Broadening the Myopic Vision of Parent Involvement.
Year: 2009
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Parent involvement in schools – what do you believe about it? Disparate groups, like front office staff at a school, preservice teachers, teachers, school administrators, and parents respond quite differently to focus questions, which might include: What do you see as important aspects of parent involvement? What parents do you think would probably not want to be involved in par-ent involvement activities at the school? Do you know enough about parent involvement? Is it important to be informed anyway? Survey questions queried teachers, classified staff, parents, administrators, and preservice teachers on their perceptions of parent involvement. The purpose of this study was to unravel common threads within the data, which revealed a very narrow understanding of parent involvement. This narrow understanding needs to be broadened if, indeed, we ever want to see parent involvement as a systemic, important foun-dation for student learning. The study discloses that each group had a disparate view of what constitutes parent involvement. The least vocal group in this dis-cussion is the parent; the most vocal is the teacher. The conclusion is that it is inherently important to provide training for preservice and current teachers to help broaden the often myopic vision of parent involvement.
Author: Margaret M. Ferrara
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2156988535