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 Iinstructional 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.Summary Of Anticipated Results And Implications:Professional quality, field tested, videotape-print manuals will be developed to help low income and at risk families learn to mentor their children to self-reliance and achievement These materials would provide technical and materials support for a needs based family centered early childhood intervention, while fostering the skills and competency attitudes of parents. Both at-risk and general population parents are potential consumers. Voice-over video and print materials would be available in English, and Spanish languages.By using video-print educational packages, parents can mentor their children in a variety of learning tasks; from basic school preparation competencies to enrichment skills. The Commercial entertainment home video market has developed into a major business segment. Educational materials are in demand to be delivered by internet or home video; however, the financial backing is not readily available to develop quality start-up/untested projects. Distance learning and nontraditionally delivered educational products are rapidly growing markets.
