Parent Engagement In Children’s Education
What Is Parent Engagement?
Families are the first educators of their children and they continue to influence their children’s learning and development during the school years and long afterwards (Family-School Partnerships Framework).
Parents engage in their children’s education in many ways in the home, the community and in schools. Good parenting in the home includes many different kinds of engagement including:
- providing a secure environment
- providing intellectual stimulation and conversation
- modelling constructive social and educational values
- shaping the child’s self concept as a learner by fostering literacy and problem solving
- encouraging high aspirations, both personally and socially.
In addition, parents may be engaged in their children’s education in school contexts in a range of different ways – both formally and informally.
Engagement Is More Than Involvement
Some writers use the term family engagement while others speak of parent engagement. We use the term parent inclusively here to encompass caregivers and other family members. Regardless of which term is used, it is important to recognise that engagement is at the more active end of a participation continuum than is involvement and may be qualitatively different. Pushor and Ruitenberg (2005, p. 12-13) suggest the essential difference is that engagement implies:
…enabling parents to take their place alongside educators in the schooling of their children, fitting together their knowledge of children, teaching and learning, with teachers’ knowledge. With parent engagement, possibilities are created for the structure of schooling to be flattened, power and authority to be shared by educators and parents, and the agenda being served to be mutually determined and mutually beneficial.
Harris and Goodall (2007) conclude that many schools focus on involving parents in various school-based or school-related activities, but emphasise that this constitutes parental involvement rather than parental engagement. Nonetheless, much of the research literature uses the two terms interchangeably.
Most recently, an American National Policy forum defined family engagement as follows:
Family engagement is a shared responsibility of families, schools, and communities for student learning and achievement; it is continuous from birth to young adulthood; and it occurs across multiple settings where children learn (Weiss, Lopez & Rosenberg, 2010, p.3).
Parent/family engagement is not in itself a new idea. What is relatively new is the idea that it be formally enshrined in government policy and integrated systemically into school policies and practices. Weiss, Lopez and Rosenberg (2010) assert that family engagement must be a systemic, integrated andsustained approach, not an add-on or a random act.
Systemic here means family engagement that is purposefully designed as a core component of educational goals such as school readiness or student achievement.
Integrated engagement will be embedded into structures and processes including training and professional development, teaching and learning, community collaboration, and the use of data for continuous improvement and accountability.
Sustainable engagement will have adequate resources including public–private partnerships, to ensure effective strategies with the power to impact on student learning and achievement.
Defined in this way, and with a community engagement wrap around, family engagement represents ‘an innovative strategy in education reform’ and ‘an effective strategy to promote student success’ (Weiss, Lopez & Rosenberg, 2010, p.3).
