How do parents and school staff conceptualize parental engagement? A primary school case study

Abstract

Understanding what different stakeholders mean by “parental engagement” is vital as school leaders and policy makers increasingly turn to parental engagement to improve pupils’ outcomes. Yet, to-date, there has been little examination of whether parents’, teachers’, and school leaders’ conceptions of parental engagement match those used in research and policy. This case study used online questionnaires to explore the conceptions of parental engagement held by 103 parents and 40 members of staff at one large English primary school. The results showed that only a quarter of school staff conceptualized parental engagement in relation to learning at home and that school leaders appeared to overestimate the impact of school-based activities. This is at odds with previous research suggesting that it is parental engagement with learning in the home – rather than parents’ involvement with school - that is associated with pupil attainment. This suggests that there might be a striking mismatch in the way that parental engagement is conceptualized by researchers advocating for its efficacy, and by school staff devising and implementing parental engagement initiatives. It is vital to raise awareness of this possibility amongst practitioners, researchers, and policy makers because any such mismatch could result in the misdirection of time and resources and the undermining of parental engagement’s potential as a powerful tool for raising attainment and closing achievement gaps.

Have Teachers’ Perceptions of Parental Engagement Changed Following COVID-19? Evidence from a Mixed-Methods Longitudinal Case Study

“…However, the barriers identified by teachers in the survey suggests that the deficit model continues to persist, with half of teachers identifying parents not caring as a barrier. This is consistent with pre-pandemic findings [48] and suggests a continuing need for training that targets teachers attitudes towards parental engagement [79]. On a more positive note, experiences during the pandemic appear to have led teachers to take some responsibility for removing the language barrier.…”

“…The research questions required comparable data about teachers' views of parental engagement, before and after the COVID-19 school closures. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, we had collected data relating to teachers' views of parental engagement at one large English primary school as part of a wider project [48]. Returning to the same school after the COVID-19 school closures provided an opportunity to collect directly comparable data, thus creating a longitudinal case study.…”

“…The data from both surveys (2019 and 2021) were combined into a single dataset, with timepoint added as a dummy variable. The free-text survey question asking teachers to define parental engagement in their own words was converted into a categorical variable using procedures previously established by the authors [48]. This involved using Goodall and Montgomery's continuum to code each response as level 1, 2 or 3 (see Table 3) to enable the 2019 and 2021 data to be directly compared [73].…”

“…For those who view it in relation to parents attending school-based events it will have decreased during the school closures. One motivation for conducting this study was to investigate the possibility that the period of home-learning might have counteracted teachers' pre-COVID tendency towards less effective, school-centric types of parental engagement [23][24][25]48]. The survey results showed a large increase in the percentage of teachers conceptualising parental engagement in relation to parent-child learning beyond the school gates (from 19% to 44%).…”