Involving Parents in Educational Programmes of Their Children - Essay Example

Policy 2005 Parents are the first and the most important link of the children's connection with the world they enter. The newcomers are faced with a lot of problems because the world is a completely unknown thing for them, so to get acquainted with it, to become its part they have to obtain all the necessary skills for a successful and stable future. Firstly, they are to learn how to talk and to work, the next stage is more complicated and is connected with an educational system in its more extended way. That's the notion of children's education is so important in case parents and the society as a whole need to bring up a healthy clever personality to make a constant progress in future and to become an adequate member of society and a knowledgeable human being. Researches (Eagle, 1989; Henderson & Berla, 1994; U.S. Department of Education, 1994; Ziegler, 1987) confirm that when families are involved in their children's education, 'children earn higher grades and receive higher scores on tests, attend school more regularly, complete more homework, demonstrate more positive attitudes and behaviours, graduate from high school at higher rates, and are more likely to enrol in higher education than students with less involved families' (Hoover-Dempsey, K.V., & Sandler, H.M., 1997). So that, it's so important to involve parents in educational programmes of their children as an important goal for schools. Education here plays the major role, so that the child's education is a shared responsibility of the school and the home. At school he is said to be given knowledge common for the whole class and meant for the children of particular age taking into account their level of mental, physical and social development. At home parents can help their offshoots to solve the possible problems which can emerge at school; they can also help them to come through the adaptation process to the new surrounding and new system of communication successfully. 'Outside the school, the home is the most salient source of learning, encouragement and support for a child', notices Alison Rich (Rich, A., 2001). She also stresses upon the 'parental resources' which refers to 'income level, parental education and parental employment'. This is urgent because family income can increase educational opportunities of a child greatly by providing him with a bigger number of books and educational tools. Besides this, parents with higher level of education tend to have children who are much interested in their self-improve and realization thus giving them much motivation for their finishing high school and continuing educational steps on higher levels. On the contrary, children from unemployed families tend to be backward in education and have smaller level of motivation for studying. All these facts stress upon the fact of importance of parental participation in their children's development process, educational process in particular, to set a good example for them. There also some factors that can be a rather positive impulse for children to like school and are eager to study. This is a notion of 'parental involvement in a child's education' that 'can be crucial in developing a child's academic ability and confidence' (Rich, A., 2001). Parents can actively participate in their child's school life, taking part in 'school committees, attending sporting and social events, attending parent teacher nights, volunteering and so on' (Rich, A., 2001). Doing this they show their great involvement into their children's life that gives their offshoots a sense of responsibility for their deeds and their progress in studies. Parents can also provide a suitable home environment for children to be ready for school, and to know that in case something goes wrong with their studies they can learn at home and improve their knowledge. Psychology deals with the notion of 'psychological readiness of a child for school'. This includes all the facts that influence a young person to be ready to face and to step into a new system of relations (that is school, future classmates and teachers - new authoritative grown-ups) successfully. Before entering school a child was surrounded by absolutely common people foe him, and school is considered to become a new responsible step into social relations with outer surrounding for him. If there appear any trouble on the way of his successful integration into the process of obtaining him a new social role, it could be a very stressful factor for him that could negatively influence his further development process. That's why it's some important for the parents to give their child a helpful hand on this stage of his personal development. 'The home environment should be conductive to learning' (Rich, A., 2001). In the years prior to school and in the later years parents can invest their time in active school participation, provide necessary educational materials and their academic knowledge to help their offshoots. Parents who value education will enforce child's good study habits, work out a positive motivation for them to study well and to want to extend their knowledge and practical skills. Parents are the children's first teachers, while the home is their first classroom. The role parents play in their offshoots development cannot be underestimated. But what about practical issues Now, in the era of technical revolution and implementation of new high-technique equipment into our lives much must be done by parents to prepare children to navigate these tools to avoid further troubles which could possibly emerge in future. In most schools, as researches show, the level of the availability of technology serving is very poor. Glennan and Melmed (1996) point out that technology may become "one more element in an array of factors that cause a student's educational attainment to be highly correlated with the socioeconomic status of his or her family" (Henderson, Marburger, & Ooms, 1986). But some parents are not knowledgeable about the use of technologies themselves, that's why it's important for schools to establish partnerships and to include parents in discussion, decisions and technology-making training. If it doesn't happen, parents can negatively influence their children attitude towards technological usage in their future studying and working process, thus providing less learning opportunities and databases for them and significantly decreasing