Role of Omani parents: fostering emergent literacy skills: fostering emergent literacy skills

The purpose of this study is to document the significance of four practices employed by parents that contribute to such development. Those practices encompassed the availability of materials, activities at home, parent attitude and visits to their child's class. Subjects consisted of 314 male and female parents of kindergarten children in the Sultanate of Oman. The researchers developed a 25-item questionnaire intended to measure the degree of parent involvement in their children's development at acceptable levels of validity and reliability. Results indicated that the role of parents ranged from medium to high on all practice domains of the tool. There were no significant differences for parents reading and writing practices, education levels, income levels, gender of children and siblings order. It is suggested that additional investigation in rural areas and other locales districts with different socially and economical levels should be conducted. In addition, the role of technology at homes and kindergartens such as child's learning style, parent's knowledge of child development and the availability of related outside resources available to families should be considered.