For this proposal, I am going to be looking at how parental inclusion could be implemented in a home and school settings and I will remain comparing and contrasting settings with each other. My research questions are as follows: What are the effects and barriers that children may face with parental involvement? How can parental contribution benefit children’s academic achievement? And how do parents feel about the involvement from school? The main themes of the literature to be studied are how teachers can build a partnership with parents in order to have an impact on the participation in their child’s learning, and the effects that parental involvement may have on children and the reasons as to why some parents may be more engaged than other parents. In my methodology, I will clarify the importance of interviews also how I have gathered and stored the data that I have collected. I will likewise be clarifying the ethical considerations that I needed to take and will be looking at how and what I have done in order to manage with possible issues.
Introduction
The reasons as to why I chose to explore parental involvement and partnership within children’s academic achievement is because I am a solid supporter of parent partnerships and parents engaging in their children’s lives. I think that this is a very significant stage for a child’s development as over the year’s studies have shown that “Nearly 88 percent of parents consider their child’s teacher a partner in achieving success in school” (NEA, 2017). This shows that parents heavily rely on the education system to work and support their children because parents believe that teachers are the prime factors to success and development as they are the professionals within their sector. Jeynes (2003) focused on the significance of parental engagement with their children’s academic lives this includes, mother’s and fathers. To analyse the vision of most critics, a significant part of the literature about parental involvement is not just about parental involvement, yet it is about parents who are not involved, or who are not engaged in the correct way, but rather can get really well involved if they attend to the invitations from school and its members (c.f., Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005) (Avvisati, Besbas and Guyon, 2010). From my own experience, my mother used to be the one to dependably go to my school occasions for instance parents evening, this was in order to help and support me. Jeynes (2003) has also found that partnership as well as parental involvement leads to excellence as well as knowledge and skills for children therefore, I see this as one of the main reasons to why I wanted to more in depth into this matter and conduct a thorough analyzation as to why parental involvement is so important.
Literature review
Parental involvement has been described and considered in literature into two groups Driessen et al (2005) split up parental involvement. One is school-based the other is parent-based. School-based is described as the school including more approaches that they may have made by themselves. However, parent-based is described as when the parents are more included in their children’s work and play methods.
Families impressions of, and interactions with, schools and teachers play a fundamental part in children’s educational outcome. As indicated by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, children develop within different nested systems of influence interacting with each other. Therefore, their development is influenced by people, processes, and schools they go to, family interaction, and the society they withhold. This study examines the role of school, family connections, parents’ school satisfaction, and their associations with educational achievement (Hampden-Thompson and Galindo, 2016).
Parents may feel more comfortable with the involvement of schools as teachers are the ones that are in maintain contact with the parents/carers this could mean regular meetings, more written communication like letters or emails, home visits and could include telephone calls. This may happen when there is something wrong at school for example, medical emergency or concerns. Therefore, parents may relay on teachers more often as they may think that if there is actually something urgent the teachers will contact them anyway. There are many techniques and strategies that help improve the parental involvement, teachers and professionals must have a good knowledge of strategies and techniques needed to enhance parental involvement organized by schools, which incorporates such things as guidelines for meeting and other activities involving parents, as well as guidelines for organizing parent education workshops (Boult, 2006; Grant & Ray, 2010; Hornby, 2000). They should have a great understanding of parent’s perspectives and they should value their points of views. However, some institutes do not have these strategies in place therefore, the child lacks development as there is no input from parents or teachers (Hornby, 2011). Educators ought to be aware of family dynamics and have the capacity to view all children within the context of their families (Bronfenbrenner,1979).
From my reading and findings of partnership between parents, teachers and school I have gathered that involvement plays a strong role in a child’s academic achievement as it helps the child to feel that these people are trying to be involved in their life and that they care about their education. According to Hoover-Dempsey et al (2001), educators were more than happy to welcome parents to be included and to help them to do this as opposed to attempting to motivate them and possibly nothing happening. Hoover-Dempsey et al (2005) has additionally found in their study that some educator’s states of mind can likewise impact the involvement, regardless of whether teachers were eager to enable parents to be involved in the school setting or if they were in the school setting the way that the teachers demonstration towards them can extinguish the partnership between parent and teacher. This demonstrates that teachers need to be more willing to work together with parents to be included and support the child.
One of the issues that may occur is communication some parents home language may not be English therefore, parents may struggle to communicate with teachers. This can have an effect on a child’s language development as for example, if a child was not to have story telling time or book reading with their parents it is seen to have a major effect on their linguistic development. Moreover, engagement in learning activities expands children’s vocabularies and conceptual knowledge. In particularly sharing a phenomenal time like book reading with parents facilitate a child’s vocabulary growth, phonemic skills and positive attitudes towards literacy (Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development, 2009).
