Engaging Parents On School Landscapes

Engaging ParentsOn

School Landscapes

Parents as Partners Webcast

Monday, May 5th, 2008

Prepared by

Debbie PushorAssociate Professor, College of Education,

University of Saskatchewan

debbie.pushor@usask.ca

Involvement:

The word involvement comes from the Latin word “involvere” which means “to roll into.” Students, parents, and community members are “co-opted”; “brought into the act by another party.”

Involvement:

Involvement may include activities such as having parents organize events, arrange fundraising activities, be audience members or support classroom activities.

Example:

A school is working to improve student academic performance. The school holds a reading day and invites parents and community members in to read with students.

Engagement :

The word ‘engagement’ comes from ‘en’ meaning make and ‘gage’ meaning pledge

– to make a pledge to; to make a moral commitment. Students, parents, and community members who are engaged are “brought into the act” because of care and commitment.

Engagement :

Together, staff, students, parents, and community members:

• create the agenda, • make decisions, and • take actions.

Children, families, the school and the

community all benefit from this engagement

Example :

A school wants to work toward improving student academic performance.

Through personal contact, all staff invite students, parents and community members to a forum to discuss what together they could do to positively impact achievement.

Together, they actualize the plan and integrate the learning community’s suggestions into the school. They review their progress by measuring and sharing outcomes with all involved.

Engagement

EngagementInvolvement

school’s agenda

hierarchical

unidirectional

school’s power

teacher knowledge

“hotdogs & plumbing”

shared agenda

side by side

reciprocal

shared power

teacher & parent knowledge

teaching & learning

Key Finding

“Parent and community involvement that is linked to student learning [in other words, parent engagement] has a greater effect on achievement than more general forms of involvement”

(Henderson & Mapp, 2002, p. 38).

Key Finding

In Jeynes’ meta-analysis (2005), he found it was not particular parent actions

•attending school functions•establishing household rules•checking student homework

that yielded the statistically significant effect sizes.

Key Finding

Instead, it was things which create “an educationally oriented ambiance”

–a sense of support and standards in the child’s mind – which produced the

strongest results.

- a “new story” of school. It interrupts the “old story” of parent involvement to put a new story in its place. It redefines what we do, how we do it - and why.

Parent Engagement

Engaging ParentsOn

School Landscapes

Parents as Partners Webcast

Monday, May 5th, 2008