Parent Involvement: The Benefits of Parent Involvement in their Child’s Learning
Geassamyne Germano
Longwood University
SOCL-345-01/02
Dr. Pederson
November 30, 2021
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to provide families with five different types of activities provided though Head Start to improve parent involvement, these activities were put together with the purpose of being fun and to give the families a chance to improve on the amount of time they spent doing activities with their child. The survey that was sent home along with the activities was a cross sectional, where the information collected would be coming from three different Head Start schools and the age of the children involved were between three and five, we had a small portion of 11 surveys that got returned to us.
The qualitative findings of this study should be results on the areas where the themes fun, family engagement and happiness were mentioned. The theme fun was mentioned twice out of the eleven questionnaires that were returned. The theme family engagement was brought up nine times out of the eleven total surveys returned. And the theme happiness occurred three times out of eleven.The quantitative findings of the questionnaire should be in the areas of “How much did your family enjoy this activity?” and “What is your relationship to your child/children who attend Head Start?”. For the first question the mean was at 9.3, the medium was at 10 and the mode was also at a 10. For the second question the data indicated that eleven respondents that completed the survey with their child were their mothers.
The whole survey and activities was all designen by Longwood University students to see what the levels of enjoyment and involvement would have been. After the 51 surveys were sent back home with the children.
Introduction
The biggest issue when it comes to parent involvement is a common factor between a lot of families which is the lack of time. In a household there could be any number of factors that can influence the why parents have stated that the lack of time is the issue. According to the article Parent Involvement is Key to Student Success wrote by Public School Review, the point made in this article is that lack of time is the top reason parents give as a why they are not as involved in their child education.But on the other side is the school and teachers that also state that they don’t reach out more actively to parents because they also feel the absence of time to do so. Within the factors listed are, the lack of a relationship between parents and the school, the lack of activities to be done and sometimes even a language barrier when talking about Latino families.
The main problem in discussion is how the lack of time is a big factor on whether the parents are involved or not on their child’s educational path. Students learn best when parents are interested in what they live in the school environment schools have better results when they have a good relationship with families.Several studies point to the importance of a good relationship between parents and school.
When parents actively participate in the lives of their children and engage even in the child’s school routine, the tendency is for students to dedicate themselves and try harder to feel loved and supported.The father who seeks to know about his children’s relationship with teachers, classroom behavior, grades and difficulties in the subjects is usually willing to help the teacher overcome challenges in the classroom, adopting complementary measures at home.This inevitably promotes an improvement in student performance.
Literature Review
Joyce Epstein (1991) from Johns Hopkins University created a framework that identified six different types of involvement including parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making and community collaboration, as it is stated in the “Parent, Family, Community Involvement in Education” article by The NEA Labor Union. Those six types of involvement are the bridge between families, the school and the community that will benefit on the outcomes of each student. Another framework conducted by Harris and Robinson (2016), pointed out that the reason why parenting involvement has a gap of agreement is because the concept on itself has been defined differently throughout studies.Joyce Epstein (2008) from Johns Hopkins University created a framework that identified six different types of involvement including parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making and community collaboration, as it is stated in the “Parent, Family, Community Involvement in Education” article by The NEA Labor Union. Those six types of involvement are the bridge between families, the school and the community that will benefit on the outcomes of each student. Another framework conducted by Harris and Robinson (2016), pointed out that the reason why parenting involvement has a gap of agreement is because the concept on itself has been defined differently throughout studies.
The involvement of families in their children’s educational careers has been a topic of discussion, many studies have been conducted to figure out the relation between childrens’ outcomes in school and how much their families encourage them towards success (Henderson & Berla 1994, Gonzalez, Willems & Holbein 2005). According to Carter (2002), family encouragement has a remarkable effect on their child’s outcome throughout not only their elementary years but also in middle school. She also found that outside factors, such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity and cultural background also play a role in the success of students. Zeedyk, Werritty and Riach (2008) study conducted a study in the UK, showing that even just the mere availability of programs for parents have had a great impact on their ability to access their childs’ necessities. The researchers used a thematic analysis method to attain long-term results on how much more prepared parents felt to assist their children with their academi path.
The whole point this study is trying to prove is that there’s a lot of benefits that could potentially come from parenting involvement including how much improvement there is on academics, better classroom behavior, reading at home greatly improves reading skills and lift teachers morale. All this benefits are mentioned in the article Parental Involvement is Key to Student Success (Chen, 2021).
Data and Methodology
Instrument
A survey questionnaire was created by the 40 members of the Social Research and Program Evaluation team at Longwood University. The survey contained both open-ended and close-ended questions. Items on the survey were designed to evaluate SMART objectives of each of five activities that were completed the previous week by Head Start families. Beyond the objectives of the activities, participants were asked about their experiences with Head Start, take home activities, and demographic information about their households.
Sample
The non-probability sample for this study was based on the 51 children (ages three to five) who attend Head Start in two rural counties in Virginia. After activities were sent home with children for five days, the questionnaire was sent home with all 51 students. Attached to the questionnaire was a children’s book, to incentivize families to return the survey. Guardians of the children were asked to complete the survey and return it to the Head Start teacher the following school day. 10 questionnaires were returned the next school day. Teachers then sent a reminder home with children to return any outstanding questionnaires. This resulted in 1 more questionnaires being returned. Overall, there was a 22% response rate.
