Coaching parents of preschool children improved child skills through grade seven

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The children of parents who received coaching and support materials in preschool had fewer conduct problems in middle school and higher levels of academic skills more than seven years later, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers.

In a recent study published in Development and Psychopathology, the research team examined seventh grade data from children who participated during preschool in the Research Based, Developmentally Informed (REDI) program, a supplemental educational program. Results demonstrated that the subset of REDI students whose parents received coaching and support materials had fewer conduct problems in middle school and higher levels of working memory — the ability to hold and manipulate information in the brain.

“This study shows how important it is to involve parents in the development of key educational skills,” said Karen Bierman, Evan Pugh University Professor of Psychology and lead author of the study.

Children who are ready for school when they enter kindergarten — those who have skills such as following classroom rules, sitting still and listening to directions — are much more likely to succeed throughout their education, Bierman said. However, children from environments that lack educational and financial resources are less likely to have these skills when they start school.

“Head Start, a federally funded preschool program for children from low-income families, gives children with fewer resources a better chance of success in school and later life,” Bierman said. “But the program was not fully bridging the achievement gap between children from lower and higher income households, so we developed REDI to promote the development of school readiness skills. Now, we are seeing those skill improvements pay off over the long term.”

Around 20 years ago, Bierman and her collaborators created and tested REDI, which targeted social-emotional learning and literacy development in Head Start classrooms. Even though the program improved student performance both in emotional and academic skills, some benefits faded by the end of first grade. Later in elementary school, REDI students were performing academically like their peers who had not participated in REDI.

To see if the duration of more benefits could be extended, the researchers developed another program for REDI children’s parents. Parents received coaching on how to build their children’s skills and play-based instructional materials and activities to help connect the home environment with the preschool environment. For example, parents received grocery store props for pretend play, along with coaching on how to support their child’s language and emerging literacy skills using these props.

In this study, the researchers compared 105 Head Start participants who received REDI at school to 95 Head Start participants who received REDI at school and whose parents also received the coaching and materials.

When former REDI participants were in seventh grade, a research assistant from Penn State visited their homes. Students were assessed on their reading achievement and memory skills. They also answered questions about how competent they felt in social situations and how often they associate with children who misbehave or engage in antisocial behavior. Additionally, the students’ language arts teachers completed surveys that ranked students’ social aggression and other antisocial behaviors.

The results demonstrated that the parent program improved children’s abilities in multiple dimensions. Children whose parents had received the coaching scored higher on working memory tasks, and — though it was not statistically significant — they also trended toward better performance in reading. These students were more likely to report feeling socially confident and reported fewer associations with children who misbehave or engage in antisocial behavior. Additionally, their teachers reported that these children displayed lower levels of conduct problems.

The researchers also studied the mechanisms through which the REDI program worked. They found that immediately after the parent program, students displayed improvements in learning behaviors and social competence. Over time, these improvements indirectly led to the outcomes of this study.

“Notably, this is not a comparison between children who received REDI and those who did not,” said Damon Jones, research professor of health and human development and co-author of the study. “This is a comparison between children who received REDI enrichments at school whose parents did or did not receive the REDI coaching and materials at home. All the children in the program experienced long-term social and behavioral improvements that were reported in other studies. The improvements reflected in this study are specifically related to the parent-focused program.”

The researchers said this research demonstrates the potential to improve people’s lives by involving parents in early childhood education.

“I’m very excited to see that supporting parent engagement when a child is in preschool can have this kind of positive influence over time,” Bierman said. “One third of the participating parents had not finished high school and only 4% had a college degree. Families had few financial resources but were invested in supporting their children’s school success. Providing them with some play-based materials and coaching enabled them to build skills in their children that lasted many years into their educations.”

Other Penn State researchers who contributed to this research include Janet Welsh, research professor in the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, and Brenda Heinrichs, lead statistician on the REDI project.

The National Institutes of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development funded this research.

At Penn State, researchers are solving real problems that impact the health, safety and quality of life of people across the commonwealth, the nation and around the world.

For decades, federal support for research has fueled innovation that makes our country safer, our industries more competitive and our economy stronger. Recent federal funding cuts threaten this progress.

Learn more about the implications of federal funding cuts to our future at Research or Regress.