Factors Influencing Parental Involvement in Schools on Improving School Management Practices: The Case Study of Selected Public Primary Schools in Kahama Municipality, Tanzania

The Elementary School Journal Volume 86, Number S O 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0013-5984/86/8603-0002$01.00 Teachers have strong opinions about parent involvement. Some believe that they can be effective only if they obtain parental assistance on learning activities at home. Others believe that their professional status is in jeopardy if parents are involved in activities that are typically the teachers' responsibilities. The different philosophies and beliefs of teachers reflect the two main, opposing theories of school and family relations. One perspective emphasizes the inherent incompatibility, competition, and conflict between families and schools and supports the separation of the two institutions (Parsons, 1959; Waller, 1932; Weber, 1947). It assumes that school bureaucracies and family organizations are directed, respectively, by educators and parents, who can best fulfill their different goals, roles, and responsibilities independently. Thus, these distinct goals are achieved most efficiently and effectively when teachers maintain their professional, general standards and judgments about the children in their classrooms and when parents maintain their personal, particularistic standards and judgments about their children at home.

Parent involvement in elementary school and educational attainment

School governance is the engine for all the activities in the school. The school governance plays a significant role for parents to feel welcomed or neglected. Participation of parents in school activities has raised concerns for the government of Rwanda from long ago and MINEDUC has put in place a law to create a room whereby parents’ role in the school development will be observed clearly. Bugesera District has been reported to experience absence of parental involvement in schools’ events which interested the researcher to carry out this investigation. The main objective of this study was to explore the implications of school governance on parental participation in school activities whereas the specific objectives were (i)to examine the effects of school decision making process on parental participation in selected secondary schools of Bugesera District. (ii) to assess the functioning of the school governing bodies on parental participation in selected secondary schools of Bugesera District, (iii) to evaluate the contribution of quality assurance on parental participation in selected secondary schools of Bugesera District, (iv) to find out the reasons why the parents do not actively participate in school activities in selected secondary schools of Bugesera District.This research utilized concurrent mixed method research design. The target population consisted of 5675 individuals, including members of the school executive council, school leaders, teachers, and students. A sample of 52 respondents, consisting of 4 head teachers, 10 teachers, 18 parents, and 20 students, were chosen from the selected secondary schools of Bugesera District. Both simple random sampling and purposive sampling methods were used to sample them. Data were gathered using focus groups, questionnaires, document reviews, and guided interviews. Head teachers and teachers completed questionnaires, which were utilized in this study as quantitative data gathering instruments. Head teachers also received interviews in addition to questionnaires. In addition, focus groups were employed to get qualitative information from parents and students. Tables and graphs were used to display the data after they had been examined using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages). The findings to this study (90%) have shown that decision processes are made through in person meetings that gather them at school and parents are encouraged to participate in decision making through school committees and school general assemblies. The findings (85%) again indicated that generally the governing bodies exist in almost all the schools, functional and all the lawful members are included. Parents testified that they are involved in quality assurance through students’ homework, provision of school materials, monitoring the movements of their children from home to school and back home. Parents highlighted that when they do follow up on quality assurance, this boosts the children’s confidence and increase their efforts in learning. However, the findings indicated that the level of welcoming parents in school activities is still low and proposed reinforcement in school governance attitudes towards the participation of parents in school activities. Therefore, the study recommended thorough follow up and attention on the implementation of the established policies that regulates the school governance in order to fully integrate the parents.

