Apart from national policies on reading literacy, researches and studies have been devoted to this field for a few decades. The following will deal with related research in foreign studies and domestic ones, respectively.
Foreign studies on co-learning
Studies on parent-child participation in foreign countries focus on varied aspects, from psychological, social, to physical level. The investigator will organize the
following literature according to the significance of the study: academic performance, learning behavior, physical and psychological development, and parent-child relation- ship.
A few experts did research on effect of co-learning on children’s academic performance. Edward (1987) investigated the relationship between parents’
involvement and children’s academic achievement. The study showed that parents’
participation has positive effect on their children’s learning performance. Wagner and Spratt (1988) researched a sample of three hundred and fifty six-to- seven-year-old African children and their parents for five years. Parents were asked questions about their reading habits; while their children were given tests on reading behavior and reading ability. Results showed that parents who believed in family learning can strongly predict children’s learning attitudes and achievement. Whitehurst and Angell (1994) conducted a research on parent-child co-reading in families of low social economic status and found that such act heightens children’s language and self reading abilities. Same findings were also shown by Chin (1999) that the frequency and time span in the co-reading have influences on children’s language development.
Some research concerned about the correlations between co-learning and
children’s learning behavior. Taylor (1983) studied six families with a total of fifteen children aged two to seventeen for sixteen months. He concluded that if literacy becomes important for parents, it will become important for their children as well. A study (Greenwood & Hickman, 1991) on parents’ participation in children’s learning and the result revealed that parents’ participation reduces children’s frequency of absence in learning. Another study (Celano, Hazzard, McFadden-Garden, &
Swaby-Ellis, 1998) indicated that the way parents guided reading has correlations with children’s attitude toward reading and learning new things. The findings above explained positive effect of parents’ participation on children’s progress in learning.
Still some others focused on the influence on children’s physical and
psychological development through co-learning. Hale and Windecker (1992) observed
parents’ behavior in the co-reading process and concluded that sufficient feedback and language input from parents strengthens their children’s creativity and awareness of self-actualization. Sigman (2000) conducted a study on bed-time stories between parents and their children, it showed that if parents spare twenty minutes telling a story to their child before he goes to bed, the child will gain a better sleeping quality, as well as his immunity system and incretion operation. As for the factor of parent- child relationship, some studies (Edward, 1987; Chavkin, 1989; Greenwood &
Hickman, 1991) supported the idea that parents’ involvement in children’s learning is helpful to the atmosphere between parents and their children.
From the above studies, it can be found that parent-child participation together is beneficial to both parents and their children from all aspects.
Since there are abundant of research on parent-child learning interactions in foreign theses and dissertations, the investigator listed relevant papers focusing on studies of children and their parents. Others related to subjects like teenagers are excluded from the table organized by the investigator. The papers selected are ranged from 1984 to 2005 as follows:
Table 2.2 Foreign Research on Parent-Child Co-Learning
Year Author Title Procedures and Findings
1984 Anderson, B.,
& Stokes, S.
J.
Social and Institutional
Influences on the Development and Practice of Literacy
Observations focused on preschool children during home visits of three ethnic groups. Results indicated that:
A. American parents initiated the greatest number of individual events that communicated the importance of literacy.
B. African American parents were more likely to wait for children to initiate literacy activities.
C. African American and Mexican American parents spent more time participating in a given even with their children.
1984 Clark, M. M. Literacy at Home and at School: Insights from a Study of Young Fluent Readers
Parents with their children fluent in reading were interviewed. Results indicated that:
A. The families studied had a large number of books.
B. Positive and extended interactions with their parents was a feature of all those children.
C. Such interactions above did not always involve books or reading instruction.
1986 Ortiz, V. Reading Activities and Reading Proficiency Among Hispanic, Black, and White Students
Analysis of the National Assessment of Education Progress’s survey of reading proficiency were used among in-school fourth, eighth, and eleventh graders. Results showed that:
A. No one factor explained a large portion of the differences among racial and ethnic groups.
B. Parents’ reading activities directly affected reading proficiency of children.
1988 Osiobe, A. E. Distribution of Home Factors That Favor Early Reading in English as a Second Language:
The Port Harcourt Case Study
Two hundred and sixteen ESL primary school children were surveyed by oral interviews; one of the questions was about parent-child reading at home. Results showed that:
A. 77.78% (168) of the children interviewed were involved in parent- child or relative-child reading at home.
B. Parent-child reading creates positive and encouraging attitudes towards reading books.
1989 Barton, D. Making Sense of Literacy in the Home
Twenty parents and their children were studied. All lived in England.
Interviews, case studies, and
observations were used in this study.
Results revealed that:
A. The subjects liked literacy activities with pens and paper.
B. Types of activities were gender oriented.
C. Children’s literacy roles in the family included activities like getting the mail and being first to read the newspaper.
1992 Eldridge- Hunter, D.
Intergenerational Literacy:
Impact on the Development of the Storybook Reading Behavior of Hispanic Mothers
Four subjects audio-taped themselves at home sharing with their children about every 4 to 6 weeks. Maternal utterances were analyzed in five categories: interactions, responses, questions, function, and focus.
Results indicated that:
A. Areas most like to be affected were maternal responsiveness to child initiations, semantic
contingency of maternal responses, and focus of maternal utterances on literacy.
B. Sharing knowledge about storybook reading methods with parents can enhance the parent-child experience at home.
1995 Miller, A. L.,
& Narrett, C. M.
Does Parent Involvement and Parent Feedback about Reading Progress Influence Students' Reading Progress?
Sixty-one parents and children of second and third grades were divided in four groups in a co-reading program for over a fifteen-week period. Results showed that:
A. Parent participation in a structured at-home reading program did not influence student reading achievement.
B. The attitudes of students and parents toward reading were
generally positive.
1996 Ellis, M. G. Parent-Child Reading
Programs: Involving Parents in the Reading Intervention Process: Summary of Dissertation Research
Twenty parents and children of second and third grades participated in a twelve-week reading program.
Findings support the notion of parental involvement in reading to improve reading ability.
Reading Between the Pixels:
Parent-Child Interaction While Reading Online Storybooks
Seven parent-child in pairs were observed while reading two online storybooks that presented branching stories in which readers' choices helped to determine the course of the story.
Finding showed that children not only saw and heard the stories, but
2005 Antonucci, M. L.
Bringing Reading Strategies Home from a Family Literacy Workshop: Two Case Studies of Parents and Their Children Reading Together
also helped to determine the course of events, with implications for emergent literacy.
The researcher adoptedqualitative paradigm to investigate two case studies on their family literacy interactions. Findings showed that:
A. A reading intervention designed by a family literacy teacher for parents needs to consider a parent's personal literacy needs as well as any literacy support strategies.
B. Parents not only adopted the reading strategies but also adapted them, changing them to meet their child's literacy needs.
C. School-based literacy instruction transferred from the school to the homes and added new under- standings to the home literacy environments of both families.
On the basis of the above papers, it can be noticed that only one of them focuses on co-learning ESL subjects, and the rest are still related to English texts.