ABSTRACT
Starting in 2010, researchers at the Education Development Center and SRI International began an in-depth exploration of how media at home could support children's learning. The initial study the authors describe was the first to examine the impact of Ready To Learn mathematics media resources on parents' engagement and young children's learning. Informal parent engagement refers to a broad range of activities wherein children's learning occurs indirectly through exposure to language, numbers, and other concepts. Parents' informal and formal engagement are differentially related to children's learning. Greater parent mediation is also associated with an increased development of social-emotional skills. Evidence on the impact of parental mediation of apps or digital games on children's learning is quite limited. Survey findings also provided insight into how parents mediated their children's engagement with science-related educational media. Findings from the people survey and qualitative study thus suggest that parents frequently engage in educational media generally and science-related media specifically.