The Elementary School Journal Volume 83, Number 2 ? 1982 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 001 3-5984183/8302-0009$01o.00 Teachers approach their instructional tasks with a variety of perspectives and strategies that emphasize certain aspects of teaching and deemphasize others. For example, some teachers teach language skills using organized games, while other teachers teach the same skills by direct instruction. Teachers adopt different approaches to the same subject matter partly because their teaching situations differ. Their students may have different learning problems or their classrooms may have varied resources and facilities. Even in the

The present paper investigates parental involvement in a rural primary school in Kenya. Qualitative interviews have been used to gather information from ten parents, a class teacher and a head teacher. The aim of the case study is to find out how – if at all – parents are involved in their children’s education, and how important parents’ background and involvement in school activities are for their children’s results. It is also interested in determining whether the school-home relationship in rural Kenya may provide new knowledge to the relationship between minority parents and schools in western countries. The findings of the study indicate no shared responsibility between parents and school; the school is solely responsible for students’ education. Normally, parents’ responsibility is limited to providing economic resources: buying school uniforms, books and other necessities. Where the mother tongue is not a school language, some parents also prepare their children for school by code-switching at home: using both the school language and the mother tongue. There is hardly any relationship to be found between parents’ involvement and students’ results. The findings from the study may provide new knowledge about minority parents’ involvement in school in western education.

The purpose of this case study is to investigate parental involvement in the schooling process of their children through the six typologies of Parental involvement within the two selected primary schools in Katsina state of Nigeria. The study used qualitative case study method, students, parents, and teachers, of the two selected primary schools in Katsina state were interviewed. In addition to the interviews, observations were conducted; school documents were used as instruments for data collection. The study shows that parent involved in the schooling process of their children through six typologies of parental involvement. The result also indicated that parents in SA use all thesix typologies to get involve while SB uses parenting & decision making more than the rest. The finding also indicated that there is a low level of meaningful contact between school, parents and community members within School B. Apathy exists on the side of parents, low ex­pectations on the side of School teachers, and there is no organisational structure to facilitate parental involvement in the school. The students whose parents were involved in their schooling process achieved more academic success at school than students whose parents were less involved. The study contributed to the body of knowledge by adding insightful information to the knowledge base surrounding the Implementation of the Eptein’s (1998) Typologies of parental involvement for facilitating academic success in Kasina State, Nigeria.

The aim of this study was to investigate the management of parental involvement in three multicultural schools in the Umlazi District in Durban, South Africa. A literature survey resulting in a theoretical framework on parental involvement in schools, multicultural schools, and themanaging of parental involvement in schools has been done. The contextual background of schools in contemporary South Africa is depicted. A qualitative research design has been used. Focus group discussions have been conducted, with a total of thirty-three principals, teachersand parents. It has found that there is a low level of meaningful contact between school and parents. Apathy exists on the side of parents, low expectations on the side of principals and teachers, and an organisational structure facilitating parent-school interaction is lacking. In managing parental involvement in multicultural schools, school managers displaya lack of intercultural sensitivity.

Parental involvement in inclusive school is crucial for the development of children with special needs. Thus, the present study observed an inclusive primary school in Denpasar to identify the types of parental involvement in the school, the school's programs to involve parents, and the challenges faced by the teachers in involving parents in their children's education. Following Miles' and Huberman's (1994) model of Interactive Qualitative Data Analysis combined with Epstein's et al. (2002) types of parental involvement at school, the present study revealed that 1) all the six types of parental involvement’s in Epstein’s model were identified with an average of moderate frequency; 2) Seven programs were designed to involve the parents, namely, parenting seminar, class conference, WhatsApp Group discussion, Guest teacher, interactive project, field trip, and collaboration with English-speaking community; 3) there were moderate challenges in involving parents in communicating with the schools, in decision making, and in enrolling the parents in the school activities. This implies that there should be more deliberate effort from the parents in inclusive schools to be more involved in their children’s education, while schools should relentlessly initiate and inspire more intensive parental involvements in the schools’ program.

Background Educational reform is a major challenge facing schools in Taiwan. The new educational reform requires that every primary school must have parental involvement programmes in their school schedules, and to support these new programmes, there is a need for research to examine the extent and nature of parental involvement in primary schools in Taiwan, and to investigate the impact of parental involvement on pupil outcomes. Purpose The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which parents' involvement in schooling is related to primary pupil outcomes, after taking into account differences in family social status and family structure, and the children's perceptions of their school learning environments. Sample For the analyses data were collected in 2001 from 261 6th-grade Taiwanese students, 128 boys and 133 girls, from four primary schools in the Taichung City school district. The average age of the children was approximately 11 years. Design and methods In the analysis of the research model, a quantitative approach was adopted, in which each student completed two questionnaires and two academic achievement tests. The first questionnaire included questions to assess family social status, family structure and parents' involvement in their children's education. In the second questionnaire there were questions to measure pupils' self-concept and perceptions of their schools' learning environments. The data were analysed using multiple-regression techniques to examine relationships among family social status, family structure, parental involvement, the school learning environment and pupils' school-related outcomes. Results The findings suggested that: (a) children's academic achievement is related to their family social status and perceptions of immediate family learning environments, and (b) children's self-concept is associated with their perceptions of classroom learning environments, parents' aspirations and parents' involvement at home. These propositions indicate the differential nature of the relationships among family and school environments and measures of children's school outcomes. Conclusions In the Taiwanese context, by showing the particularly important association between Taiwanese family environments and children's school outcomes, the present investigation supports the educational reform movement that encourages schools to involve parents more intimately in shared responsibilities.

Parents play important roles in their children's lives, and parental involvement in elementary schooling in particular is meaningful for a range of child outcomes. Given the increasing number of school-aged children with incarcerated parents, this study explores the ways paternal incarceration is associated with mothers' and fathers' reports of home- and school-based involvement in schooling. Using Fragile Families Study data, we find that a father's incarceration inhibits his school- and home-based involvement in schooling, but associations for maternal involvement are weaker. Results are robust to alternative specifications of incarceration that address concerns about selection and unobserved heterogeneity. Findings also hold across levels of father-child contact. We also conducted a test of the system avoidance mechanism and results suggest it partially explains reductions in school involvement for fathers following incarceration. Given the reoccurring interest in the interconnection between families and schools and how this translates into success, this study suggests that paternal incarceration is associated with lower parental involvement in schooling and highlights the role of system avoidance in this association. Attachment to social institutions like schools is quite consequential, and this work highlights another way mass incarceration influences social life in the United States.

Home-school dissonance (HSD), or differing values, beliefs, and behavioral expectations between home and school may contribute to variation in parental involvement (Arunkumar, Midgley, & Urdan, 1999). This study utilized data from parent and teacher interviews to examine perspectives on parental involvement and HSD in middle school. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. Teachers described a spectrum of HSD ranging from low parental involvement (high-HSD) to high involvement (low-HSD). Although all parents reported involvement in school, some parents described negative experiences related to race and a fear of retaliation from school officials. Schools may benefit by improving policies and practices that decrease HSD, and thus increase parental involvement in schools.

This chapter aims to describe the nature of parental involvement as enacted and experienced by the parents as well as induced and perceived by the principals and teachers in three primary schools. A grounded-theory approach is used to explore the different facets and manifestations of parental involvement so as to understand the underlying values and the implicit meanings different stakeholders ascribe to it (Glaser and Strauss ; Strauss and Corbin ). The practice of parental involvement in a school setting is a complex phenomenon. Given different styles of school leadership, established parent–teacher relationships and dispositions of different stakeholders, the forms of parental involvement evolved in different schools will differ. Certain forms of parental involvement tend to result from actions and interactions between and among groups of stakeholders in the education of children in contemporary society, including principals, teachers, parents and students. These actions and interactions take place in specific organizational, policy and community contexts. Table 2.1 identifies the respective contexts of the three primary schools taking part in the case studies.Table 1 Background characteristics of the three participating schools Characteristics School A School B School C School establishment year 1996 1988 1999 School size 30 classes 27 classes 30 classes School instruction time Whole-day Whole-day Whole-day School location A new town A new town A new town Students’ socio-economic backgrounda Middle-class Working-class Lower-middle class PTA/HSC team establishment year 1999 1996 2000 Level of parental participation as of 1999–2000 High Low Medium aA crude measure based on the occupation of students’ parents and the type of housing they live in

