Parent involvement: what is it that works? - Head Start Family Impact Project

Children Today, May-June, 1990 by Robert K. Leik, Mary Anne Chalkley

Parent Involvement: What Is It That Works?

Since its beginning, Head Start goals have included involving parents in the program. What this involvement means, however, and whether it has any favorable impact, has been less clear. The Head Start Family Impact Project was planned specifically to study the family system and to test the notion that joint parent-child interaction in the context of Head Start would be the most beneficial form of parental involvement. Initial findings from the project suggest that there are important benefits from parent involvement with Head Start that were not previously envisioned. (1)

Project Design

The Head Start Family Impact Project was funded by the Administration for Children, Youth and Families with assistance from the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota. The project began in 1986 in cooperation with Parents in Community Action (PICA) in the Hennepin County (Minnesota) Head Start program. Because more than 80 percent of PICA families are headed by single mothers, only that type of family was sampled. A total of 81 single Head Start mothers and their children participated in two sets of assessments. In addition, 21 mothers and their children who were on the PICA waiting list also participated in the assessments as control families. Of these 102 families, 42 were white, 40 were black, and 20 were American Indian. The assessments occurred early in the Head Start year (October 1986) and again at the end of the Head Start year (April 1987).

The assessments measured the parent and the family as well as the child. Mothers answered questions that supplied most of the data. Personal psychological variables were examined in the mother, including her self-esteem and sense of control in her life. The mother's evaluation of her own child's behavior and capabilities was assessed through questions about the child's competence, social acceptance and independence. Other questions gave a measure of the family's functioning, particularly of family cohesion, adaptability and coping strategies. Family stress, family resources and family support within the community were measured. Demographic information, such as family size and composition, was also obtained. In addition, the children were interviewed individually using a picture-based rating scale that measured their own sense of competence and social acceptance.

Head Start families were assigned to one of two treatment groups: enriched or regular. Regular meant that the mothers were free to participate in Head Start as they wished, with no specific requirements or encouragements. The enriched group participated in special activities throughout the Head Start year. These included two support groups for the mothers; three computer games designed both to encourage interaction between the mother and her child and to teach the child about decisionmaking and the use of resources; and two parent-child group activities focusing on role-playing and games to play together.

For the computer sessions, the mother was first taught how to run the system, then she taught and worked with her child. The sessions included making a simple color drawing, playing a birthday planning game, and going on a computer treasure hunt that emphasized systematic search procedures. In most instances, the child ended up sitting on the mother's lap in order to operate the keyboard. The role-playing and game sessions emphasized each mother and child sharing with other mothers and children in small groups.

Although it was intended to have equal numbers of families in each of the three assessment groups, a number of factors made this impossible. The final breakdown of the participants was 30 in the enriched group, 51 in the regular group, and 21 in the control group.

Initial Assessment

How did the Head Start families compare with "normal" middle-class families at the beginning of the Head Start year? All of the Head Start families in the assessment groups were fairly young (average age, 28) and poor (a median income of $531 a month), but reasonably well educated (74 percent had graduated from high school or earned a G.E.D). The families were atypically large: One-third had three or more children and nearly half had two or more adults.

On the average, the Head Start mothers were no different from "normal" middle-class mothers in terms of self-esteem and sense of control in their own lives. Their children also scored no differently on average in measures of competence and social acceptance from middle-class children who had taken the same tests.

Mothers tended to rate the independence of their children somewhat lower than did parents of children attending the University of Minnesota nursery school. However, the Head Start mothers were more satisfied than the nursery school mothers with their children's independence. Both the Head Start mothers and the control group mothers rated their children significantly lower on competence and social acceptance than the children did themselves.