The Importance Of Parental Involvement In Children’s Educational And Developmental Growth: An Empirical Study In The UK

Evidence-based Knowledge of Research Context

Participatory approaches is focused at establishing rapport and maintaining trust among participants and researchers to motivate active participation in the planning, incorporation, and assessment of the issue undertaken for the research work (Hall, Gaved and Sargent 2021). Parents’ proactive participation in the children’s academic curriculum enhances the development of the child in various aspects. Parental involvement is an empirically proven parameter in the academic growth and empowerment in the children (Besi and Sakellariou 2019). Parental involvement and scaffolding in educational context ensures that the child’s growth and development is facilitated and the child is academically empowered (El Nokali, Bachman and Votruba?Drzal 2010). With the increase in the parents’ participation in their children’s curriculum, the child will be able to improve their educational skills, achieve their educational goals, increase their confidence and self-esteem and enhance the developmental trajectory of the children. The involvement of the parents in children’s educational purposes enhances the parent-child interpersonal relationship. Therefore, the essay will argue that parental involvement in educational settings results in positive experience in the children on the dimensions of growth and personal development. Furthermore, research design will be focused at enhancing and emphasizing the participation of the parents by reflecting on their own unique practice and also incorporating the experiences of the children through self-report to gather information about how the parental involvement can impact the experience of the children in educational context.     

There are multiple background studies identified to set out the context of the current project. A study by ?uriši? and Bunijevac (2017) reported that young parents’ participation matters for understanding the concerns about childcare, their education, aspirations, and future occupation, professional and personal development. The self-efficacy of parents in understanding and directing children is crucial in participatory teaching methods (?uriši? and Bunijevac 2017). Another study by Larsson et al. (2018) illustrated that children’s participation in the studies might adversely influence the research outcomes because of the uncertainty of information shared by them. In this context, the children might be incompetent in providing adequate and appropriate information about the techniques that the parents use to improve the educational outcomes of the children. However, young parents’ participation is essential for investigating the children’s unique perspectives of the care (Larsson et al. 2018). This creates provision for researcher to explore and develop strategies that will increase the parental involvement and the positive experiences of the children. Thus, the participatory approach effectively contributes to ensuring proper investigation of children’s care and decision-making about enhancing care and development processes for the children. The participatory approach adequately engages young parents in data collection for the research to co-create significant and effective techniques to address the educational and academic developmental issues (Larsson et al. 2018).

Project Rationale

Some studies outlined the fact that parent involvement relies upon the expectations and personal beliefs of the children. In this context, the family-centred strategy is followed where the growth and development of the children are improved through the parents’ collaborative involvement and guidance. Parental involvement is also identified as the investment made by the parents for the educational and personal development of the associated child. Family involvement also comprises the programmes that enhance the parents’ skills to communicate with the child for identifying his or her educational needs (Fasina and Fagbeminiyi 2011).

Apart from this, another study by Zellman and Perlman (2006) has outlined the rationale behind parental participation in childcare. The study reported the role played by the childcare providers, educational administrations and the children in accessing the quality of care being provided to the children. The results show that educated and well-informed parents who engage in cooperative care and work closely with the education system significantly contribute to offering better care to their children for their significant development (Zellman and Perlman 2006). In this relation, a systematic investigation of empirical studies determining school-based interventions involving parents in taking care of children of age-group 4-12 years has been undertaken. The outcomes of this evidence-based research determined that while parents show active participation in childcare settings, children successfully develop five different socio-cognitive determinants, including awareness, knowledge, intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, and positive attitude (Verjans-Janssen et al. 2018). Thus, it is clarified that parents’ participatory responses work effectively to contribute to their children’s development early.

A study by Feuerstein and Landa (2020) offered effective evidence base regarding the involvement of care providers, including parents, in childcare settings to avoid delays in their development. In this regard, cluster-randomised controlled trials were utilised wherein data gathering was done from children and care providers. The outcomes denoted that early achievement intervention programs with the involvement of care providers, including parents, have a significant role in accelerating the social development among young children with atypical development (Feuerstein and Landa 2020). However, a clear gap was identified in the past literature regarding UK-based young parents‘ participatory responses to address the children’s care-related issues.

