RESEARCH
Parental Involvement: The Missing Link in School Achievement - Michelle LaRocque, Ira Kleiman and Sharon Darling
- Some researchers state that the missing link in educational equity in terms of educational achievement is parental involvement.
- Increased level of parental involvement in schools and in the education of their children is positively correlated with increasing educational achievement
- Parents base their participation on a variety of factors such as comfort level, knowledge, self confidence, motivation, and language skills
- Factors that inhibit parental involvement include parents own schooling experience, employment commitments, socio-economic status and cultural view points
- Benefits of parental involvement for teachers include; insights how to better cater for students needs, help planning activities and learning goals for students
- Teachers and schools need to get to know the community in order to improve understanding and attitude between themselves and parents. They need to understand the needs and opportunities of the families they serve.
- Hartas (2008) suggests that it is not just parents doing all of the work to get involved, but “parents working together with a range of professionals” (p.140).
- Teachers and staff need to make parents feel welcome and wanted in their classrooms (p.13).
- All need to work with the interest of the child/children in mind (p.13).
- Success occurs when parents of children actively engage in reading, acquiring new skills and taking on new challenges (p.14).
- Ramey & Ramey (1999) suggest “If children see their parents are eagerly and actively learning, then children are more likely to feel comfortable in taking on new challenges themselves.”
- “Most parents feel that parental involvement is important to them and that they want the teacher to show them or give them things that they can do with their child at home or as an activity in the classroom.” - Hanni &Phippen (2010, p.37)
- Multiple and varied studies have shown parent participation at schools to advantage:
* Schools - those with outperform those without, valuable resources in volunteer time and increased school support
* Parents - more positive attitudes generally, towards their children’s and their own education, and towards teachers, and development of higher educational aspirations for their children
- Despite the advantages, there exist multiple concerns from:
* Parents - feeling intimidated by educational jargon, threatened by teacher authority, having differing educational backgrounds and attitudes, perceived SES differences, lack of formal knowledge
- Increasing parent involvement requires time to gain the trust of parents and to inform them of how they can be involved (p.52)
- Perhaps the most simple, yet most powerful, recommendation was “make the parent feel more welcome” (p. 52)
- For teachers to build collaborative relationships with parents, they need time to plan and organize parent activities (p. 52)
- First, schools need to create a hierarchy of involvement opportunities for parents, ranging from working with their children at home to participating in school decision making. Second, schools should provide parents with the knowledge in order to participate in any of these activities. Parents then feel welcomed and confident to participate in various activities (p. 53)