The Significance of Involving Parents in Their Children’s Learning Process
In the process of the children’s education, there are three factors at play – the children themselves, teachers, and the parents. The significance of the children’s parents involving in their learning process in the school has been a topic of discussion for more than a decade. According to Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1997), when parents acquire more information on their children’s education from the school activities, their views change over time and they become more understanding of their children’s activities, and this acts as the greatest motivator from the perspective of the parents to involve in their children’s learning process in schools. On the other hand, Yoder and Lopez (2013) argue that parents should engage in the school activities for the enhancement of their children’s academic performance. According to Fronius et al. (2016), the term restorative justice has been imparted to the social movement that is trying to make a change by promoting peaceful and non-punitive approaches of addressing crime, violation, mistake, and problem solving in various institutions. In the context of education, the restorative justice is interwoven with ethical perspectives. Ethics are a set of moral principles that guides a person to conduct himself properly. Therefore, it discusses the idea of good behavior. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate ethical implications in building school-family-community partnership with special attention to the emphasis it puts on communication with parents.
With the help of Epstein’s six types of school-family-community involvement interactions, Griffin and Steen (2010) shows that, there is an increase in the involvement of the parenting and collaborating with the community interactions, and also the school counsellors have developed a novel partnership interaction. On this context, the standard 3.7 states that the teachers need to describe extensive strategies and according to those, plan activities and programs that give the parents/carers opportunities to get involved in the learning process of their children (educationstandards.nsw.edu.au, 2018). In addition, the standard 7.3 says that the teachers must initiate effective communication with the parents/carers and create opportunities for them to participate in their children’s learning progress and the school’s educational priorities (educationstandards.nsw.edu.au, 2018).
As Griffin and Steen (2010) also states in their study that, school-family-community partnerships are the ideal approach to satisfy and support the needs of the children. Partnership means the relationship between two or more parties based on reciprocity and equality. In the context of education, it is used to describe the relationship between school, family, and community for the benefit of the children. It also implies that all the members in this partnership would be treated equally. On this regard, it is crucial that the school maintains an effective communication with the families and communities in order grow a strong partnership. They also suggests that personalised communication with the parents to inform them the progress and concerns about their children can build a warm environment for them as well as for the teachers and students to communicate. According to the standard 5.5, the teacher should demonstrate extensive knowledge on how to present a report on the students’ achievements and why it is crucial to keep accurate records of those (educationstandards.nsw.edu.au, 2018). It is important to provide accurate, informative and timely reports to the students and parents/carers, and to evaluate and revise them according to the needs of the students and parents/carers. Therefore, it can be said that the communication between the parents and the school acts as a significant factor in the implementation of the school-family-community partnerships.
The Role of Effective Communication in Building Partnerships
The role of the school counsellors are notable in this process of building a communication between school, family, and community, as they are the medium through which the school communicates with the respective parents of the children. The study of Griffin and Steen (2010) indicates that there are five aspects of school-family-community partnerships – Communication, volunteering, home learning, decision-making, leadership and advocacy – that need the attention of the school counsellors. Their suggestion on creating personalised communication with the parents and inviting the parents in planning and developing programs for their children shows a way of creating strong partnership between the school and family, and also helps the progress of the children. Inviting parents to volunteer in the schools in the communities gives them the opportunity to work on a broader scope. It is even more helpful for the parents who have children in more than one school. In addition, it would retain the school counsellors from unnecessary paperwork and phone calls. Communicating with the parents to notify them about the curriculum and guiding them for the homework would make the parents able to help their children with their study. Parents with lower education would benefit from this strategy.
The school not only looks after the needs of the students abut also the needs of the parents. Therefore, organising workshops for educating the parents, guidance activities, and group projects can help the parents integrate more with the school. This way, they can also help in the decision making process of the school. As the study recognises the school counsellors as the leader and advocate of founding a strong basis for the partnership between the school, family and community, it recommends that the school counsellors should initiate and lead the way to partnership. The significance of this study is that it does not only facilitate partnership for the parents and schools in general, but makes suggestions that are helpful for parents who have difficult situations.