their potential learning ability. Parent-involvement strategies include the following: Provide a parent-friendly school climate that encourages parents and family members to collaborate on technology initiatives. Develop open and ongoing communications with parents about technology planning. Provide opportunities for parents to collaborate and help solve problems related to technology use, including developing plans for their own technology skill development. Tap parents' technology knowledge and expertise by inviting knowledgeable parents to be advisors and resource providers on your implementation team. Design the technology plan to benefit and reach all families in the school community. Promote a philosophy of partnership with parents. Request and support parental volunteers in your school's family technology resource centre, in computer learning labs, and in the classroom (Henderson, Marburger, & Ooms, 1986). Technologies tend to change greatly and fast in modern society, so school in collaboration with parents must respond to these changes and be ready to learn by themselves, be aware and support the combination of educational change. Besides this, new technologies for some parents can provoke the appearance of a so-called 'technostress' when the parents feel uncomfortable for the generational gap between them and their children. In this case, school need to keep parents 'informed and knowledgeable about various ways to use technology for learning at school and in the home' (Henderson, Marburger, & Ooms, 1986). If technologies are used at school, there is a great need to establish a sufficient integration between technology planners at school and the home: by, for example, letters which will regularly inform parents about 'technology developments, such as purchases, locations, and capabilities of new technology' (Henderson, Marburger, & Ooms, 1986). They can also be invited regularly to school to see how their children study, to know their progress and possible trouble in using new technologies, for them to help their offshoots to minimize this lack of skills by practicing at home. Schools activates can also provide technology training after school or in the evenings and invite parents to attend. But the main thing, that must be kept in mind and followed, is that learning with technology must be a kind of fun for the whole family. If the learning process is interesting and useful at the same time it will provoke a positive outcomes for both parents, teachers, and children who will attend school with pleasure and will take knowledge playing. On the early stages of development game is considered to be a leading children's activity by means of which they get acquainted with the surrounding world, get to know the abilities and objects' relations, causation-hereditary connection between notions in objective reality. They like to manipulate with objects, giving them certain sense and roles in their game. Paying much attention to the individual child's characteristics on this developmental stage, teachers and authoritative grown-ups for him should organize this learning process in the way when it will be funny, interesting and useful for a young member of society to study. On this stage children attentiveness isn't stable, so that much must be done to keep his attention by providing a child with frequently changed tasks and various types of work to support his motivation for studies. "Indeed, many of the major changes in social and economic life are ushered in by innovations in technology" (Henderson, Marburger, & Ooms, 1986). That's why more and more modern school implement regular usage of up-to-date technological databases into the learning process, and establish good collaboration between school and parents to provide children with 'foundational skills that will enable them to participate in a technology-rich society and become lifelong learners. Technology training programs and technology resource centres for parents can be a key to fostering learning achievement' (Henderson, Marburger, & Ooms, 1986). As a result, children will receive a highly-quality education. It was researched there is a strong connection between children's abilities and performance in school, but the level of this performance isn't determined by student's ability. Of course, there is a certain connection between homework and academic success, but 'Steinberg found that even typical forms of parental involvement-such as checking homework, monitoring academic involvement from home, encouraging better performance-did not by themselves raise the students' levels of performance' (Steinberg, Laurence, 1996). He also studies successful and unsuccessful parental strategies and it happened, that when a child perform poor at school and has some problems with studies, parents more commonly tend to solve the problem themselves without collaboration with teachers. 'Perhaps they spend more time overseeing their child's homework, offering more assistance with assignments, or setting up more rigorous study schedules for the child to follow' (Steinberg, Laurence, 1996). They can also criticise teachers at school or seek outside help for their children, neglecting the positive influence a teacher can give in this sense to overcome this gap. This strategy often fails and leads to parental dissatisfaction and unreasonable anger towards a child himself or school as an establishment which is meant to provide all the necessary things for their offshoot at this age. Steinberg calls this strategy an 'unsuccessful' one, while he observes a 'successful' strategy as that when parents '"work the system," mobilizing the school on their child's behalf' (Steinberg, Laurence, 1996). In the case of problem, parents give a call to their child's teacher, have a conversation about the problem and decide the ways of its solution. This resultative collaboration also 'strengthens the child's belief in the school's effectiveness' (Steinberg, Laurence, 1996). Steinberg also researched that students with 'warm, firm, demanding, and democratic' parents tend to have 'better grades and greater engagement in classroom activities, devote more time to homework, and have higher educational aspirations than their peers'. When, on the contrary, children with '"disengaged" parents who don't ask about their child's progress, spend time in activities with their child, or know their child's friends may have children who are less interested and less successful in