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Schweizerisches Institut für Kinder- und Jugendmedien SIKJM

Evaluation of Reading Promotion Projects

Lisbon 2009

Christine Holliger

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Share a story – Family Literacy

• The project

• The evaluation

• Results

• Conclusions

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The Project

• „Share a story – Family Literacy“ was started in 2006.

• The project was funded by the Swiss government, by the cantons of Zürich, Basel, Solothurn, by several larger cities with a high percentage of immigrants and by private partnership.

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Target Group

Immigrant families with low educational background with 2 to 5-year-old children who do not use other available offers or opportunities.

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Outline of the project

• Parents with children aged 2 to 5 meet regularly with intercultural mediators for activities like story-telling, playing games, singing etc.

• The activities are in the parents‘ first language.

• The intercultural mediators aim at bridging the gap not only between the two cultures, but also between written and spoken language.

• Intercultural mediators encourage parents to promote the generalliteracy competencies of their children and to use their first language in order to support their child‘s language development.

• The intercultural mediators advise parents about daycare centres for pre-schoolers where children get in touch with the German language, and about German language courses for adults.

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Outline of the project

• The reading promotion

activities take place

every week or every fortnight and are held in

local community centres, libraries or

immigrant associations.

• Activities are free of

charge for parents.

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Outline of the project

• Intercultural mediators

attend a specific introductory training

course.

• Intercultural mediators

are coached by persons trained in adult

education.

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Aims

• Raise awareness of the role of the parent in their child’s learning and development.

• To give parents ideas and suggestions how to communicate with their child involving every day language as well as oral and written language tradition.

• Provide books and access to books in the family’s first language and in German.

• Strengthen the positive perception of families’first language.

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Recruiting the Families

• Model 1: activities in community centres, in local organisations for immigrants and in libraries

• Model 2: house visits, library introductions, accompanied library visits and library activities

• Model 3: activities in community centres and libraries supplemented by house visits

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Concepts

• Emphasis on the acquisition of text competencies. These are not tied to one language and can be transferred to other languages (Isler 2008).

• The family is not only the earliest, but also the most effective authority on their children’s reading socialisation (Hurrelmann 1995).

• ‘Family Literacy’: Trans-generational intervention programme with the structure: ‘Parent time – Children time – Family time’ (Nickel 2004).

Significance of first language in the promotion of early literacy:

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Languages

• Albanian• Arabic

• Bosnian• Croatian

• German / multilingual• Kurdish

• Portuguese

• Serbian • Spanish

• Tamil• Turkish

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The Evaluation

• From September 2007 till August 2008, the project was evaluated by the School of Teacher Education, Zürich.

• The aim of the evaluation was to find out what factors influence success or failure of the project and how the project could be improved and developed.

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The Evaluation

• The focus of the evaluation was on the activities, i.e. the way in which the activities were carried out, how parents were encouraged to promote the general literacy competencies of their children and in what way they were encouraged to support their children‘s language development.

• The evaluation method was mainly participant observation of reading promotion activities, interviews with e.g. intercultural mediators and an examination of the feedback questionnaires.

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The Evaluation

The project was evaluated in two steps:

1) Between November 2007 and February 2008:

5 intercultural mediators, 2 external experts and the project leader were interviewed and the documents, e.g. feedback questionnaires, were examined.

2) In June 2008 a group interview was made with 4 intercultural mediators.

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The Evaluation

The results of the first evaluation were presented in a training course for the intercultural mediators in March 2008.

In the group interview in June 2008 intercultural mediators were asked among other things about the effect of the input received in the training course in march 2008.

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Results

• Parents and children were very positive about the project; they liked the activities and attended them regularly. The parents – usually mothers – were happy about the input and the suggestions they got. When they visited the library, they usually got a membership straight away.

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Results

• Activities in the family language strengthen the family‘s own perception of their language and have an intensifying effect on the communicative exchange as well as on the child‘s learning and development.

• Target groups can be reached by effective networking, i.e. the intercultural mediator has to contact the families.

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Results

• Ideal places for multicultural activities are places with an intercultural public, i.e. community centres and intercultural libraries.

• The project could be even further improved if parents are given an opportunity to practice, e.g. how to tell stories and how to share books with children.

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The Cost

The cost of the evaluation: CHF 38‘000

CHF 20‘000 were paid by SIKJM

CHF 18‘000 were paid by the School of Teacher

Education

The cost of the project:CHF 92‘500 (budget)CHF 113‘600 (effective cost)

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Conclusions

Positive:

• Early literacy promoters can act independently and reach target groups through effective networking and high personal commitment.

• Intercultural mediators can adapt the activities to the requirements of the cultural group they are working with.

• Early literacy promotion is possible by getting in touch with the families before children start school.

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Conclusions

To be considered in further project development:

• early literacy promoters should be supported in their activities

• there should be a stronger focus on parents (the goal should be ‘empowerment’ of parents instead of ‘raising awareness’)

• there should be an increased promotion of parent-child communication

• the project should be embedded locally.

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Thank you for your attention.

www.sikjm.ch