Abstract
This mixed methods study was designed to look at levels of parental involvement and the barriers that could inhibit parents from spending more time with their child. It looks at Head Start facilities across three counties of Cumberland, Nottoway, and Prince Edward, located in rural areas of Virginia. The children focused on were ages three to five. The purpose of the research was also to analyze the use of preplanned activities that could be sent home by the school at increasing parental involvement with young children. There were five activities sent home with the children to do with their parents and then a post survey was requested from the parent. We found that parents who work more hours per week reported spending less time with their children, but parents who work part time spend more time with their child. The research also concluded that the pre-planned activities did indeed make it easier for busy parents to spend time with their children. The study will promote further research into similar programs and more resolutions for parental involvement to increase.
Introduction
Families are important. And in almost every culture, time spent with family is deeply valued. Families or guardians are pivotal pieces to guiding and understanding life, and as we know, parental involvement specifically plays a key role in helping children better their education. Not only does research back this information, but parenting blogs promote parental involvement in children. They promote the fact that learning and spending time with their child while they are in their care can promote better learning while they continue throughout school (Spreeuwenberg, 2019). Growing up in a single parent household, I understand the value in parental involvement and I especially understand that there are barriers that cannot be avoided. For example, there are parents who work multiple jobs to provide for their children, have a major health issue, or even suffer mental health conditions that can prevent them from spending more time involved with their children (Lamb-Parker et al., 2001).
Our study aimed to fill the gap and look at ways to fix the barrier of time and aid parents in spending more time with their children. Looking at not only preplanned activities and how they could possibly assist but also barriers that might be reducing the parents amount of time spent with their child. Our research suggested that the barrier of work hours held true. Parents with higher work hours do unfortunately spend less time with their children, however it seems like it could be fixed by certain programs. Parents also reported to us that the pre-planned activities helped them spend more time with their child; they suggested it made it easier not having to plan the activity and they were just able to spend the time they had doing something engaging with their child. With research supporting the importance of parental involvement, it is important that new programs and initiatives are being put into place to help parents, who may be experiencing those barriers, spend more time with their children.
Literature Review
There is a significant amount of previous research that supports just how important parental involvement is in education. There are changing definitions that go along with the term “parental involvement” and they are adjusted within different studies. The research discussed in this paper will examine a selection of the different ways researchers have defined, analyzed and tested parental involvement.
Parent Involvement Definitions
Parent involvement has been studied in many different lights, some study it based on race and Socioeconomic Status. However, how people have described and given definitions of parent involvement can differ from time to time. Epstein (1991), has written multiple articles on the ideas and definitions of parent involvement and why they are important. Epstein (1991) concluded five types of parental involvement that include firstly that there are certain obligations we deem as basic obligation as parents, where parents meet the needs of the child. Secondly, are their obligations to communicate with their child’s school (Epstein, 1991). Next is the actual act of involvement with the schools, including teachers and sporting events, etc (Epstein, 1991). Forth, is the at home portion of parental involvement, and fifth is the governmental participation in activities such as Parent Teacher Organizations (Epstein, 1991). Epstein is however, not the only person who finds participation in Parent Teacher Organizations a significant part of defining parental involvement. McNeal (1999), found in his longitudinal study, that parental involvement in PTO actually had a correlation with lower dropout rates as well as lower rate of truancy by the student. In this study, it was also noted that four elements of parental involvement were analyzed in the findings, and the four elements found in parent involvement were, monitoring, discussion, PTO participation, and direct participation in the education (McNeal, 1999). In a longitudinal, cross sectional, meta-analysis multiple forms of parental involvement were studied; the research concluded that the one factor that benefits children the most in achievement, is the parent’s academic socialization of their child, even when compared to home involvement and school involvement (Hill and Tyson, 2009).
