What are the goals of family and intergenerational programs?
One set of goals for family and intergenerational programming has been improving the school achievement of children by promoting parental involvement. Programs aimed primarily at increasing parental involvement use activities that encourage or teach parents 1) to provide a home environment that supports children’s learning needs; 2) to volunteer in the schools as aides or other roles; 3) to monitor children’s progress and communicate with school personnel; and 4) to tutor children at home to reinforce work done in school (Simich-Dudgeon, 1986). It has been argued that school-focused programs should enable schools to better respond to parents and families. With this as a goal, parents learn about school, but school personnel also learn about families, enabling schools to better respond to the realities of the communities they serve (McCaleb, 1994). A second set of goals often found in family literacy programs is to improve skills, attitudes, values, and behaviors linked to reading (Nick
