Fantuzzo 476). The findings also showed that home-based involvement in a child's early education has a more positive effect on the child's in-school learning than "home-school conferencing" - albeit that aspect of family - teacher involvement is important too.
