Parents and Teachers Together: E-PATT

The purpose of the e-PATT project is to learn whether a combination of two interventions conducted in an electronic format, one in the classroom and one in the home, will have a greater effect on children’s school readiness skills than either intervention will have alone. e-PATT is investigating the added benefit to low-income, at-risk, preschool-age children’s literacy, language, and social development of targeting teacher instructional practices in combination with parental use of responsive style in the home. Teachers from local Head Start programs participate in online professional development sessions, while parents of students in their classrooms receive online training and coaching in the Play and Learning Strategies (PALS) program.

The study also investigates the potential moderating influence of parent and teacher factors on the targeted behaviors within the home and classroom interventions and measures results in increased school readiness skills. The study seeks to determine whether the intervention’s effects on children’s school readiness skills are sustained into kindergarten. We are also comparing the outcomes utilizing these electronic delivery methods with the person-to-person delivery methods used in the original Parents and Teachers Together project (PATT) executed from 2009-2013. Economic factors involving both interventions are being analyzed and compared to ascertain cost effectiveness.

CLI Faculty:

Tricia Zucker, Ph.D., April Crawford, Ph.D., Michael Assel, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator:

Susan Landry, PhD

Co-Investigator:

Tricia Zucker, Ph.D., Hsien-Yuan Hsu, Ph.D., Michael Assel, Ph.D., April Crawford, Ph.D., Maria Carlo, PhD., Ursula Johnson, PhD (formerly UTHealth Houston)

Participating Sites:

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston)