Parental Engagement in children's learning

Educators' expectations and understandings of parental involvement in our nation's schools are often disconnected from the reality of students' home lives. This qualitative study purports that educators often lose opportunities to more fully understand and serve students, particularly when perceptions of parental involvement and home-school-community relationships are not accurate or expansive enough to appreciate the nuances of different cultural, economic, or geographic circumstances. Parent (or caregiver) engagement, as we define it, encapsulates both parent voice and parent presence. Parent voice implies not only that parents have ideas and opinions about their children, but also that educators are receptive to this voice, allowing for an open, multidirectional flow of communication. Similarly, parent presence refers to actions related to the voices of caregivers. Based on a grounded theory model of qualitative research, we used a small, theoretically derived sample of parents involved with a local parent education program to further understand parent engagement, presenting detailed descriptions of conversations and writing done by participants through focus groups and interviews. From these data, new models of parent voice and presence emerged. These models act as precursors to a reconfigured and more comprehensive model of parent engagement. Crucial to the final model is an understanding of parent participation in children's lives that is fluid, robust, and specific to context and culture. The final model presented herein is a combination of parent voice and parent presence, whereby children's well being is central to the interactions. (Contains 3 figures and 3 endnotes.)

Engaging parents in their children’s learning has the potential to improve students’ attitudes and their academic achievements. Until now, however, we have lacked an overview of the ways in which beginning teachers are educated and up-skilled to invite and support parental engagement in Australia’s 350 accredited teacher education programs. To address this knowledge gap, the Federal Department of Education and Training commissioned the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) to undertake research, conducted in collaboration with the Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE). The result is this report, which analyses the existing literature on parent engagement and researches the myriad ways in which Australian teacher education programs prepare graduates to foster parents’ active engagement with their children’s learning. Just under half (21) of Australia’s Faculties and Schools of Education have outlined how their programs prepare teacher education students to support parental engagement. They have discussed constraints and challenges, the research base and rationale for their approaches and their aspirations for future developments and improvements.
The 21 teacher education providers, which responded to a survey sent to all 43 ACDE member institutions, represent a broad spread across states, territories and sectors. The sample reflects the diversity of public and private initial teacher education institutions at over 80 locations in regional and urban Australia and online.

Parent involvement in and engagement with children's learning has been shown to strongly influence student achievement, engagement, motivation and school completion. However, parent involvement decreases once students reach middle school, as subject content gets harder, the number of teachers increases, and students are less likely to share their homework and learning with parents. To this end, the flipped learning approach has received growing attention, with evidence of improved higher order thinking and collaborative skills, and increased transparency for parents. This article explores school leader, parent, student and teacher perceptions of the flipped learning approach, through the lens of a one-year case study of two rural South Australian schools, in order to uncover how the approach affects parent engagement. Findings reveal that, whilst stakeholders feel that the flipped approach is beneficial for absent students, to reinforce content and increase student responsibility, it has not improved transparency for parents, with a disconnect between what schools think parents know and are engaging in, and the actual level of parent engagement in student learning. Recommendations for schools implementing the flipped learning approach are provided against a bioecological model, adapted for this study. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic  Parents play a vital role in the learning journey of students, although less is known about their perceptions of flipped learning (FL) in schools.  FL has been gaining popularity, however far less research has been undertaken in schools. What this paper adds  Stakeholders feel that FL supports students who are absent or who require content reinforcement, increases students' sense of responsibility, centres parent-teacher conversations more on learning, and has the potential to increase student engagement.  Whilst teachers feel that FL increases transparency for parents, parents and students do not.  Misconceptions of parent engagement and knowledge of school processes can hinder FL efficacy. Implications for practice and/or policy  Schools should conduct a needs analysis and implement a whole school approach to parent engagement and implementing FL, with school leaders playing a key role.  Increased support of FL through funding of equipment and professional development, as well as less staffing changes.  Gaining support from governing council, and offering combined FL workshops for parents and teachers may increase transparency and strengthen links between home and school.

It is well known from the research literature that parents are important when it comes to determining individual school experiences, achievements and careers. However, in what way parental background influences education outcomes is less clear. In this article, the focus is
on academic socialization as a specific aspect of parents’ influence on children’s school achievements. The main aims are to discuss the relationship between academic socialization and school performance and to discuss some implications of this relationship for the educational
system’s role as a producer and reproducer of social inequalities. Firstly, an understanding of the concept of academic socialization is presented. Secondly, implications of research findings pointing to the importance of academic socialization are critically assessed in terms of social inequalities in education. Thirdly, the educational system’s presupposition
for academic socialization is discussed in terms of inequity in education and symbolic violence.

Parents’ experiences and satisfaction with their child’s compulsory school are affected by several factors. Some, such as parents’ education and marital status, are social factors, while others are school factors that local leaders and school personnel can address. Findings build on data from an online questionnaire to parents in 20 compulsory schools in Iceland (n = 2129). Factor analysis generated two factors: communication and teaching. These, together with a question on parents’ overall satisfaction with the school, were used as outcome variables in a regression analysis exploring what influences parents’ satisfaction with the school. The majority of parents were satisfied, which may make it is easy to overlook those who are dissatisfied. Parents who felt that their children had special needs that were not acknowledged in school were more likely to be dissatisfied than other parents. Educational background was also influential. Single mothers were overrepresented in the group of unsatisfied parents; they experienced more difficulties in communicating with school personnel, believed less in the possibility for parents to influence the school, and more frequently experienced that their child’s need for special support was not met in school. The findings imply that equity in Icelandic schools is disputable.

The aim of the present study was to adapt a measure of maternal scaffolding of children's learning and to examine its relationships with children's self-regulated learning (SRL) skills and cognitive performance in different cognitive domains, such as visual-spatial and language tasks. Thirty-five pairs of mothers-preschool children participated in joint problem solving. Maternal supportive behaviors were examined by means of a structured observation form tapping mothers' Cognitive and Metacognitive Support, Emotional-Motivational Support, and Autonomy Support. The children's actual SRL skills and cognitive