Family Learning Coach: Engaging Families in Children’s Early Literacy Learning with Computer-Supported Tools

Abstract

Literacy learning is an inherently social activity, best learned within a supportive community network of parents, teachers, and peers who can encourage, model, and coach the child through the learning process. However, most digital literacy tools for beginning readers fail to include this social dimension. In response, we propose the design of a computer-supported community network for children’s early literacy learning. This network, centered around children’s play on open-ended literacy apps, engages three stakeholders—child, parent, and family learning coach—in the experience. This new coaching role supports the parent-child dyad, using digital tools to provide parents with updates on their child’s on-screen learning process, ideas for contextualized parent-child activities, and encouragement in a timely and efficient manner. Initial findings from our exploratory pilot indicate that parents positively perceived the coaches, while coaches’ updates increased parent visibility into and informed the content of children’s play sessions. This work has implications for both the potential of digitally mediated community networks to facilitate family engagement in children’s learning, and the development of a new, supportive role of a family learning coach in the child’s learning community.