According to the American Community Survey (ACS) about 95% of the children of the age group 3 to 18 years have access to internet. About 88% had access to internet through the computer and about only 6% had access internet through smartphone. In the year 2021-2022, most of the children with the access to smartphones and internet invested it in learning and self-developmental purposes. Most children require proper assistance from their parents to meet their care-related needs and development issues, especially so in the first fifteen years of their lives (Ofcom 2021). In this relation, the purpose of the study is to investigate and examine the significance of parents’ participatory responses’ increment for resolving issues concerning care and development of children, particularly in the UK.

The rationale for this research project is to address the issues in parental involvement that leads to the enhanced development of the children aged 18-22 years in the UK population. The former literature studies of ?uriši? and Bunijevac (2017) and Larsson et al. (2018) have helped in understanding the importance of increasing the participation of the parents in educating the children to enable the well-being of the children. Young parent participation also enhances the parents’ self-efficacy in assisting the children in meeting the educational and developmental goals. The existing empirical mass of data had focused on the importance of parental participation in the educational development of the children. However, the former research works are not performed in the specific context of any country or region as they talk about the parent involvement on the generalised level. Therefore, there is a gap in the existing literature sources in terms of highlighting the critical data findings for understanding the different measures that help enhance the participatory responses of the young parents residing within the United Kingdom to make them capable enough for looking after the children effectively. This research can add new and specific data findings in the existing research databases by highlighting the key strategies that the young parents of the UK can undertake to increase their participatory responses to assist the children in their daily activities.

The research can efficiently showcase the practical usage of the participatory research methods for analysing the crucial data findings. The research can be used as an ideal informative foundation for future research workers to showcase the implementation of the participatory methods to meet and resolve specifically outlined issues in the community settings. The execution of the current research project enables the identification of the practical viewpoints from the research participants about the key strategies that can help mitigate the educational challenges of the children in the UK and enhance the contribution of the young parents towards assisting in personal academic growth.

As this research will be executed in the form of participatory research, therefore the proactive involvement of the parents and the children in the research process is essential. A self-report questionnaire will be developed including items that directly focus on exploring and gathering information regarding the parental involvement in the children’s development from the perspective of the parents and another scale will be used in determining the parental involvement from the perspective of the children. Therefore, two questionnaires will be used in collecting two distinct sets of data, aiming at increasing the researchers’ knowledge about the extent and impacts of parental involvement in childcare. A parental involvement scale was developed by an empirical study by Dohner-Chávez (2014) to gather data about the perspective of the children on parental involvement. The parental involvement questionnaire developed by the study was divided into three sections – the first section focused on asking the participants to report the primary reason for pursuing the particular college degree, the second section consisted of rateable parental involvement items which used five point Likert scale and the third section involved asking the participants demographic questions like age, gender, ethnicity and GPA. The data collected by using the parental questionnaire for the parents will be used to substantiate and relate with the data collected from their counterpart questionnaire meant for the children. The data collected through the process will be analysed to study any association in the perception between the parents and their children regarding parental involvement.

During the data collection from the parents and the adolescents, the parents will interact with their children in a manner in which the parents gather a better understanding about the needs, beliefs system, aspirations and preferences of their children. A participatory discussion will be induced into the date collection process which will enhance the understanding between the children and their parents through the exchange of interpersonal data related to the perspectives of the children and the parents about the parental involvement. This method is beneficial in nurturing strong and understanding interpersonal relationship between the young parents and their children. The participatory discussion will be aimed at increasing understanding, communication, respect and mutual collaboration among the parents and their children. The legal and ethical domains of the research will be addressed by ensuring that the personal and sensitive information shared by the children and parents in the group discussion will be kept confidential and a written informed consent from both the parents and the children will be gathered before including them in the study (Kallio et al. 2016).

The sample size of 5 young parents residing in the United Kingdom will be selected with the help of purposive sampling. The purposive sampling will recruit the sample of young parents aged between 18 to 22 years employed and have children aged between 2 to 5 years. Purposive sampling method will be used to ensure that samples that do not meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria are excluded from the research on the basis of availability.

Further, the research will utilise pragmatism philosophy that helps resolve issues with the aid of worldly experience and practical senses and social interaction to support the argument. In the proposed study, pragmatism supports integrating experiential knowledge that is also observed in a real-world situation (Maarouf 2019). The research is also likely to apply the adductive approach to obtaining logical facts from the real world and reaching an effective conclusion to determine the practical implication of integrating parents’ participatory responses when looking towards their children (Larco et al. 2021). In this manner, the adductive approach is noted as pertinent for the proposed research.