The research of Walker, Shenker and Hoover-Dempsey (2010) suggests that parents’ behaviour regarding the involvement in their children’s learning, both in school and in home, majorly depends on the invitation they receive from the teachers as well as the children. This means that the parents become more enthusiastic about their active participation in the children’s learning when they are provided with opportunities and encouraged to do so. They argued that the learning process of the students depends on their attention to and retention of modelled behaviour, and the later reproduction of it. The first step of their suggestion for constructing an effective form of involvement with the parents is to assess the view of the school personnel and teachers regarding parent involvement, and understand the barriers and different values between that are at play. The second step is to hire staffs that have the competence to manage and overcome those barriers to create respectful and trusting relationships with the parents.
The Importance of School Counselors in Developing Partnerships
Increasing the socio-cultural awareness among the staffs and teachers through training is the third step of their suggestion. This step also emphasises on the sensitivity level of the staffs and teachers to manage the partnership with the parents. On this context, the standard 7.3 is about the teachers’ engagements with the parents/carers (educationstandards.nsw.edu.au, 2018). Teachers need to understand that their job requires them to show sensitivity and confidentiality. The effectiveness of their work lies in the fact that they have to establish a trusting relationship not only with the students but also with the parents/carers. Therefore, they must aim to establish respectful collaborative relationships with the parents/carers as well for the well-being of the children. There are multiple types of families around us, such as single parents, same-sex parents, living-in parents, noncustodial parents, foster parents. The fourth step is the most crucial step on the context of partnership as it recognises the complexity of the conceptions of family or parents. Therefore, it recommends that the school counsellors must have a clear understanding of the different needs and sensitivity level of these families, and communicate and collaborate accordingly.
The fifth step of their recommendation is that, in order to understand the children better, the teachers should seek help and advice of the parents. This suggestion is also supported by the standard 1.5 as it says that a teacher need to apply different teaching methods to satisfy the specific learning needs of the students of different abilities (educationstandards.nsw.edu.au, 2018). In order to do so, the teacher must have adequate knowledge and understanding of various strategies that helps addressing the specific need of the students and develop programs and activities accordingly. Further, he needs to evaluate those teaching programs and activities based on the different levels of assessments of the students. This process of planning programs and evaluation can be done accurately with the help of the parents. As the standard 3.7 suggests that teachers should plan the activities and programs in a fashion that it requires parent participation (educationstandards.nsw.edu.au, 2018), the sixth and the seventh steps of the recommendation by Walker, Shenker and Hoover-Dempsey (2010) is about doing that. These steps say that, keeping the cultural background of the family in mind, the teachers should give such homework to the children that need the family to participate in it.
They also make recommendation on increasing the families’ capacity to involve in their children’s learning. On this regard, it is crucial to employ restorative justice. According to Evans and Vaandering (2016), restorative justice, in the context of teaching, is a way to improve the engaging capacity of the people of the learning communities and their environment in order to make it supportive, worthy, and dignified. The restorative justice is about replacing old discipline system of punishment such as expulsion, exclusion, and suspension with alternative approaches that are supportive. Rather than punishing, it believes in repairing. Restorative justice education promotes respect, dignity, just learning environments, creates healthy relationship, repairs harm, and transforms conflicts. As per Walker, Shenker and Hoover-Dempsey (2010), school counsellors have the leading role in building partnership with parents. It is their responsibility to support and encourage the school personnel to engage with parents and students in ways that are open, authentic, genuine, and affirming. In addition, they also suggest that the school counsellors should impart equal responsibility and importance on the role of the family in the process of learning. In order to that, the school personnel as well as the students should acknowledge the parent volunteers for their role in the process. Therefore, it can be said that this research recognises the existence of different types of families and recommends actions that helps all those kind of families to participate and involve in the learning process of their children.