SES and Parent Involvement
Socioeconomic Status has often been studied in correlation with parental involvement. It is well known within the sociological community that in a human development cycle, in the early years, humans are very dependent on people to take care of them (Steiner and Mahn, 1996). In a fairly recent study by Arnold, Zeljo, Doctotoff, and Ortiz (2008), researchers studied some families with lower socioeconomic statuses and some higher to middle; their methods were a self-completed survey with a Likert scale (1-5). The results of this study concluded a few things, but most importantly to this paper, is that higher SES was found to have a direct correlation with their students and the likelihood of higher reported parental involvement (Arnold, Zeljo, Soctotoff, and Ortiz, 2008). An article by Lee and Bowen (2006), discussed their findings through another survey about educational attainment by parents or someone within the household of a child actually related significantly with higher rates of parent involvement, including at school participation and at home involvement. Within this research, the educators were also surveyed and reported that students who did not suffer from poverty had higher accomplishments academically (Lee and Bowen, 2006). There was a significant amount of correlation between SES and student success and this study deemed to connect it in some way to parental involvement (2006). Life experiences of the parent were also listed as a barrier; they might inhibit parents from becoming as involved (Lamb-Parker et al., 2001). In one study it was noted that parents with multiple reported barriers were actually rated as less involved by many of the teachers (Lamb-Parker et al., 2001). Barriers included depression, having no form of communication, major injuries or illnesses, having no running water or electricity, and much more (Lamb-Parker et al., 2001).
Next Steps and Gaps to Fill
There are limitations and gaps often found in previous research that other tests and exploration can attempt to fill. One gap/implication for further research mention was “how Head Start parent involvement programs might accommodate the individual needs of parents by encouraging both emotional well-being and self-sufficiency…” as well as “how traditional parent involvement activities and experiences might be redesigned in light of current realities for Head Start parents” (Lamb-Parker et al., 2001, p.48). These questions can lead researchers to look into what is affecting parents from becoming involved, which has been detailed above, and rationalizing how it can be fixed to aid parent in helping their children and getting them involved.
The significance of the research has shown the drastic importance of parental involvement on the success of the student in many different situations. The parent’s barriers, SES, level of education attainment, etc., are all ways that can be analyzed to determine improved ways to aid parents in involvement within their child’s lives. Specifically looking at Head Start programs and noticing the barriers, could aid the research in implementing new policies or practices that support and strengthen parental involvement in the Head Start program.
Methods
Participants
As researchers, it was decided to use a specific sample to analyze and investigate the research question. During the research, 86 families that were a part of the Head Start Program across three counties, Prince Edward, Cumberland, and Nottoway, which are all located in rural areas of Virginia, were used to analyze the research question. The age level of the children was 3-5 years old. Of those 86 families, 45 had responded to the final survey.
Procedure
After construction of the research design by higher ups and previous researches, the research proposal was submitted to Longwood University’s Intuitional Review Board (IRB), for approval. They approved the research based on their guidelines involving research ethics. To further the ethics of the research, included was a statement about voluntariness on the survey sent home with the parents, as well as previously requesting participants to check a box to ensure they understood the content of the research. All of these are requirements of the Longwood IRB and ethics.
Through the process of evaluation research, the process started with five separate activities that were pre-planned to be sent home with the children in the Head Start Program. The research question was tested by the pre-designed activities that were sent home with the children for them and their parents to complete and then the results of those activities will be evaluated by the survey. These activities and their objectives include the following:
The Turkey Plate Activity is designed to see if the child will be able to use their creativity to identify three out of five nouns associated with being thankful.
Animal Dice Activity will look at the child’s ability to identify and demonstrate animals sounds or actions for 4 out of 6 provided animal list.
Noodle Necklace Activity is designed to assess the child’s ability to add noodles to a necklace as well and if the child is able to identify the colors of the painted noodles.
Stress Ball Balloon Activity is looking at the child’s ability to identify emotions on the stress ball and their ability to describe a time they felt one of these emotions.
Sugar Writing Trays were used to analyze if the child was able to identify and write shapes, numbers, and the letters of their name.
After the sent home activities had concluded, paper surveys were sent home with a request to be completed. In attempts to incentivize further responses, a five-dollar Walmart gift card was attached as well. To ensure anonymity in this research, the teachers collected the surveys when completed and returned them to the researchers to be further analyzed.
Quantitative Measures
Quantitative measures in this study will be dependent upon the completion rate of the activities as well as demographic questions and other scaled questions listed on the survey. The independent variable is the hours worked by the parent each week and the dependent variable is if the parent will have increased time spend with the child by completing the activity. Examples of the demographic question include: “What is the highest level of education anyone in your household has completed?”,“What is your race/ethnicity?” and “On average how many hours do you work in a week?” Other examples of the survey questions that were used to collect the quantitative research are matrix questions such as “How would you rate your current relationship with your child/children? (0=Mostly negative, 10=Mostly positive),” and “How involved was your family in this activity? (0=Not at all, 10=Very much).”
