Conceptions of Parental Engagement and the Implications for School Leadership and Policy

背景：父母的参与是有效教育的重要组成部分，并一再与改善学生的成果。因此，世界各地的政府政策都将父母的参与纳入其中。家长参与是英国学校中一个备受瞩目的问题，也是英国教育标准局检查框架中的一个特点。尽管父母的参与受到了大量的关注，但这个词的定义仍然很模糊。它用来指一系列活动（如家长之夜、家庭作业支持、家长在学校的志愿活动、家校协议以及家长在家与孩子一起阅读）。先前的研究表明，与学生成绩提高有关的是父母在家里参与学习，而不是父母在学校的参与。在硕士阶段，我研究了英国一所大型小学的工作人员和家长如何将家长参与概念化。令人担忧的是，只有25%的员工将父母参与与家庭学习的关系概念化。学校领导似乎也高估了学校活动的影响，而忽视了家庭和社区活动。这表明，可能有一个令人担忧的不匹配的方式，家长参与的概念化的研究人员主张其功效，以及它是如何概念化的学校工作人员设计和实施家长参与的举措。需要调查这是否是一个普遍存在的问题，因为如果学校领导人对家长的参与存在误解，那么学校很可能会将不成比例的资源分配给旨在改善家长与学校关系的无效的校本活动，而不是支持有效的以家庭为中心的学习参与。我之前的案例研究也强调了学校工作人员和家长所感知的障碍之间的巨大差异。近一半的工作人员表示，主要障碍是父母不关心子女的教育。与此同时，所有家长都表示希望参与孩子的学习。更好地了解全国家长和工作人员所持的信念有助于为教师培训提供信息，并解决误解，以便建立有效的、相互尊重的伙伴关系。研究问题：1.学校领导如何定义家长参与度？2.学校工作人员渴望什么样的家长参与，他们认为有什么障碍？是否存在群体差异，例如在学校或学校类型中的角色差异？3.父母渴望什么样的父母参与，他们报告了什么障碍？是否存在组间差异，例如性别、种族或SEND？4.对学校领导和教育政策有什么影响？参加者：来自英国小学的家长和学校工作人员，涵盖各种不同的背景。数据收集工具将使用匿名在线问卷从工作人员和家长那里收集数据，以最大限度地提高从一个大的地理区域收集和分析的回复数量。必要时，父母调查将被翻译成其他语言。数据分析我将使用Goodall和蒙哥马利（2014）的连续体来编纂工作人员和家长提供的父母参与定义。该连续体描述了三个层次，从第一级（活动重点是家长参与学校）到第三级（活动重点是家长参与孩子的学习，承认家长的作用和家庭活动的价值）。分析的重点是，围绕家长参与英国小学的愿景是否存在共识，以及学校工作人员是否使用与研究人员和政策制定者使用的定义相匹配的定义。

Background: Parental engagement is a vital component of effective education and has repeatedly been linked to improved pupil outcomes. As a result, parental engagement has been enshrined in government policies around the world. Parental engagement is a high-profile issue within English schools and features in the Ofsted inspection framework. Despite the amount of attention parental engagement has received, the term remains poorly defined. It is used to refer to a whole continuum of activities (e.g. parents' evenings, support with homework, parents volunteering in schools, home-school agreements, and parents reading with children at home). Previous research suggests that it is parental engagement with learning in the home - rather than parents' involvement with school - that is associated with increased pupil attainment. At Masters level, I researched how parental engagement was conceptualised by staff and parents at one large primary school in England. Worryingly, only 25% of staff conceptualised parental engagement in relation to parents' relationship with learning in the home. School leaders also appeared to overestimate the impact of school-based activities, at the expense of home- and community- based activities. This suggests that there may be a worrying mismatch in the way that parental engagement is conceptualised by researchers advocating for its efficacy, and how it is conceptualised by school staff devising and implementing parental engagement initiatives. The possibility that this is a widespread problem needs to be investigated because schools in which leaders have misconceptions around parental engagement are likely to disproportionately allocate resources towards ineffective, school-based events aimed at parents' relationships with schools, rather than supporting effective family-centred engagement with learning. My previous case study also highlighted large discrepancies between the barriers perceived by school staff and parents. Nearly half of staff said that the main barrier was parents not caring about their children's education. Meanwhile all parents expressed desire to engage with their children's learning. A better understanding of the beliefs held by parents and staff nationally could help to inform teacher training and address misconceptions so that effective, mutually respectful partnerships can be built.Research Questions:1. How do school leaders define parental engagement?2. What sort of parental engagement do school staff aspire to and what barriers do theyperceive? Are there group differences e.g. by role within school or school type?3. What sort of parental engagement do parents aspire to and what barriers do they report? Are there group differences e.g. by gender, ethnicity or SEND?4. What are the implications for school leaders and educational policy?Approach: Participants Parents and school staff from English primary schools covering a variety of different contexts. Data collection tools Data will be collected from staff and parents using anonymous online questionnaires in order to maximise the number of responses that can be collected and analysed from a large geographic region. The parental survey will be translated into other languages where necessary. Data analysis I will use Goodall and Montgomery's (2014) continuum to codify the parental engagement definitions provided by staff and parents. The continuum describes three levels ranging from level 1 (activity focussed on parental involvement with the school) to level 3 (activity focussed on parental engagement with their child's learning, recognising the agency of parents and the value of activity at home). Analysis will focus on whether there is consensus around the vision for parental engagement in English primary schools and whether school staff are using definitions that match those used by researchers and policy makers.