Another challenge and issue that parents and professionals may face are beliefs and attitudes. These two aspects could clash and have an effect on the partnership between them as some professional’s may have adequate knowledge on how to be able to work efficiently with parents who themselves present particular challenges for instance, being too aggressive. This might be due to the fact that some parents and practitioners hold conflicting beliefs about how children learn or may have stereotypical views about each other. This shows that professionals would need to research and build their knowledge of services and resources that are available for parents (Hornby, 2011). Partnership is defined as parents, families and practitioners being involved in working together in order to benefit the child. By both sides recognising, respecting and valuing each others opinions and thoughts the best outcomes will happen (Lu
eder, 2000).
The effects and barriers that a child may face with parental involvement are that some parents may or may not choose to be involved with their child’s academic achievement. Hoover-Dempsey (2001) spotted that some parents are more confident in selected areas of their involvement with others. For instance, some parents are more confident with the areas of picking certain educational activities for their child while others are more confident with helping their child with homework even if they fully do not understand the work themselves. This would help the child feel like their parents are trying to get involved in helping them and making them feel better by having a positive approach to their child’s academic achievement.
According to Driessen et al (2005), the wrong type of parental involvement can have an impact on a child’s cognitive, emotional and social development. Children find it easier to communicate with their parents more then anyone else if they were to have any type of trouble with their work or even sometimes communicating with other children. Hoover-Dempsey et al (2001) have also noticed that these areas can also affect a child’s skill, knowledge and attitude. Children usually learn by observing their parents and what they do they mimic their parent’s behaviour and see them as their role model. For parents, they act as a role model towards their child so that eventually when their children grow older they can then repeat these ideas and approaches for their future.
Within the literature we can see that there is a positive impact of parental involvement and partnership for children, parents and teachers. For schools and parent’s partnership is needed and it is important for both aspects to make an effort on their end as this would then benefit the child and both these areas could then work together for the child’s best interest as stated by Jeynes (2003). He has also discovered that it is common for conflict to arise between both parents and teachers as miss-communication is very common for them for example, within his study he has seen that teachers were the ones who were stressing most parents to be more involved in their child’s learning and they were inviting them to evenings where they can communicate and work together to see what is the best option for there child’s studies however parents were not attending to these evenings. This shows to me that both parents/carers and teachers would need to communicate for them to find out what the best method is for that individual child and that they both have learning to do from each other in order to work together and help that child excel with their studies (Hill and Taylor, 2004).
Moreover, I feel that there could be a major difference between parental involvement being implemented by teachers of is parent initiated. I feel like this is a good mixture of both factors however, I also feel that it could be more significant for the parent to be more involved with their own child as they would be more aware of what their likes and dislikes are so this would be strange for the teacher to then critique or change the way that their involvement is going. I also understand from a parent’s point of view as some parents may face difficulties whether this is because of employment or financial problems or they just cannot attend to certain evening’s that the school has arranged however, as Hill and Taylor (2004) stated if the school is having a type of difficulty in finding ways to have parental involvement or attention then the school would need to communicate and interact with parents in order to see what may be the problem and find ways to come together and think of the possible ideas and approaches so that they could come together.
This literature review has shown me that there are a few gaps that were mentioned and recognised within the topic. Hill and Taylor (2004) has identified that there is not much research regarding parent’s attitudes within the topic however, more on what they are and not doing right. An additional gap that I have identified is that within the literature that is discussed there is a wide range of information on the effects and implications within parental involvement in a school setting, be that as it may, should there not be something said about out of school settings for instance at home? There are no actual ways of finding out this kind of information. What is meant is that if there was a way of interviewing parents involvement at home then this may lead to them adjusting their answers from what they actually do or do not do and if we were to go to their houses to observe them then this could be seen as being in their personal space too much and not be professional therefore asking them information is hard to do so. This goes back to the importance of professionalism and being able to ask questions without making the other person feel strange or uncomfortable.
Lastly, another gap could be the lack of parental involvement within school settings. According to Driessen et al (2005) when parents are invited to come over and be involved for their child’s academic achievement they are the ones who are most likely to ask teachers what they think they should do and how they should do it therefore, Driessen et al (2005) stressed the importance of parents having an idea where it has come from them and that it is based on their knowledge and experience as this would show that parents are the ones who are in control of their own child’s development and that they are involved with them in their own way.
Within my evaluation, I came up with three types of direct questions that I will be looking at more in depth and my proposal will be mostly concentrated on them. As some gaps are shown I will need to research and find more information’s within it therefore I will be researching the questions and trying to answer them from a new perspective. I will also need to answer questions on the involvement of parents and see if they think that schools are doing enough. Lastly, I will be looking at some of the barriers in depth and closely in order to see where I can find solutions or options that may help both perspectives.
