How Staff Is Encouraging Parental Involvement - Essay Example

How Staff is Encouraging Parental Involvement in an Inner School at Foundation Stage Roll No: Teacher: 16th April 2010 University Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Abstract 3 How Staff is Encouraging Parental Involvement in an Inner City School at Foundation Stage 4 Chapter 1: Introduction 4 Statement of the Problem 9 Research Questions 11 Definition of terms 13 The Need for Study 13 Abstract The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of positive parental involvement in a child’s academic success in the school of my practice, especially in the case of children attending foundation stage class in an inner city school. The research was also undertaken to understand the benefits of staff working in partnership with parents for the benefit of children; discuss progress and assist in early identification of any problems; and build social and educative development through a wide range of activities. Trust is a fundamental thing, which results in a successful relationship between parents and the school staff. Open door policy helps staff acknowledge the importance of parents as the primary caretakers of a child. The staff needs to be friendly and approachable. In an early childhood setting, it is important to develop relationships between parents and a childcare worker, which are based on trust (Whalley, 2003). The study was conducted with five sets of parents who all live in an inner city community, and are from different background and cultures, who were interviewed using a prepared interview guide. Their responses were analysed to determine the school experience, home structure, and the home–school relationships developed by parents to promote high academic achievement among their children. The result of this study shows the contribution of parents towards the academic achievements of children and thereby the need of successful interaction between parents and staff to share strategies Therefore, what occurs at home has a significant impact on what happens in school. This relationship will assist parents support their children to achieve their full learning potential. How Staff is Encouraging Parental Involvement in an Inner City School at Foundation Stage Chapter 1: Introduction My research focused on the role of parent involvement in increasing the child’s intellectual capacity, attitudes, and academic achievement across all subject areas of the National Curriculum. Based on information from the National Child Development, my study found that the involvement of parents improved children’s prospects at school (Buchanan, 2001). Parents are the most important people in a child’s life because they are the people who matter most to him/her. Communication between the school and the parents must be maintained throughout a child’s time in school (Burnham, 2002). Therefore, the staff working in the setting should communicate and encourage the registered parents all the time to meet the needs of the children. Communicating with parents can be verbal or in the form of a written letter. Written communication includes parents’ notice board, by which they can be informed about the curriculum plan and other developments in school. Verbal communication includes parents and teachers meetings, sending out reports and feedback of the child’s improvements, inviting the parents for social events or workshops etc. Everyone who is a parent has the right to participate in decisions about a child’s education (DfEE, 2000). The role of the school and staff is to recognise the parents as the primary caretakers of the child. All parents should not be treated the same; they are individuals who have different needs and come from different backgrounds, cultures and have different expectations of their child’s attitude towards life. In my school of practice, parental involvement has been recognised increasingly as an important element in building school success (Levin, 2004). However, it is important to understand some of the differences that might exist between inner city parents and staffs in the education setting. Many children attending school in inner cities are living in average homes where the sole provider does one or more jobs to bring food on the table and keep roof over the heads of the family. This means that parents might not be available to help the child with schoolwork or homework because they may be at work. Research of Siraj-Blatchford et al. (2000) demonstrated that children do better in settings where practitioners share a pedagogical approach with parents, and where this happens most effectively is where the Curriculum is jointly shared. It has been found that such approach greatly affects the level of achievement a student is motivated to strive for. However, this does not mean that educators should care more about the home life of children in the schools. It is important for parents of inner-city children to know that even though they may need to work long hours to meet the needs of the family, there are alternative ways for the children at home to get the attention and school support they need. This means it is important for parents and staff to work together to match children in need with a programme that can help them succeed academically. An important aspect of Every Child Matters (2003) is that staffs at school are aware of additional services to support and strengthen family life, thus to an extend supporting the families. Parental involvement and support are major factors in a child’s academic performance. Therefore, parents are an integral part of the question if we are to assure that every child succeeds in school. Co-operation at home and at school may increase progress and ensure children behave well in class (Balls, 2007). Parents are obviously the best people to bring up their children. Therefore, it is also important that the staff exchange information with parents in terms of keeping them in touch with any issues or progress of their children. Another key area that the staff can communicate with parents is the bad behaviour of a child. Keeping parents informed can have a positive impact on a child with behaviour issues. Involving parents in behaviour issues requires some sensibility (Rogers, 2000), when Belsky (1984) reminds us that the home influence is the most enduring