The nature of the relationship between parents, teachers, and the school are continuously important because of teachers’ changing social expectations. While formal education is traditionally viewed as the job of teachers, they cannot be expected to address all educational issues that are influenced by multifaceted social issues. We explore parents’ and teachers’ understanding and experiences of parental involvement, and the nature of parental involvement in rural schools. We used the phenomenological approach; semi-structured interviews were administered to comprehend teachers’ and parents’ experiences of parental involvement in school activities. Complex parental views of schooling shaped the manner of involvement in school activities, and the nature of partnerships that were imbalanced. Teachers’ discourses of parental involvement were unsurprisingly influenced by associating classroom spaces with professional qualifications and curriculum pressure, resulting in the exclusion of parents from classroom activities. The dominant nature of parental involvement that teachers mentioned was that parents’ participation was limited to helping outside the classroom to ensure the upkeep of the schools. The findings also revealed that parents’ dominant experiences relate to viewing schools as inaccessible spaces without invitation or permission, as they view themselves as outsiders, and questioned the nature of communication channels.

In order to address performance gaps in management of public primary schools and provision of quality education, the Ministry of Education periodically supports head teachers of primary schools to undertake induction courses in education management. One of the many induction courses supported and organised by the Ministry of Education (MoE) is the Induction Course in Educational Management (ICEM). ICEM is organised by Kenya Education Management Institute (KEMI) for head teachers of public primary schools where they are taken through best management practices to be adopted and implemented in schools. Despite the head teachers undertaking this induction courses, poor management of public primary schools is a perennial problem in many schools. Despite the enormous resources set aside by the Government of Kenya (GoK) for induction courses, poor management of primary schools affects the provision of quality education. The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacies of ICEM in-service training in order to establish its impact on management of public primary schools in Nairobi County. The specific objective of this study was to examine the procedures used in the selection and preparation of head teachers for ICEM in-service training. The study was anchored on Quality Management System’s theory.The study employed a descriptive research design. The target population for the study were public primary schools head teachers, chairpersons of Boards of Management (BOM), senior teachers, subordinate staff members, school prefects and KEMI staff trainers. Stratified random sampling was used to select the target population for this study. Data for the study was collected using structured questionnaires and was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) computer software. This study established that despite the fact that ICEM training were considered to be pertinent in the management of the schools’ resources such as finances, curriculum, plant and human resources, it was revealed that there were no proper policy guidelines on head teacher selection and preparation for ICEM training. The study concludes that time allocated for the trainings were inadequate and lack of follow-ups were challenges that hampered effectiveness of the training. Therefore, this study recommends that the Ministry of Education (MoE) should develop clear policies and guidelines on selection and orientation of head teachers for in-service training. Further, this study recommends that KEMI in partnership with the MoE should review timelines of the trainings and develop a sustainable model of evaluating results or effectiveness of the ICEM training in management of public primary schools in Kenya. Keywords: Efficacy, Education Management and Induction DOI : 10.7176/JEP/10-18-04 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

Research on family involvement has revealed its positive impact on children’s academic and nonacademic achievement over the past two decades. However, little is known about parental involvement in religious schools. During our review, we examined studies focusing on parental involvement with special attention to religious schools. 22 papers met the research criteria out of 123 abstracts screened from 85 databases. Management and decision-making participation in religious schools seem to be less important than in Epstein’s model. Religious schools have developed a special PI model where parents accept decisions based on staff competence, and teachers work to build a parent community and earn the trust of parents by being accountable for the children’s diverse development. Some studies point to inadequate implementation of the ideal model and are critical. The novelty of the analysis is that our analysis was open to schools of all religions. A limitation of the review is that we cannot be sure that all relevant studies were included in the examined databases. As such, further research is needed to better understand this phenomenon.