Methodology
Methodology can be seen as a reflection of the principles and values as summarised by Roberts-Holmes (2010). A methodology holds a structure on how to perceive the research topic and the knowledge that constructs around it. Within the research that I am an advocate for parental involvement within children’s academic achievement I am going to be researching and gathering all the information’s together.
The research I will be using is qualitative research methods. Punch (2009) describes that qualitative research is the traditional scientific way of seeing the world. This shows that qualitative researchers will not simplify their findings instead, they would be looking for information that represents individual’s voices and their thoughts on the topic. Qualitative researcher’s states theory and expectations which they can prove as either true or either false. Therefore, I will be using a much smaller sample size as it could be more challenging to question over three hundred individuals with only 15 questions then, I will be looking at three hundred answers. The reason as to why I choose to use qualitative method is because for my research question the questions I will be asking are mostly open-ended types and that they could only be answered by asking for the individual’s perspective. As qualitative methods are specific and straight forward this type of method helps to focus on what the outcome is.
In order to complete my research, I would pre-plan my interview questions that I will ask parents/carers and the teachers to understand what their thoughts and matters are next, I will be doing reading on some of these top
ics in order to settle and structure my interviews and questionnaires. Following the interview reports and questionnaire answers I will next use it for my quantitative analysis to be able to recognise some repetitions that may occur. By using interviews and questionnaires I would be able to see the different aspects of the responses that I receive.
By conducting a research, it is important to be able to outline the sample sizes. With my research I am going to be focusing on British families. The main reason for this is that there is many research on international countries however not much on Britain therefore, I believe that this would be a great way of seeing the perspectives within this country. For my sample I have chosen to carry a small scale of research between fifteen participants for parents/carers and of course the teachers, from again fifteen schools that are within the Britain’s London area. I think that for this sample size this is the best as including too many participants or institutes could lead to confusion with all the data I collect for example, questionnaires and interviews. With the way I pick my participants I will be using purposive sampling method. According to Roberts-Holmes (2010) when researchers do this it is a deliberately choice of picking a specific sample group. The main reason why I have picked this method is because as I will be focusing on parents and teachers this method is the one that will help and support me as it will get me to focus on my research questions more therefore, enable me to be relevant when doing so. This also means that for me to consider who I want and need I will need to study based on their specific background.
For the data collection part, I will be collecting it through the use of questionnaires and interviews. When conducting my interviews, the best way is keeping a record of what was said either through writing or recording this way you would be able to listen or read through your notes again and again. Another benefit of keeping a records is by responding to any open questions as well as rhetorical questions this may be beneficial to ask the participant. For me to follow my research questions, I will be taking notes by writing down in a booklet on everything that has been mentioned. I will also be coding all the phrases in order to shorten words and save time which will then help me come back to it at a later date and I will then know what I mean by my codes (Mac Naughton et al, 2010). Robert-Holmes (2010) has identified for the questionnaire that there are three ways a questionnaire could be handed out. One of these is self-completion questionnaires, this is when the researcher hands out the questionnaires either by post, e-mail or face-to-face these ensure that the participant takes time while completing it. Another way could also be the use of telephone questionnaires where the researcher would leave their number for the participant to call or vice versa in order to be able to answer the questions. Within my studies I will be doing self-completion questionnaires this would ensure my participants would take time completing it and I believe that this is a reliable way of doing so as this way the school would then help me reach out to parents and get their thoughts.
Considering the ethical issues, it is important to get informed consent from all your participants this means whether they are a child, adult or professional. Getting consent from participants allows them to know that they can stop the interview and not participate if they do not want to for instance if they have thought about it and decided that they would like to change their mind. The researcher will also need to explain to the participant what the research is about and what the areas that will be looked at are. This is vital as explaining to the participant will help them feel comfortable and calm as they would know that they can stop whenever they like and that I am not pressuring them to do anything they do not wish to do. In some cases, Mac Naughton et al (2010) has stated that most of the researchers use deception and that they do not get a formal consent form across. This would lead to the researcher not being one hundred percent honest and may adjust the truth. In order to be sure that I do not do this I will be telling the participant everything and let them know that if they have any questions for me they are free to ask and get an honest answer. Mac Naughton et al (2010) has also noticed that some researchers do come across deceiving participants whether they have too or it accidentally happens.
Another ethical issue is confidentiality and privacy as this is an important part that would need to be addressed. Mac Naughton et al (2010) argues that for a researcher to keep things confidential there are few rules that they would need to follow. Firstly, they would need a written consent form that is signed. Then would need to store the data in a safe secure storage cupboard with a lock that no one can access other than the researcher. For my research data collection which includes interviews, questionnaires and consent forms, I will be keeping them in separate folders and locking them up with a padlock. This ensures that I keep all my information in one place and not get confused with all the other information I keep. This also allows me to keep things confidential and allows me to only be able to have access to it.