A Qualitative Action Research Study of North Carolina Head Start Parent Involvement and At-Risk Preschool Early Literacy Experiences

Early literacy skills are important because early reading skills form the core of later academic achievement. Parents need to understand that they are their children's first teacher, and that learning to read and write begins long before kindergarten. When at-risk four-year-old children are not exposed to shared reading experiences at home they may score below their chronological age on literacy assessments, which may impede their literacy achievement. The purpose of this qualitative action research study was to explore Head Start parents' perceptions and experiences with parent-child shared reading at home and school in early literacy learning to prepare at-risk North Carolina four-year-old literacy development. A qualitative action research approach was appropriate for this study as the goal of action research is to gain an understanding of lack of parent-child shared reading and what that meant from the perspectives of the parents. An intervention strategy called Raising a Reader was implemented during the two day parent workshop training. Studies have shown that the program Raising a Reader has been an effective intervention supporting parent-child shared reading in the home (Chao, Mattocks, Birden, & Marnarino-Leggett, 2015). Using purposive sampling, the participants were 10 parents of the at-risk four-year-old children from a Telamon Head Start Program in Clinton, North Carolina. Data collection entailed a post-intervention questionnaire to gather parent perceptions and experiences with parent-child shared reading. Data analysis was employed using NVivo 10 to conduct thematic content analysis for coding and classification of the results into themes for study constructs. Three major themes emerged from the analysis, which were (a) parent's modeled reading using read-aloud time for school readiness, (b) desire to read increased conversation and questions during shared reading time, (c) improved shared reading skills by reinforcing home, or library connections. Recommendations for future research included, (a) qualitative case study of parent perceptions and experiences in parent-child shared reading from all eight Telamon Head Start sites in Sampson County, (b) a three-year quantitative longitudinal study to measure parents perceptions and experiences in parent-child shared reading, (c) qualitative phenomenological study to further explore parent perceptions and experiences with parent-child shared reading.