Qualitative Measures
The survey included multiple (4) open-ended questions relevant to the activities or possible skills or knowledge gained by those activities, relevant to the children or the parent(s). These questions were as follows:
“The Family Fun Time Activities included a Thankful Turkey Activity, an Animal Dice Activity, a Noodle Necklace Activity, a Stress Ball Balloon Activity, and a Sugar Tray Writing Activity. What was your favorite activity and why?”
“Please explain what your family gained from these activities. How will you use what you gained in the future?”
“Do you think that being provided with pre-planned activities increased the amount of fun time you got to spend with your family after school? Please explain.”
And finally, “If you had to change at least one thing about these activities for future use, what would it be?”
These open-ended questions provided the researchers the opportunity to gain more knowledge regarding the activities’ effectiveness and the possible positive and negative outcomes of the pre-planned activities, as viewed by the parent(s).
Analysis
The analysis of the research was done after receiving the surveys back from the parents. Each survey was looked at separately and then compiled. Quantitative results were analyses and well as qualitative.
Quantitative analysis. The quantitative responses were coded and analyzed using the program SPSS 25. SPSS was used to input the answers to the question we collected quantitative information from, and then provides the statistics necessary for analysis. These results were used to create an analysis of the quantitative section of the survey. For some of the qualitative measures, after further analysis, they needed to be recoded in order to logically corelate with another variable being studied as a bivariate analysis. None of the data was changed, just the levels it was being compared. Specifically, for an open-ended, continuous question that asked parents about their average work hours in a week, we decided to group the answer choices into categories such as: 0-1 hours worked per week, 2-20 hours, 21-39 hours and 40+.
Qualitative analysis. The qualitative responses are analyzed after the transcription of the responses for simpler view and clarification. As the open-ended question were analyzed, commonalties were noted. Specific words and phrases were pulled from the responses and coded to identify themes.
Mixed methods analysis. After an analysis of the two separately, mixed methods analysis was used to compare the open-ended questions (qualitative) with the closed ended questions (quantitative) answers from the survey. When the two are compared, it provides a more in-depth analysis from the two and more conclusion are drawn.
Quantitative Findings
When analyzing our final data, there were multiple avenues to observe for the dependent variable in the research. In this section we are analyzing the interval question “During a typical day, how many hours do you get to spend interacting with your child/children?” The answer choice was a scale from 0-10 or more. The respondents were to circle the one that applies. As we can see pictured in table 1, the average amount of hours parents in this survey were spending with their child a day was 5.985. This was measured out of 34 valid responses to the question.
Table 1
Frequencies of Hours Spent with Child
Hours spent with child
Mean 5.985
Median 6.000
Mode 6.0
The independent variable analyzed in this research was the number of hours the parent/guardian work in a typical week. This was an open-ended question where they were free to write in the blank. As we can see, the large majority of the respondents work 40 or more hours in the average week, that is 16 out of the viable 28 responses or 57.1%. However, it is notable that there are parents within the survey who do not work, or responded that they only work 1 hour, that accounted for 14.3%. 21-39 hours was the second most common response with 6/28 parents reporting or 21.4%.
Table 2
Percentages of Hours Worked by the Parent
Hours worked Frequency Valid Percent
0-1 4 14.3
2-20 2 7.1
21-39 6 21.4
40+ 16 57.1
Total 28 100.0
Comparison of independent to dependent variable is shown below in table 3. The two variables compared were the independent variable of how many hours the parents work in the average week and compared it to the dependent of how much time do they usually spend interacting with their child. The table does bring forth some interesting findings. It seems that the more hours worked by the parent, the less reported to spend with the child. It is reported that those parents who work 40+ hours a week only report spending and average of 4.933 hours a day with this child. Though parents who work only 2-10 hours report spending 7.25 average hours with their child. These responses can show that the more a parent works per week whether it be at a full-time job or multiple jobs, the less they can spend interacting with their child. The highest amount reported of hours work was 56 hours per week. Though it should be noted that those that reported they did not work or were in the range of 0-1 hours only reported spending an average of 5 hours a week with their child. It is possible that there are more factors that could play into the amount of time they are able to spend with their child, and there is room for more research to be completed.
Table 3
Hours worked by parent compared to hours spent with child
Hours spent with child
Hours worked Mean N
0-1 5.0 4
2-10 7.25 2
21-39 6.0 6
40+ 4.933 15
Total 5.352 27
Note. Hours worked by the parent was recoded due to the wide range.
The mean is the mean of hours spent with child.
