**Acknowledgements**

*Parenting - Studies by an Ecocultural and Transactional Perspective*

big concern of intervention research (see [60]).

and volunteer tutors: [10]).

**8. Conclusions**

involved parents.

Finally, none of the implementation factors turned out to be relevant for explaining training success. Apparently, the technical aspects as much as the intensity of conducting a training seem not to be crucial factors. Even the variable "positive feedback" which is supposed to promote a motivating climate did not reveal a considerable difference between the two groups. The objective to provide evidence for training success in relation with implementation fidelity remains still a

Even though differences between the two groups are discussed, it must be remembered that no interaction effects could be found. Thus, the interpretations remain vague. Further investigations are clearly needed. Of course, training success surely does not depend on single factors. Rather, we suppose an entirety of factors leading to training success. To verify this, large sample sizes are needed, which is challenging in intervention studies. Moreover, the initial reading ability of the children (e.g., struggling vs. normal readers) must absolutely be considered; it is supposed that particularly struggling readers at primary school level and above might not benefit from conducting a training with their parents. After all, expectations toward parents' effectiveness should probably be relativized in the light of the current state of research presented above (see also our own study comparing parent

This chapter reviews the existing literature about the effectiveness of reading programs involving parents and investigates explanation for training success within a Swiss Paired Reading study. The chapter shall contribute to gain a better understanding of benefits and constraints to promote reading in the family environment. To date, only few studies investigated differential effects of reading programs that

Altogether, research literature presents small, but significant effects of programs that involve parents to promote their child's emergent literacy and/or reading skills. However, the findings must be interpreted with caution because many studies evaluated within meta-analyses show methodological weaknesses and implementation fidelity is often neglected. Hence, there is a need for more research on such kind of reading programs that follow high standards of field research [71] and evaluate programs before, during, and after implementation [72]. Data of our PR study identified some possible factors that explain training success: the importance the child attaches to reading competence, the child's self-reported effort, reading frequency during spare time, and the number of books at the family's home. However, the relevance of these factors still needs to be verified with larger samples. To sum up, the effectiveness of parents in reading programs is still questionable. Obviously, the direct impact of parental activities on academic outcomes is small, particularly for struggling readers [10]. However, parental activities that offer children a stimulating learning environment and rich literacy experiences *before* entering school can have sustained effects [73–75]. Moreover, reading activities at preschool level are not shaped yet by achievement-oriented objectives, but they are embedded in a more supportive and affective context (e.g., shared book reading), which fits the family context better. Instead, at primary school, parents are more focused on achievement and are likely to exert more pressure in case of low achievement level, which creates unfavorable conditions for learning. By all means, reading programs that involve parents need to carefully examine child characteristics as much as parental aspects, in order to ponder whether the activities could realisti-

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cally lead to program success.

This research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (project no. 149560) and the Universities of Teacher Education of Fribourg, Lucerne, and Bern in Switzerland. A special thank goes to the University of Teacher Education Bern for financial support of this publication. The author wishes to thank the parent tutors and students for making this research possible. Gratitude is also expressed to people who were involved in editorial assistance (Nadine Schuler, Anna Hostettler), statistical support (Loredana Torchetti), and testing and data entry staff.
