Father/Male Involvement Preschool Teacher Education Program

The Father/Male Involvement Preschool Teacher Education Program pilot was designed in 1995 to help teachers increase father/male involvement in state-funded preschool programs for at-risk students. The pilot ran for two full academic years prior to the evaluation. The focus of the Teacher Education Program was to help teachers develop the knowledge and skills needed to successfully plan, implement, and evaluate specific activities that encourage program involvement by fathers and other males who serve as father figures for school children.

Specialists in child development provided teacher training on topics such as staff development; planning and implementing events such as father/child picnics, gym nights, and classroom nights; and developing other outreach initiatives to encourage father/male involvement. The teachers also had the opportunity to participate in individual consultations and group discussion sessions to discuss questions they may have had on a variety of issues, including the appropriateness of involving fathers/males in preschool programs.

Currently, the program's developers are working with the Illinois State Board of Education to implement the program statewide.

The goal of this program was to increase father/male involvement in state-funded preschool programs for at-risk students.

An evaluation of the program found the following:
- Fathers/men participated in parent involvement activities at a significantly higher rate at the preschool with the training program.
- Prior to the start of the program, 5 percent of the total parent involvement at the preschool with the training program included fathers/males. By the program's third year, this participation rate was up to 23 percent at the treatment school and 12 percent at the comparison school.
- Teachers participating in the training program reported significantly more parent involvement contacts with fathers/males than did teachers at comparison program schools, regardless of their level of commitment to involving fathers/males.
- Of the teachers who participated in the training program, those teachers who were highly committed to involving fathers/males reported significantly more contact with fathers/males than did teachers in the training program who were not highly committed to involving fathers.
- A significantly higher proportion of fathers/males initiated family-member contacts at the treatment site than at the control site.