An Investigation of Greek Teachers' Views on Parental Involvement in Education

Abstract

Parents' involvement in their children's education has been shown to have positive results in various aspects of child development such as behaviour, social-emotional development and academic performance. This article focuses on teachers' views of the major problems affecting home-school partnership and possible solutions to improve communication between school and family. It examines teachers' accounts of the components of parental participation in the process of pupil learning and evaluates teachers' suggestions for improving teacher-parent collaboration in Greek schools. The results show that Greek secondary school teachers have a positive attitude towards parental involvement in school but find that in fact parental involvement in Greek schooling is poor and infrequent. Most teachers ascribe poor parent-school relationship to factors such as parental unwillingness to respond to school initiated partnership schemes and to the parents' educational and social background. Generally speaking, Greek teachers appear to be in favour of an active collaboration with parents which will benefit schools, families and pupils.