Quantitative Analysis
Quantitative analysis of the returned surveys is based on the close-ended questions. For this study the dependent variable is parent involvement. The item from the questionnaire that was used to operationalize this was “How much did your family enjoy this activity”. The answer choices for this item were a scale 0-10; 0 = not at all and 10 = a great amount. The independent variable for this study is demographic information. The item from the questionnaire that was used to operationalize this was the relationship to the child/children who attend Head Start. The answer choices for this question were mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, grandparent, guardian and other. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze these variables.
For the quantitative findings, the following variables were examined using descriptive statistics.The independent variable being “What is your relationship to your child/children who attend Head Start?” the answer choices were: Mother, Father, Step-mom, Step-dad, Grandparent, Guardian, or Other.The overall meaning of this data would be to simply identify who completed the activity with the child.The data indicated that eleven respondents that completed the survey with their child were their mothers.
The independent variable is “What is your relationship to your child/children who attend Head Start ?” and from the data collected the majority of the respondents were mothers and only one other respondent circled the option other for being the child’s aunt.
The quantitative findings, the following variables were examined using descriptive statistics.The dependent variable being “How much did your family enjoy this activity?” The respondents had to answer thai question with a zero to ten scale with zero being not at all, and ten being a great amount. One respondent rated their enjoyment at a six, one respondent rated their enjoyment at a seven and eight respondents rated their enjoyment at a ten.The overall meaning of the data is to show the amount of enjoyment that the repondants plus their child had during activity four. The positive correlation from both independent and dependent variables is “How can parent/family encouragement stimulate children’s involvement” through the activities provided.
Table 1
Enjoyment rates
| Mean | Medium | Mode | |
| Mother | 9.3 | 10 | 10 |
The dependent variable is “How much did your family enjoy this activity?” shows that eight respondents had and enjoyment rate placed on ten, repondant seven enjoyment rate was a six and repondant eight enjoyment rate was a seven.
The bivariable analysis from both independent and dependent variables correlate towards each other based off parent involvement.The chart below shows that out of all the participants their relationship choice to the child/children was mother and the rate of how enjoyable the activity was, got to a 9,3.
Table 2
Variables Correlation
| Relationship | Enjoyment | |
| Mother | 1 | 9.3 |
The table above shows that the overall rate of enjoyment for this activity was a 9.3, according with the mothers that completed the activity with their child/children.
Qualitative Analysis
Qualitative analysis of the returned surveys is based on the open-ended questions. The open-ended questions on the survey were “what did your family enjoy most about these activities”, “what recommendations would you suggest to make these activities better”, and “what are your favorite ways to spend time with your child?”. To answer the research question, how can parent/family encouragement stimulate children’s involvement, inductive open coding was used to determine reoccurring themes in the participant’s responses.
In social research research class we have been working on data and methods for a survey focused on five fun activities. The activities included dino buddie, painted leaf pressings, breaded clothespin butterfly, fall themed scavenger hunt and astronaut pudding. The goal was to see how much parent involvement from each of these activities would show the relationship between parents and their children on how much time they spent together during all activities and would result in some quality time between child and parent. Once we got the results back, eleven respondents out of fifty-one participants completed the survey, only a small portion from what we were expecting.The overall themes that I instantly thought of were fun, family engagement and happiness.
Starting off with the theme fun, it appeared twice out of the eleven surveys we got back. This information would also be of great used for us researchers Because it showed how effective the activities were when it came to being fun for both the parent and the child. For example respondent number four said “It brought a lot of fun and laughter for our family, my kids were able to learn a lot”.We also had responded numbered ten state “they had a lot of fun”.With this results we can conclude that the activities fulfilled their purpose of being fun and giving the families a fun activity to complete together.
Following the theme fun now we’re going to focus on the family engagement theme. This theme appeared nine times out of the eleven surveys.Having this feedback is a successful outcome for our survey because knowing that overall the families got together and spent time to complete this activity.Having so many parents report back saying they had such a good time while doing the activities and that it also helped their family to just have something to do together. Respondent number one said “We did a each activity at least twice. I loved the organization plus how detailed the instructions were and the materials being included”.Respondent number two stated “Spending time together and learning things”.Responding number nine said “The interaction with our child and the fact that the rest of the family was interested in participating as well”.After all the positive feedback we can only conclude that the purpose of the activities were achieved.
The third theme being happiness was brought up by three different respondents,having happiness as one of the themes would also show one of the main purposes of the Head Start activities by being able to provide activities that would result in with the family having a good time together.Responding number three said “the family time we spent together. So happy doing activities”. Responded number five stated “We love the arts and crafts for the scavenger hunt activity”..And responded numbers six said “being together and helping each other”.The results we can come to after collecting this information is that this activities did provide the families some amount of happiness.
Conclusion
The whole issue that was trying to be accessed for this project is parent involvement, and how it’s benefits can improvement their child success throughout their school career. We all agree that the task of being a parent isn’t at all easy specially when trying to jungle being a parent with adult life. A new social norm must be stablished because every family is a different family and they all should be considered their own normal. The support a child gets from their parents is essential and it should be given throughout their whole school careers, many factors can make that parent and child interaction more difficult but the main purpose of this project was to created a fun but fast to complete activities for both parents and child.
The results achieved after the whole process was done, 11 respondents out of 51 complete the activities sent out along with the survey, which is considered low compared to previous years. A great part of participants reposted back with a positive feedback, they all have positive comments about all five activities, the comments included they had a lot of fun while completing the activities, it made the whole family get involved to complete the project and the also stated how much fun the children had while completing the activities. Even with a low rate of surveys that we received back, we considered the data to be positive because all 11 participants were more than satisfied with how easy and fun completing the activities were and everyone that joined in the activities had fun also.
Reference
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