Intenvening with teachers to encourage father/male involvement in early childhood programs

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the impact of an inter vention program targeted at teachers and designed to encourage and facilita te father/male involvement in state-funded prekindergarten programs for chi ldren identified as being at-risk for later school failure. In contrast to other intervention programs which provide direct services to fathers/famili es, the nature of the current intervention was on providing support service s to staff members which focussed on strategies for encouraging father/male involvement. Participants were 21 teachers at two state-funded prekinderga rten programs. Evaluation data were collected which tracked the nature, con tent, and context of all parent involvement contacts at the treatment and c ontrol program sites over a 26 week period. Findings suggest that a signifi cantly higher proportion of the parent involvement contacts and activities at the treatment site program involved fathers/men than that reported at th e comparison site program. Results are discussed in terms of implications f or future research and program development in this area. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.