school' (Steinberg, Laurence, et al., 1992). Here appears a conclusion that the way parents treat their children and style of behaviour they choose towards their offshoot motivate or don't motivate students-in-future to make an academic progress in their studies and determine the level of their participation in school and form activities, measuring their integration in a new system of social relations. In conclusion, Ballantine states that 'Parenting academically successful children means consistently conveying the message that school matters, talking with and visiting teachers and school administrators, and prioritizing school performance above other activities' (Ballantine, Jeanne H., 1999). Being knowledgeable about the role parents play in their children successful educating, many schools now 'sponsor family involvement initiatives and activities to improve student learning and participate in family-school-community partnerships' (U.S. Department for Education, 1997). Successful school-family partnerships must be adopted as the sustained mutual collaboration, support, and participation of schools staff and families at home and at school inn activities that can affect the success of the children's learning. There are different strategies which are considered to bring good results of school-family partnership, but I personally want to stress upon some of them, such as programmes aimed at involvement parents in school planning and governance activities as volunteers; telephone interviews with the staff and parents, and focus groups interviews with parents 'provided the detailed illustrations of specific strategies for overcoming barriers to parent involvement' (Hoover-Dempsey, K.V., & Sandler, H.M., 1997). Henderson & Berla after having studied the impact parents make on their children progress in studies at school, pointes out a successful collaboration school-parents strategy that includes such points as 'providing information and training to parents and school staff, restructuring schools to support family involvement, bringing school-family differences, and tapping external supports for partnerships' (Henderson, A. T., & Berla, N. (Eds.), 1994) which can be accepted as good governmental policy to be provided in the sphere of education. Sociologist Paul Amato has investigated the relationship between fathers and their children and found out that it consists of two parts: human capital - father's possession of skills, knowledge, and traits, and financial capital - refers to the income, or goods and experiences purchased with that income, that parents give to their children (Amato, P. R., 1998). This combination provide a child with all the necessary tools for his further education process, containing material and emotional part in itself. Financial capital can be compensated by some other factors, while there is no compensation for parental effect, that makes it being so important one. Ria Vogels in the research looks on the problem of parental involvement in schools and says that 'there is a striking difference between primary education, where parents are highly active, and secondary education, where they are much less involved with the school' (Vogels, R., 2002 ). Parents meeting and report interviews can be very common means of contact between parents and school: 'they are more or less compulsory in primary school, which explains the high rate of attendance. This is much lower in secondary school, except in the case of children in the initial, transitional, years' (Vogels, R., 2002). On the beginning steps of the educational pyramid mothers and father need to provide much support for their children good involvement into school life and show them that they are an integral part of their part, thus parents who work less hours a week can take part in many informal activities organized by school authorities. Every school has to deal with different types of parents, face their demand and interests. 'More cooperation, efforts to achieve consensus where necessary and to avoid some parents being excluded will all require the attention of teachers and principals, alongside the day-to-day work of teaching and supporting pupils. Parents are particularly concerned about the circumstances surrounding education: school opening hours, pupil counselling, finances, safety' that is said to be a great plus for their children's successful integration into the educational system (Vogels, R., 2002). In conclusion, it's worth to stress that however parents are to take their active part in parent-school collaboration process, and tend to know their children's personal features, they must realize that school is, first of all, an educational establishment aimed at bringing up a well-educated, skilled personality, an independent and responsible member of society. That's why when entering school a child becomes dependent mostly on the school rules and directives rather than parental ones; on this second step of his socializing process he appeared in a new system of social relations where parents must only support rather than govern him. The primary importance here is obtained by school. References 1. Amato, P. R. (1998). More than money Men's contributions to their children's lives. 2. Ballantine, Jeanne H. (1999). Getting involved in our children's education. Childhood Education, 75(3), 170-171. 3. Henderson, Marburger, & Ooms (1986) How do families and communities influence children's use of technology 4. Henderson, A. T., & Berla, N. (Eds.). (1994). A new generation of evidence: The family is critical to student achievement (A report from the National Committee for Citizens in Education). Washington, DC: Center for Law and Education. 5. Hoover-Dempsey, K.V., & Sandler, H.M. (1997). Why do parents become involved in their children's education Review of Educational Research, 67, 3-42. 6. Rich, A. (2001) Beyond the classroom: How Parents Influence Their Children's Education 7. Steinberg, Laurence. (1996). Beyond the classroom: Why school reform has failed and what parents need to do. New York: Simon & Schuster. 8. Steinberg, Laurence; Lamborn, Susie D.; Dornbusch, Sanford M.; & Darling, Nancy. (1992). Impact of parenting practices on adolescent achievement: Authoritative parenting, school involvement, and encouragement to succeed. Child Development, 63(5), 1266-1281. 9. U.S. Department for Education, Compact for Learning (1997) 10. Vogels, R. (2002) Parents and School. Parental involvement at school Read More