Improving Parent-Teacher Communication through Recorded Telephone Messages¹

This study assessed the effects of a teacher-parent communication system which used a daily recorded telephone message as a communications link between parents and their children's teacher. A class of 21 first grade students in a rural southern Illinois community served as Ss. A three-part experiment was conducted to determine: 1) if the parents would use such a system; 2) if the use of such a system would have any beneficial effects on learning; and 3) if the inclusion of non-academic information would be of value. The results of the experiment were that 1) the system was used extensively; 2) the inclusion of academic information in the daily message resulted in improved academic performance by every student in the class; and 3) families complied with recorded teacher instructions of a non-academic nature at a much higher rate than they did when these instructions were sent home with the child in memo form alone.