Introduction
In today’s society the involvement of parents and teachers in a students’ education is well needed due to the child having the ultimate decision of their educational future. The goal of this study is to get more insight and to identify good practice in the relation between parental involvement and children’s school achievement. Ones’ parents can only push them to a certain level before the child starts thinking for themselves. It’s the parents’ responsibility to ensure that their kids become well-rounded people.
Education falls under that purview. If the teacher lacks what the child needs to know then the parent has to cover the slack and make sure the kid is learning what they need to know. But at the same time, there should be a teacher/parent partnership when it comes to a child’s education. To establish these partnerships, the focus is placed on the teachers. So really, who has the ultimate responsibility of a child’s education, the parent or the teacher?
Parental involvement is highly essential in a child’s academic for the basis of their success. It is important for them to be involved for their child’s well-being, achievement, and success in the long run. This is an important area of study in today’s society because people blame the fact that teachers are not fully committed in the teaching of students and that parents are not really involved in their academics but really it should be a partnership.
Parental involvement in children’s learning does not only affect learning results but it also influences motivation, attention, task consistency, receptive vocabulary skills, and oversee problems in the classroom. Besides parent involvement in the home situation and at school there is one factor that should be considered in this context which is parents’ belief and high expectations of their children’s success in school.
Parents look at children in a way that promotes the internalization of social and educational goals. By engaging in educational things with their children at home like homework, reading, and modeling parents show their expectations for achievement. This factor brings the school goals inside of the home.
Parents were considered to be responsible for raising their children at home and teachers were responsible for their education at school. Today we see parents do the roles that teachers are supposed to do. Teachers and parents are becoming responsible for the education of children, both at home and in school. From the separate responsibilities of parents and teachers on children’s learning development, research reports a difference towards a form of partnership. In order to maintain this partnership, there must be trust between each individual.
Recent studies showed that open communication is a frequently found keyword in reports on the relationship between school and family (Fantuzzo 2004). When parents and teachers have that connection to effectively communicate to help towards a student’s progress in school they are ensuring that they genuinely care about the academics of that student. For example, parent-teacher conferences help teachers and parents talk about and help assist the status of the student and how to help them maintain their grades moving forward. Oppose from this, there has been concerns from the concept of equality between parents and teachers.
Lareau (1987) concludes that teachers do not strive for equality with parents. Teachers expect parents to respect them because of their placement in schools and their decision making in the classrooms. Sometimes teachers think they have leverage over the parent because they teach the child material that they should know and sit in a class with them for at least 6 hours a day. That’s when the term power comes into play, teachers think they are the bigger authority in this situation. But a parent knows their child more than any teacher does and their involvement is defined by affection, love and aspirations for their children and teachers’ involvement could be defined by professionalism and knowledge of children.
Expectations
Continuing out this investigation it is the responsibility of the parent to ensure that the child is doing good throughout their academic career. The parent has to be there for their child years from now while as they go along they are to remember what they were taught in their previous years and they would need their parent’s help in order to do so until they get to a higher education level. The child is only with those teachers for a limited time so after that, the child is practically on their own, but with the help, if the parent it wouldn’t be that way.
Method
Using the experiment method, I would conduct a test to figure out rather or not the parent or the teacher is more effective for a child’s education. I would conduct this experiment by having a teacher give out information to the child during class without giving them any background on it (teach yourself) and they should go home and have the parent help them with for a week. The next week would be vice versa the teacher teaches the child and the parent does not get involved at all. By the end of the second week we will see if the teacher is responsible or if the parent is responsible.
Conclusion
The end result is that many parents and teachers find themselves in opposite spectrums. Teachers believe that they have the most power in a child’s education because they are the ones who help assist in the classroom and have to make sure the child learns the concept before leaving the class.
On the other hand, the parent is the one who sees the child every day and should be able to reinforce what has been taught in the classroom. Teachers cannot accomplish their goals as teachers without help from the parent so essentially, it’s the responsibility of both parties. But until the teachers actually communicate with parents and find out more about parent’s opinions towards their involvement in the school, the possibilities for working together with parents will be little to none. If teachers allow the parents to be their partners and if parents maintain a significant role in working with them, the students will succeed in school.
References
- Epstein, J. L. (2016). School, family, and community partnerships: Preparing educators and improving schools
- Fantuzzo, J., MacWayne, C. & Perry, M.A. (2004). Multiple dimensions of family involvement and their relations to behavioral and learning competencies for urban, low-income children. School Psychology Review
- Harpin, L. J. (2011). Promising partnerships: Ways to involve parents in their children’s education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education.
- Lareau, A. (1987). Social Class Differences in Family-School Relationships: The Importance of Cultural Capital. Sociology of Education, 60(2), 73. doi:10.2307/2112583