and has more impact than any other on a child’s life. The high need for parental involvement is also seen in Epstein’s research (Epstein, 1995). Using Epstein’s framework of parental involvement, staff in school can choose from a menu of six alternatives in which to involve parents. These practices include parenting, communication, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making, and collaboration with community. In the learning process, Whalley et al. (2001) emphasise the role of parents as “equal partners”. The 1989 Education Act attempted to change parents from passive recipients of the education service to active consumers for the benefit of their children. In the actual policy, parents have the role of clients and consumers to monitor their children’s education. For sure, parental involvement has changed significantly. Now parents have the influence and power on their children by choosing for example, a particular school for their children. Indeed, Every Child Matters (2003) and the Children Act 2004 highlighted the central role that parents have in supporting the five outcomes for children, which are: Staying safe; Being healthy; Achieving economic well-being; Enjoying and achieving; Making a positive contribution. Within this Act, local authorities are directed to have regard to the importance of parents and other persons caring for children in providing the well-being of children (DfES, 2004). This Act, as a tool can be used to evaluate the impact of parental involvement on the child’s academic achievement. Parents must be more involved in their child’s schooling if they are to assure that their children succeed at school and in their later life. Statement of the Problem This research examined the relationship between positive parental involvement and a child’s high academic achievement, especially for children attending inner city schools. Parental involvement in education can mean different things to different people. What exactly is parental involvement? There is no clear definition of what parental involvement is; conversely, what research has found is that parental involvement in a child’s progress is multifaceted. Things such as looking or checking the child’s home work, reading a book to the child, or even discussing the child’s progress with teachers are all important aspects of parental participation (Hardman, Drew & Egan, 2002). I believe, with the ever increasing amount of multicultural intake of pupils, teachers and other staffs in schools are facing new challenges to allow parents and children to relate to and engage in the world around them. Studies such as those of Rutter et al., (1979) and Tizard et al. (1988) have shown that school performance can be more or less professional and that its effects on children’s attainment can vary accordingly. Educating a child in an inner city school is a challenging task. This task becomes an even greater challenge if there is little or, no effective parental involvement to assist a child in improving his or her academic achievement. High academic achievement in foundation stage is evaluated with the incorporation of a range of formative assessment strategies to check a child understanding of the prescribed lessons and to monitor his or her progress. One of the strategies I used was questioning (open questions), which has good impact; because it developed the child’s higher thinking skills. Other methods included checking children’s works and giving them immediate feedback, self-assessment (thumbs up/thumbs down) and peer assessment. Roger (2003) shows the way this can affect practice, “. . . informal, observational assessment is effective starting point for assessing children’s competence”, while Bredekamp and Rosegrant (1992) point out that successful work with a Curriculum that emphasised relationship and participation was going to require assessment that took the same view. After examining the data of my school of work practice, I found that the school is successfully educating children, and working effectively in partnership with parents, including those from ethnic minority groups. An inset handout (2008) shows the demography at this school is 60% White, 21 % Black, 18% Asian, and others. Vygostky’s theory, the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD-1993) is the “. . . relation between the planned instructional steps and the steps of children’s learning and acquisition process”. To work with the ZPD in the foundation stage, the teachers and other staff needed to be aware of the development stages of the children and be able to plan for quantitative changes in the teaching and supporting towards a certain goals. Indeed, the staffs are to keep parents informed about their children’s developments and achievements. Parents and caretakers are to be consulted and allowed to express their views about services (“Every Child Matters”, 2003). It is imperative that schools develop systems to support and assist children in meeting their goals and needs. Research Questions This investigation aimed to answer the following research questions: This chapter is concerned with the methodology used including the limitation encountered in the gathering of data for my research. The purpose of the study was to find out the positive relationship between parental involvement and the academic achievement of children in school. I selected the qualitative method of research. This was essential because my study is related to parental involvement and the opinions of parents and staff in terms of attitude. As pointed out by Sliverman (2000) in social research, methodologies may be defined very broadly (e.g. qualitative or quantitative) or more narrowly (e.g. grounded theory or conversation analysis). Methods are specific research techniques. This includes qualitative techniques, like statistical correlation, as well as techniques like observations, interviewing and audio recording. Anderson (1999) seeks to define problems, select research designs, develop methodologies, collect, analyse and interpret data and then report findings. Qualitative research as the main data collection instrument depends on the researcher. Here, the researcher puts himself or herself in the research situation. Theoretical issues depend heavily on the particular study, the researcher’s discipline and also, arguably, national intellectual