Spotlight 83 Peer/Parent maths

interactive, with immediate support, modelling, monitoring and feedback. However, especially in the early years, most parents might be expected to be more ‘expert’ than their children (for example in reading), and the social and emotional tone and content of the parent-child relationship is very different from that of a peer relationship – praise and other forms of reinforcement might be even more salient and powerful in motivational terms. However, as children move up the school, parents are less likely to be ‘expert’ with more advanced educational content. This must be reflected in the way they are asked to encourage and prompt, rather than model. In recent years, the notion of ‘parental involvement in children’s reading’ has been replaced by the term ‘family literacy’, which implies greater emphasis on practices which enhance the literacy levels of the whole family now and in the future, for their own purposes, within their own context. This implies respecting the home culture and not merely seeking to export the school culture while at the same time carefully considering the cost/ benefit aspects of involvement as they might be perceived by potential participants. The social inclusion agenda has also gained ground (at least in the rhetoric), so there is now more emphasis on equal opportunities for involvement by all families in their own homes, rather than an elite selected group of parents acting as teacher helpers in school (Wolfendale & Topping, 1996). Parents are now involved in mediating the learning of their children in a great many ways, in many curriculum areas, at various levels of complexity, before and during the years of schooling and beyond into lifelong learning – and the benefits can be mutual and reciprocal for both members of the pair.2 What then are the implications for peer-assisted and parent-assisted work in different curriculum areas? This Spotlight (83) focuses on the areas of maths, science and ICT; the companion Spotlight (82) focuses on reading, writing, spelling and thinking skills. In previous centuries, traditional conceptions of teaching emphasised direct instruction – the transmission of information from the professional teacher to the learner. However, recent years have seen a vast increase in both the quantity and accessibility of information within and without schools. Irrespective of class size, social interaction between individual pupils and professional teachers will always be scarce. Consequently, the professional teacher increasingly works indirectly as a manager of effective learning – an arrangement which may be supported by peeror parent-assisted learning.