Parent-Child Video-Print Mentoring Packages

Long term student achievement is greatly affected by early family influences. However, many parents do not have knowledge or skill for facilitating early child development. The project is designed to develop and field test instructional materials for parent-child mentoring. The "user friendly" combination of instructional text videotape is designed to test the effectiveness of multimedia instruction of parent-as teacher. Phase I instructional materials are designed to provide naive parents with field-tested self-help materials necessary for giving children an early educational start. Phase II would enable development and longitudinal testing of additional levels of content and types of content packages. Parent instruction videotape programs have been successfully developed for some special problem topics, i.e. emotional behavior disorder. Scripted videotape/print packages can be used in a variety of settings; from home to small support groups, and the delivery could be by paraprofessional facilitators. This is a for-in of distance education, which for higher education is a fast growing national trend. The first five tape packages would be focused on early childhood needs identified by field-level consultants.