Family learning: a review of the research literature

A report prepared for NIACE by the National Research and Development Centre for adult literacy and numeracy. Institute of Education, University of London. June 2012.
This is a rapid review of the research evidence on family learning. In particular, this review summarises the evidence on one key question: “What is the impact of family learning?” Includes excellent graphic showing benefits of the family learning.
This paper looks at the evidence in the UK and internationally, and also looks at impacts across a range of domains. After summarising the evidence on family learning’s impacts on parents, the report summarises the evidence on its impacts on children. The authors also look outcomes at wider levels, such as the family unit, the community and society as a whole. This paper highlights many of the key findings in earlier NIACE evidence reviews, but seeks to build on rather than repeat the evidence from recent NIACE reports such as Lamb et al’s “Providing the evidence: the impact of wider family learning” (2009). For example, that report does an excellent job of highlighting the many ways in which family learning contributes to a broad range of policy objectives across a number of government departments.