styles (Galtung 1990-1). Again, I used the case study approach for gathering information as I thought it could be used among parents and staff and its findings could encompass the whole population. As a result of this, some feminists have suggested the increased use of qualitative research in order to better reflect the nature of human experience (Reinharz, 1979; Fox Keller, 1980; Depner, 1981). The findings of this case study aim to evaluate the parental involvement in children’s academic life. For this purpose, I conducted interviews with staff and parents. The use of this approach gave me an opportunity to understand the views of parents and staff in supporting children. Other researchers have similarly reported that interviews were taken to place pupils with whom they could share experiences (Hobson, 1978; 1981). These also give me a judgement on parental involvement employed in my school of practice. Another aim of this case study was to see how parental involvement is related to their children’s achievements in school. The social research is based on quite different assumptions about what the researcher wants to achieve of the prospect (Gage, 1989). However, in my view while we must recognise that there are some profound differences in approach, it is important to keep methodology discussion open. Only in that way can we hope to make progress towards resolving the problems that lie at the heart of the disagreements. One of the purposes of this case study is precisely to facilitate and encourage such discussions. It was Anwar (1990) and Bhrolchain (1990) who stated that our own position is that “ethnic” data can have a useful policy purpose at which it defined with specifically related to the policy needs. The use of interviews gave me the opportunity to see different views of pupils. Upon this background, I employed interview as my research instrument to help me with the data collection. I chose the staff of my school of practice for interviews and my former school of placement namely Saint Mary’s RC Primary School and Colverstone Primary School in Hackney (London) and I selected five sets of parents from each community to form the basis of my research. My intention was to use pupils from different backgrounds in order to gain a wider perspective of data for my research. Definition of terms Help: the extent to help the child to complete a task or schoolwork High Academic Achievement: the scores that place children at the top of their learning goals. Time Management: the extent to which the parents establish rules and time limitation on the kind of television watched, on homework completion, and on study time at home. Support: the level of scaffolding that parents create to assist their children in terms of positive achievement. Parental involvement: - proving a home support to children, - designing effective partnership between school and home - parents’ help inside and outside of school - provide information for families to help children at Home with homework related to the curriculum. The Need for Study Parental involvement has an impact on improving children’s academic outcomes. Most researches will agree that positive parental involvement and support are major factors in a child’s school achievement. They are required to support children and a range of other school events (Bridges, 1987; Bastiani, 1986), and act as teacher model that can be sub-divided into four foci: parents in the classroom, parents and the curriculum; accreditation schemes and home-school contracts. Parental involvement is one of the crucial elements for children’s academic success. Parents are responsible for ensuring that at the right age, their children receive full time compulsory education either at school or “otherwise”. Parents whose children are on a school roll have a duty to ensure that their children attend classes regularly. This appeared to confirm the experience of many parents that progress through the education system. (Dale, 1989). Children’s daily activities should be effectively monitored to ensure that they do not miss school or take their lessons lightly. Schools in turn, are strongly encouraged to adopt a policy of contacting parents on the first day of a pupil’s unexplained absence. Plowden report exhorted teachers to enter into “partnership” with parents, and embodied a consumer’s view of home-school relationships (Partington and Wragg, 1989). This is certainly not an easy task with simple solution. It will require staff to develop collaboration and partnerships with the child, their family, and the community. As Connell et al., (1982) remind us, the relation between teachers and parents has to be understood as a class relation, while Crozier (2000) states that parents and staff, influencing children’s education, will help them in academic achievement. This study is significant because parents in inner cities who have children in inner city schools are plagued by varied societal, academic, and emotional issues. These issues adversely affect the children’s capabilities to focus on schoolwork, thus inhibiting the acquisition of formalised skills necessary to achieve success in school. Parents should be able to contact staff about any problems they are having at home (Wadsworth et al., 1993). It is important that the school staff develops systems to support and assist parents and their children in meeting their learning goals. The result of this case study will add to the body of knowledge needed by staff to improve academic achievement for the benefit of children. This case study focused on the positive aspects of parents’ lives and their interactions with their children resulting in the improvement of their education. In order to enable as many parents as possible to act as resource to the school, staffs needs practical management and communication skills (Kroth, 1985). This case study examined positive parental involvement in their children’s academic life, which helps them to achieve more in school, especially for those children attending the foundation stage. The result of this study shows specific strategies that parents use throughout their children’s academic life, which help them in realising their goals. In addition, the study outlines criteria that schools should use to engage parents as partners in the education and needs of their children. Read More