Date of Award

1986

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Education

Department

Education

First Advisor

Diane Denney

Second Advisor

Nancy Polette

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the positive and negative effects of home-tutoring on four handicapped students and their families, and to ascertain if a home-tutoring program would be positively accepted by the students and their families. The descriptive studies were conducted using students of different handicaps and age levels.

During an interview prior to the involvement program, parents were asked about the amount of time presently spent studying with the child, the family members involved with studying, the familiarity of the parents with the IEP goals, and their feelings about involvement. At the post-treatment interview, the same questions were asked as well as ones about the benefits and problems of the home-tutoring program.

A 9-week observation period preceded the 9-week home-tutoring program. Students were pre-tested and post-tested to compare achievement results. Parent-initiated teacher contacts were recorded during both sessions. During the 9-week parent home-tutoring program, the parents were sent a weekly set of lessons and a parent record sheet.

The four descriptive studies provided several results . Three of the students showed an improvement in their skills after t he parent-tutoring program. However, half of the students indicated that the lessons were frustrating, and one felt the lessons were boring. The number of parent-initiated contacts showed little or no increase for all of the students. Only one of the parents became more familiar with the goals of the IEP . The involvement persons remained basically the same during the parent-tutoring program as before the study. One half of the subjects reported positive family reactions to the tutoring program. The other half reported sibling jealousy because of excessive parent-involvement time.

In conclusion, the studies indicated that an individualized home-tutoring program may be beneficial for some handicapped students and their families. However, the limitations of this descriptive investigation make it premature to draw any firm conclusions . The results do indicate areas of further research.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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