That’s the title of a blog by DadPad, which you can read here.
We spoke to them about the PIECE study, and the blog includes on overview of our findings, as well as a summary of the Fatherhood Institute’s Fathers Reading Every Day (FRED) programme.
DadPad was set up by Cornwall Inspire CIC to give new fathers targeted information in the perinatal period.
Chaired by Professor Anna Tarrant, University of Lincoln
Helen presented a paper that discussed how the use of longitudinal data in the PIECE project allowed her to explore individual trajectories and levels of change in relation to fathers’ involvement, and the impact this has on children’s educational achievements through primary school.
In this presentation, she reflected on the first stage of data analysis that focused on exploring the relationship between fathers’ childcare involvement and educational attainment at one time point, when children are age five. She then reflected on the second stage of analysis, which introduced longitudinal data to account for fathers’ pre-school involvement. This second stage added further nuance and insight to the findings, which show that paternal involvement does has a unique and important effect on attainment at school. She also reflected on some of the qualitative work for the project, which involved bringing in the voices of fathers to enhance understandings of the long-term relationship between paternal care and attainment at school.
She was also joined by Professor Tina Miller and Dr Georgia Phillip.
The Timescapes 10 Festival is a major celebration of advances in qualitative longitudinal methods through a mixture of international symposia, panel sessions, video provocations, sandpits, and demonstrator events. Jointly run through the Timescapes Archive and the National Centre for Research Methods, the Timescapes 10 Festival celebrates ten years since the conclusion of the original Timescapes programme of research. See here for more details about Timescapes 10.
Abstract: In this talk, Helen Norman introduces the PIECE project, which explores whether, and in what ways, fathers’ engagement in structured activities at home (like playing, reading, drawing, painting, and doing musical activities), as well as the time fathers spend with their children more generally, influences their children’s educational attainment at primary school. Through the analysis of a large-scale national survey, results show that fathers do have a unique and positive impact on their children’s academic achievements in the early stages of school. However, there continue to be barriers to fathers’ home and school engagement, which suggests that more needs to be done to support dads to engage because of the benefits this has on early attainment at school.
We ran a series of online discussion events (‘PIECE Talks’) with parents and education practitioners in May 2022. These focused on understanding how fathers support their children’s learning, the help fathers want and receive, and any challenges.
We know, from existing research, that parents’ early childcare involvement is important for children’s development – but much of this evidence is based on research conducted with mothers or parents more generally. We know less about whether and how fathers’ impact on their children’s development – even though fathers have an equally important role to play in the care of their children!
Who did we speak to?
We spoke to fathers who have at least one child under the age of 12, and who are from a diversity of backgrounds (including, but not limited to, biological/non-biological parents, those in two parent or single parent families, parents that live with their children full or part-time, or not at all).
We asked about what fathers do, what support (if any) schools, nurseries and other family services offer and whether there are particular challenges to fathers’ (and mothers’) involvement in their children’s care and learning.
We also spoke to teachers, heads and other school staff with a role in parental engagement, early years managers and staff, people from organisations and projects with an education focus and companies/ projects using technology to support parent-school relationships.
Why did we hold the PIECE Talks?
The ‘PIECE Talks’ have helped to inform our wider study, which explores links between fathers’ involvement in everyday educational and caregiving activities, and children’s progress at primary school. The care and support fathers provide is wide-ranging and might include helping with homework, or simply playing a game or going out for a walk. We wanted to find out what dads do and feel is important. We also wanted to hear about the support schools and nurseries provide.
When and where did the PIECE Talks take place?
We held the PIECE talks online (using Zoom) with fathers, and schools/ early years settings/ the education sector to share some of our early project findings, and to hear different perspectives and experiences around fathers’ childcare and school involvement. They have fed into our resources for schools, early years settings and families. We audio recorded the sessions, but only for transcription purposes and everyone’s contributions have been anonymised.
The PIECE Talks ran as follows:
Download a PDF version of our flyer for the events (this includes an invitation for a mother-focused event, which we were unable to hold, below…
Image: “Parents’ evening at school…” by Fresh On The Net is marked with CC BY 2.0.
Our new Fathers and Children’s Learning survey aims to build a better understanding of how fathers get involved in supporting their children’s learning, and how schools, nurseries and other family services can help.
The survey is aimed at all fathers (biological or otherwise) with children aged under 12, and asks them about:
Later this year (in spring/summer 2022) we will be holding online sessions with parents and professionals, to think more deeply about ways to support fathers’ involvement. We will also produce toolkits to help schools and nurseries – and families themselves – maximise fathers’ involvement. The Fathers and Children’s Learning survey will feed into all of this, so it’s an important first step on a bigger journey.
Please take the survey, which should only take 5 minutes to complete – and share it with any other fathers you know. Here’s the link to share: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WZKBVDZ.
Please ask your child’s dad to take the survey – no matter his level of involvement, we want to hear what he has to say! Here’s the link to share: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WZKBVDZ.
Please promote the survey to parents, and others who can spread the word. You can download resources to help you do this, below. Promoting the survey could be a great way for your organisation to open a deeper conversation with parents – and taking part in one of our online discussions later this year could help with this too.
To make sure you stay in touch with our project, and receive an invite to our online sessions, join the Fatherhood Institute’s Time with Dad network here, or email Dr Jeremy Davies via j.davies@fatherhoodinstitute.org.
We’ve created a printable poster and flyer, for you to hand out and post on noticeboards in schools, nurseries, workplaces and community spaces. There are also templates for letters/emails (a version to send to Dad, a version to send to Mum and a version addressed ‘Dear Parents’), and some suggested SMS/Whatsapp messages and social media posts. You can download these below.