The findings and comparison of these two variables do hold significant. It is a notable difference in the amount of time parents are getting to spend with this child who work full time schedules versus those that only work part time. Since we know how important parental involvement can be on the child, it necessary to analyse the barriers that may prevent those parents from spending more time with their child/children. The comparison between the 0-1 hours worked per week and only having an average of 5 hours spend with the child, shows just the amount of research that needs to be done to understand why it is possibly the same between those who work 40+ hours. These statistics could go in to play to show if these pre-planned activities that are sent home to the parent and child will truly aid in the amount of time they are able to spend interacting with the child and if it will increase parental involvement.
Qualitative Findings
Increase parental involvement and the encouragement for learning were the two most common themes among the open-ended questions of our survey. Parents filled out the survey based mostly on their opinions and observations of the activities sent home. Those parents did often note the activities they liked the most and what they might possibly change about a few of the materials for the activities used. Other than a few complaints about materials being messy, the parents were extremely satisfied with the sent home, pre-planned activities and even asked for more to be sent home. The parents were quick to note their observation on their child’s educational improvement, but also how their families had gained from the preplanned activities.
Increased parental involvement can be found largely reported in the surveys. A largely noted theme was the answer “yes” to our third open ended question, “Do you think that being provided with pre-planned activities increased the amount of fun time you got to spend with your family after school? Please explain.” This question was designed to gain an insight on the activities ability to boost parental involvement. For example, the most notable response was, “Yes, because being a busy mom of two it’s hard to come home and try to think of something to do.” Another notable example is “Yes. It was something that we made time for we don’t always get that chance.” These responses help us to understand the lives of busy parent makes it hard on them to come up with activities themselves or designate a large amount of time to spend with their child, but the 30-minute, pre-planned activities were able to benefit the parents in spending more time with their child/children. To further give evidence to this point 15 out of 19 surveys had a positive or yes response to the open-ended question.
Parents also spoke about the increased amount of time they were spending with their child in a response to question two, “Please explain what your family gained from these activities. How will you use what you gained in the future?” One respondent stated very simply, “it had us spend more time together…” and another mentioned that their “family was able to bond.” As we know from previous research being more involved in you child’s lives can improve their child in many aspects. One respondent mentioned more “Mommy and Me time with education…”
Being involved in your child’s lives by using pre-planned activities with learning objectives can aid the child in achieving success. The majority of the respondents described how the preplanned activities were able to allow them more time to spend with their child but also how their child or themselves had gained from the experience. Parents also made multiple comments under the free response question about what their child learned or even what their family or themselves learned. It was noted that the words “learned/learning” or “helped” and “gained” were used by 10 different participants throughout the survey to communicate what their child, themselves, or their family gained throughout the activities. Many mentioned how their child and themselves learned “team work” and another participant stated “learned to take turns” and another revealed how their child learned to “follow directions.” A guardian of a child discussed that the sugar writing tray activity was able to help the child learn write their name. These activities appear to promote parental and family involvement, but also show just how important these pre-planned activities can be at promoting parental involvement in education and increasing their child’s ability to write their name. Children seem to be taking away valuable lessons of working together and even taking turns which can aid them in the now and in the future.
Conclusion
As it has been noted, parental involvement of all types is important. Parents spending time with their children aids in their education and life in general. Working with Head Start children ages 3-5 and their parents/guardians gave us insight on the demographics and the barriers that may be faced by the families. And it led us to note the importance of pre-planned activities on these families. Activities that promote learned and parental involvement were implemented and were enjoyed by the families. Parents reported gaining time spent with their children and valuable lessons for their children and themselves. Though parents who work a full-time job or above spend less time with their children, I think the findings of this study suggest that these preplanned, sent home activities could assist parents with increasing their levels of parental involvement. There is a need for more research to be done on similar programs or initiatives, and possibly have a longer running study to assess if it truly increases involvement and if it has the positive outcomes for children. This research has added a positive connection of pre-planned activities and parental involvement in these specific communities and makes a path for possible further research.
References
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Lee, J. S., & Bowen, N. K. (2006). Parent involvement, cultural capital, and the achievement gap among elementary school children. American educational research journal, 43(2), 193-218.
McNeal Jr, R. B. (1999). Parental involvement as social capital: Differential effectiveness on science achievement, truancy, and dropping out. Social forces, 78(1), 117-144.
Spreeuwenberg, R. (2019, November 15). Why Parent Involvement is So Important in Early Childhood Education. Retrieved from https://blog.himama.com/why-parent-involvement-is-important-in-preschool/.