Solutions for Effective Parental Involvement
As opined by Van Laere, Van Houtte and Vandenbroeck (2018), the engagement of the parents in the preschool learning has a major impact on determining the children’s success in the school. In their research, they identified the gap between the economic and sociological perspective of parent involvement in the education system, and explained that this gap occurs due to variant and lack of capacity of the parents to be engaged in the preschool learning of their children. Although single parent family has been seen as a threat to the prosperity of the children who belong to such family (Kingston et al., 2013), the researches discussed above have not recognsied such threat in their studies. Moreover, they recommended that building partnership with any kind of family would require sensitivity of the teachers and school counsellors. They even recognised the special needs of such families and children and suggested to manage the relationships with according care.
Moll et al. (1992) argue that, based on the household and community resources of teaching, it is possible to improve classroom teaching and learning process. Analysing the social history, that is the origin and development, of the households and the labor history of the parents would provide bodies of knowledge on the households. Moll et al. (1992) referred these bodies of knowledge as ‘funds of knowledge’. Their research suggests that teachers should visit the households of the students to make a qualitative research to acquire the fund of knowledge to understand the background of the students and their specific needs, and to gather ideas to improve the methods and process of teaching. Moll et al. (1992) claims that their research is innovative in terms of learning as in this scenario, the teacher would become learner, and in that way, would establish symmetrical bonds with the parents. Another significance of this study is that it values every kind of origin and labor history of the households, believing that each of them can teach new things. Therefore, in this process the students get broader scope to demonstrate their skills and nourishing them. The key characteristic of this exchange of knowledge is reciprocity. On one hand, the teachers gain knowledge to develop innovative programs for teaching the students; and on the other, the families have more involvement in the learning of their children. The common goal is the proper nourishment and progress of the children. Thus, it can be said that it is a unique way to develop partnership between family and teacher.
Reviewing the articles, it can be said that the role of communication between the school and the parents are most crucial element in building school-family-community partnerships. Both the terms restorative justice and ethics in the context of education refer to a system that views every factor equally and gives equal importance to them. There are two key suggestions made in the researches. One is that the students and families should not be discriminated based on their family type or culture, and treated according to their different needs. Two, parent involvement in the learning process helps children to progress more, therefore partnership should be built based on effective communication.
References
Australian Professional Standards For Teachers. (2018). Retrieved from https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/wcm/connect/8658b2fa-62d3-40ca-a8d9-02309a2c67a1/australian-professional-standards-teachers.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID
Evans, K., & Vaandering, D. (2016). The little book of restorative justice in education: Fostering responsibility, healing, and hope in schools. Skyhorse Publishing, Inc..
Fronius, T., Persson, H., Guckenburg, S., Hurley, N., & Petrosino, A. (2016). Restorative justice in US schools: A research review. Justice & Prevention Research Center, 1-33.
Griffin, D., & Steen, S. (2010). School-family-community partnerships: Applying Epstein’s theory of the six types of involvement to school counselor practice. Professional School Counseling, 13(4), 2156759X1001300402.
Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., & Sandler, H. M. (1997). Why do parents become involved in their children’s education?. Review of educational research, 67(1), 3-42.
Kingston, S., Huang, K. Y., Calzada, E., Dawson?McClure, S., & Brotman, L. (2013). Parent involvement in education as a moderator of family and neighborhood socioeconomic context on school readiness among young children. Journal of Community Psychology, 41(3), 265-276.
Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into practice, 31(2), 132-141.
Van Laere, K., Van Houtte, M., & Vandenbroeck, M. (2018). Would it really matter? The democratic and caring deficit in ‘parental involvement’. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 26(2), 187-200.
Walker, J., Shenker, S., & Hoover-Dempsey, K. (2010). Why do parents become involved in their children’s education? Implications for school counselors. Professional School Counseling, 14(1), 27-41.
Yoder, J. R., & Lopez, A. (2013). Parent’s perceptions of involvement in children’s education: Findings from a qualitative study of public housing residents. Child and adolescent social work journal, 30(5), 415-433
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