[MUSIC] Welcome back. This is course a, developing relationships and we are now starting week four. And during this week, we are looking at various aspects of parent involvement for student success. What I would like to look at today is the connection between parent involvement and student success, and what we can say is that there is now plenty of research, so much so that we can not argue against it anymore, that suggests that parents and family involvement in their child's education. Contribute significantly to how well students learn. And what we could argue is that everybody in the school actually benefits from families being involved. The first thing we need to look at, though, is to define a family and this is not as easy as it sounds. It is certainly not as easy as it used to be because we now find that the word family means so many different things to so many different people. We could have a traditional family and in the west that might be a mother and a father and one or two children. In other parts of the world it might be the mother and the father and five or six children, and in other parts of the world it might be the father and one or two mothers and four or five children. Family means different things to different people. It might be a blended family where you have people from different backgrounds coming together. You might include your grandparents and your uncles and aunts within family. So what we need to think about here is if we are going to use the definition of family as it applies to schools, we have to think about it in terms of anyone that is actively involved in raising and educating the child. So if we think of a particular child, their family is everybody that is involved in that activity. So if we think of family involvement, what are the benefits for children? Well, as you can see from this list, there are a number of things that we can argue. What we can see is that it is easier for children to learn if their family is encouraging them, they do better, and the research tells us that, if their parents are actually involved. If the parents read to the child, if the parents help the child with their homework, children do better. Children can actually access more activities if there are adults to help at the school. So there are a variety of reasons and benefits that children get from having parents involved. We could also argue, however, that there are benefits for parents and these benefits go beyond simply having their children do better. They have a better understanding and a better knowledge of what the school is doing if they are actively involved. They have more information on how to support their child. They may gain some practical knowledge on parenting that they might not have themselves. They, perhaps, become more confident as they become more interacted with other adults around their children, and one of the things that we can say is the more active a parent is, and interactive with children, and interactive with the school, the more positive they are of what teachers are doing. They are much more supportive of what teachers do if they know what the teachers are doing. Parents are not having an easy time at the moment. We find that being a parent is perhaps harder now than it ever has been before. Here is some examples of what is happening in the United Kingdom, at the moment, examples of the types of pressures that parents have to find. They have to respond to their children in different ways children who are now staying up until all hours of the night. Children who demand that their Playstation is available to them 24 hours a day or who have tantrums if they do not get their own way. So what we are finding here is that parents are now trying to do the right thing by their children, but perhaps do not know what the right thing involved anymore, and what we can do is to suggest that schools and teachers can support them in the system in ways that will help their children learn. So there are benefits for teachers, the major benefit for teacher is that we can actually expect our students to do more. We end up with higher results if parents are assisting it. We end up having a more effective teaching of learning activity. It helps us to understand the diversity in our classroom. If I am involved with the parents and I get to know there cultures, and get to know there backgrounds. I get to know some of the languages. I get to know how they think. So I appreciate parents more, particularly if they are involved in the things that are going to help me. What that will do for teachers is to improve morale because teacher who feel supported by the parent group. So what we can find is that there are a number of benefits for the people within the school, but there are also benefits for the school itself. If parents are actively involved in the school, we find that they are more supportive of what the school does. They have more positive attitudes. There has been a lot of research in the United States where people are asked, what do you think about schools? Are schools doing well? What we find is, that the same parent who says my school is doing very well. When asked a general questions about schools in America will say, no, schools are not doing very well. So they will have a different opinion about schools in general at my school, the school my child goes to because I know the people involved, I know they are trying to help my child. So the benefit for the school is that there are much more positive attitudes. You end up having better attendance. You end up having better behavior, higher achievement, and much more positive schools to go to. So there is benefits for all involved, for the student, for the teacher, for the parent, for the school itself. So how can we look at developing this? Well there is some research that suggests there are a many of things that occur. We have found that if we are effective in involving parents in our school activity then students improve what they do, their learning is better. What we can argue is that we need to be careful to make sure that we are culturally sensitive, that we recognize that people from different backgrounds, different socioeconomic backgrounds or ethnic backgrounds may have different perceptions about how involved they might be. It might be a barrier for some people. If you have people from a lower socioeconomic group that did not enjoy their own school, and did not last in school for very long, they might be scared of coming and helping. We might need to encourage them in different ways. We also need to recognize that in some respects, if the parents are actively involved with their children at home, they can have more influence than simply by coming to school