In addition to the interview, another type of participatory method deployed for performing this research work is the survey questionnaire method. The selection of the survey questionnaire method is justified as this method provides fair chances to all the selected sample of the research respondents to reflect their opinions for the specially outlined close-ended questionnaire tool (Tourangeau 2018). Unlike the other participatory methods such as visual research and photography that enable the collection of the observatory and practical data findings from the research participants, the survey method allows collecting unpublished facts by meeting the gap of the past research works. In this regard, the survey questionnaire uses relevant subjective close-ended questions to collect factual data regarding the young parents’ involvement rate in UK settings. The survey will be performed on the randomly selected data participant sample of 50 young parents aged between 18 to 22 years residing in the UK and comprising children between the age segments of 2 to 5 years of age. The random sampling strategy is justified because it is helpful for an equalised selection of the data participants without the possibility of any research bias (Etikan and Bala 2017).

This research will incorporate the thematic data analysis method to analyse the interview-based data findings. The reason for selecting the thematic analysis strategy is that it helps compare and validate the qualitative interview opinions regarding the secondary data findings (Castleberry and Nolen 2018). Further, the thematic analysis is also assistive in deriving the unique themes from the existent literature sources and then analysing the interview data participants’ responses to solve the research problem (Terry et al. 2017). In addition to the above, a graphical data analysis strategy is also performed in the current research work because the study has derived statistical data findings from the research participants. The use of the graphical analysis method is justified for this research project because it helps present the numerical data findings utilising statistical tables and graphical elements such as pie charts that are easily interpretable. MS-Excel is used for performing graphical analysis of the survey data (Peck, Olsen, and Devore, 2015). Hence, this research will be executed in line with the two different types of data analysis strategies: qualitative and quantitative analysis (Sahin and Öztürk 2019).

Ethics are critical elements in conducting an empirical research as it ensures credibility and authenticity of the research project. There are multiple ethical principles to be considered in the proposed research. One of the ethical considerations is to retrieve consented permission of young parents for being involved in research (Biros 2018). In this context, the researcher must candidly explain the aims, objectives, proposed methods, implications and drawbacks, if any, of the research (Biros 2018). In this relation, it is decided to share a standard consent form with the UK-based young parents to convey the purpose and importance of their involvement in this research work. The research would only consider the voluntary participation of all the participants to avoid any ethical issues. The participants will be outlined their right to early withdrawal or cessation of participation in the research if they feel violated in any manner (Barrow et al. 2021). Confidentiality will be maintained in preserving the data that are collected from the participants at every stage of the research (Surmiak 2018). Along with this, the personal identity of the participants would also be securely and anonymously kept. The secondary data for performing a literature review would be obtained only from authentic, credible, and peer-reviewed literature (Bell, Bryman, and Harley 2018). Additionally, plagiarism and data theft would be avoided to maintain research work’s originality. In addition, the credibility of scholars would also be maintained by mentioning in-text citations of their names at the ending of the text. The dignity of participants, scholars and community people would be preserved throughout the research work (Hair, Page and Brunsveld 2019). The research is to be conducted in a manner that promotes the collective wellness of the community and the participants. Therefore, the research design should be focused on reducing the risk of harm for the participants. In this way, validity, originality, authenticity, and confidentiality related ethical principles are followed in the research.

The first key ethical area to consider in a research involving children as young as two to five years is the potential possibility of harm and benefits. The potential possibility of physical and mental risks will be assessed (risk assessment) before the initiation of the research and if any harm is identified, they will be immediately removed from the research settings. Second, the gathering of informed consent from the children to preserve their freedom and rights is very difficult as children in the concerned age group do not have the intellect or understanding of the research to consent voluntarily to the same (Barley and Bath 2014). If the children are rendered incompetent in providing consent to the research, the parents can consent on behalf of the children through the legal dimension of power of attorney, in the best interest of the child (Nijhawan et al. 2013). The researcher must also familiarize oneself with the children to promote researcher-participant relationship (Barley and Bath 2014).

It is summarised that the research project is to be organised to examine the significance of increasing involvement and participation of you having young parents having the age of 18 to 22 years to address the issues and needs of looking their children. To serve this purpose, a mixed-method study is to be organised involving surveys and interviews to collect quantitative and qualitative data for supporting the research argument. The research will follow all ethical principles like participants’ consented involvement, confidentiality, data anonymity, plagiarism avoidance, and scholarly credibility management. The results of this study will support evidence of the benefits of parental responses in addressing issues related to children care and child development in all dimensions.

The timeline for the research project is given below:

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