activities. There are lots of ways that parents can help their children at home without necessarily coming to the school at all and what we have found is that over time children and parents both change their attitudes towards being involved. As children get older they do not want their parents involved as much and as the children get older, the parents are probably getting busier. Many parents have gone back to work, and so they can no longer be involved in the same way that they were when they had two or three small children. So what we find is that parent involvement in elementary or primary schools, could be quite high, but as the child gets older, the parent involvement drops off. So if we only have one very limited view of what parent involvement means, then this might happen, but what we also need to recognize is that parents might need help and support in how to help their child effectively with things like hard work, with things like places that they can visit, with things like helping them to improve their reading and so on. Not all parents are going to be equally skilled and so we may need to provide different levels of support for different ethnic and cultural groups, and we might need to provide different sorts of understandings about how parents can be involved but what we have found, and this is international, that we have improved student learning when families get involved. So what can we say are the opportunities available? Well what we can say is to be effective we have to look at programs that focus on individual learners. We need to really start thinking about each child, how they learn, and then we can start thinking about how parents can best help those children. We need to establish a positive, strong, home environment for our children. If we want our children to do homework, they need to have somewhere to do it. It needs to be a place that enables them to focus their attention on the work. Finally what we recognize is the teachers are not going to learn this by themselves. If we want teachers to be good at involving parents in their child's education, we need to provide them with some sort of knowledge, some sort of practice, some sort of understanding, and, most importantly, some sort of support. So, what are some of the factors that we need to consider when we are thinking of parent involvement. We have to recognize that the first teacher a child will have will be the parent. Approximately a third of all their language that a child will learn in their lifetime is already be available to them by the time they reach school. This has not come naturally, it has come by the activities that parents would go involve themselves in. So parents being their first teachers is a very important concept, but we also need to recognize is that out of the past 40 or 50 years, family have changed quite dramatically. Not only are there different understandings of what a family is, but the amount of time that families have to work with their children has changed quite dramatically. 20 or 30 years ago there might have been the situation where many parents were able to take some time off work. For a period of years to raise their children and then they would go back to work when the child went to school. Now, in many western societies, and some other parts of the world as well, parents will only spend a short amount of time being with their children and then they will have to go back to work, and this means that there are all sorts of other factors that impact all child learning. Some children will be left with other members of the family, with grandparents, or their uncles or aunts, or so on. Other children will be put in some sort of child care situation with other children with people they do not know, and so what we have to look at is if children are in these circumstances, the ways in which parents can be involved in their child's educations changes. It changes quite dramatically. Not everybody in the school will know how to actively involve parents so it is important for schools to support teachers In getting better knowledge about how parents might be involved, and how to encourage parents to be involved. And finally, we also need to recognize that most parents do not know about how important they are once their child goes to school. There is a tendency for parents to think that we can turn everything over to the teacher once children go into a primary school but we now know from the research that the more the parents stays active in their child's education, the better the child will be in terms of their learning. So what are some guiding principles we need to think about? Perhaps the most important one is that we need to recognize that families and schools are equal partners. Neither can do the job without the other one supporting them, and that is the most important element that we can think about. We then need to consider some of the others on this list here. We need to respect the diversity of families and recognize that each of these families brings with them a different set of needs. We need to recognize that involvement in a child's education might take many different forms, and we'll talk about some of these. It does not necessarily mean that a family has to be at the school. We also need to recognize that if we want to involve their parents, it is going to take time and effort on our part. Remember, it is the teachers and the principals that are in the powerful position. Parents will not go into a school unless they are invited. Even if they are invited, some parents will be too scared. So the parents will only come into the school if the teachers take the time to build a relationship. This needs to be done over a period of time, it can not be done overnight. So each teacher with their own set of parents needs to work on how often we can encourage parents to be involved in their child's education, but even if we are looking at parent involvement, there are a number of other things we need to look at, and that brings in various social issues as well. We need to recognize that some children do not live with their parents. Some children are living with foster parents. Some children might have been abused. Some children have run away. We have all had children in hospital or care. So we have all of these issues plus the issues of lone parents, working mothers, abused children, and so on, that have to be considered when we are thinking about involvement. What I would like to do in the next session is to look more at recognizing the parent as the child's first teacher, and if we do that, how this might change the way which we see them as partners in the child's education. So, we will see you in the next session. Thank you. [MUSIC] [NOISE]
