Home-school Communication Research Articles

Study on the Nonviolent Communication in Home-School Communication under the Context of Academic Warning

Study on the Nonviolent Communication in Home-School Communication under the Context of Academic Warning

Collaborative Governance of College Student Management and Home School Communication Strategies

Collaborative Governance of College Student Management and Home School Communication Strategies

The role of parent and teacher councils in reducing the phenomenon of bullying from the principals, teachers and educational counselors’ viewpoint

Introduction. The roles of Parent and Teacher Councils in modern schools cannot be overstated. Principals, teachers, and guidance counsellors all agree that working together is crucial to addressing the chronic problem of bullying in schools. This cooperation provides a comprehensive method for making schools safer and more supportive places for students to learn. Aim. The focus of this study was on how school administrators, classroom teachers, and guidance counsellors view the role of parent and teacher councils in preventing and responding to bullying in the upper basic grades. Study participants and methods. Because schools were selected at random among those associated with the Wadi Al-Seer Education Directorate, the study population included all members of those schools' parentteacher councils. There was a total of four hundred (400) school administrators, classroom instructors, and guidance counsellors included in the sample. The first section of the closed questionnaire focused on the part played by parent and teacher councils in combating physical bullying. This section was one of three and contained ten questions per domain. Results. Physical bullying, verbal bullying, and psychological bullying were found to be the top three areas where parent-teacher councils can make a difference in avoiding bullying among children in the upper basic level, the means were (3,57, 3.67, and 3.65) respectively. The results demonstrated the efficacy of a collaborative effort including parents, teachers, the director, and a school counsellor to reduce bullying among secondary school students. Involving parents, principals, teachers, and guidance counsellors in the councils has been demonstrated to promote communication between schools and their students' families, to lower psychological barriers between kids and their peers, and to increase student achievement, teachers and parents can work together to address challenges that students confront and share their opinions on child rearing through these councils, which take place in the context of the students' culture and the community between the classroom and the home. Practical significance. Research into the effectiveness of Parent and Teacher Councils in the fight against school bullying demonstrates the need of coordinated community action. The councils do double duty by reducing bullying in schools and improving home-school communication by bringing together teachers and parents. The results offer useful information for enhancing anti-bullying initiatives and promoting the wellbeing of students. This study can be used as a guide by schools all over the world to implement their own anti-bullying policies

Application of Social Software in the Context of Home-School Communication: Issues and Suggestions

Application of Social Software in the Context of Home-School Communication: Issues and Suggestions

Parents' Perceptions in an Institutional Flexible Learning Program

Parents play a vital role in supporting their children's learning. This paper mainly explored parents' perceptions of a flexible learning program in one laboratory school in Metro Manila. Convenient sampling was used to identify the participants. There were 86 parents who voluntarily participated in this study via survey which utilized a convergent parallel mixed-method research design. For the quantitative data, descriptive statistics was employed. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. Relevant findings revealed three themes namely, home-school communication, facilitation of instruction, and class time. Online communication tools can be maximized to provide feedback, monitor learners’ status, and set up consultation time. The facilitation of instruction provided opportunities for active participation, independent learning, and production of creative outputs. Class time may be designed to provide sufficient synchronous meetings for learning and to accommodate parents' schedules. The results of the study provided insights to revisit policy implementation in flexible learning and developed preparedness of parents in supporting their children's learning.

Understanding the impact of parental involvement subtypes on Chinese preschool children's language ability.

Parental involvement, especially home-based involvement and home‒school communication, is an important factor affecting the development of preschool children's language abilities. Although previous studies suggest that parents are important catalysts in shaping children's language achievement, it is still unclear how types of parental involvement affect children's language abilities. This study surveys 874 preschool children in China and finds that home-based involvement boosts children's language abilities via improved approaches to learning. Surprisingly, we also find that home‒school communication negatively predicts children's language abilities via decreased approaches to learning. Moreover, school-based involvement has no significant association with children's language abilities. This study contributes new insights to the literature on children's language abilities by uncovering the various impacts of the subtypes of parental involvement and providing a process explanation accordingly.

Increasing collaboration and knowledge in school communities to enhance outcomes for autistic students

PurposeThis paper describes a case study of a developmental program evaluation on the Autism Community Toolkit, a collaborative skills training program for parents and school professionals. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the training on participants’ knowledge, competence and perceived collaboration; and potential improvements to the training program.Design/methodology/approachThe program included multiple training sessions for families and school professionals, designed to educate participants on autism, evidence-based interventions and to increase home-school communication and collaboration. Data collection methods included pre- and post-measures and feedback forms.FindingsResults indicated that the training program was beneficial for participants overall. Pre- and posttest measures indicated growth in knowledge and competency in autism interventions. While there were no statistically significant differences in the quantitative measure of collaboration, qualitative results suggest that participants reported increased collaboration posttraining.Practical implicationsOverall, the training program was effective, and the ongoing implementation assessment was conducive to continuous improvement. The authors also discuss difficulties with implementation and recommendations for future intervention implementation.Originality/valueThis case study provides practical information about creating, evaluating and improving a unique intervention designed to support school–home collaboration.

'She didn't know how to go back': School attendance problems in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic-A multiple stakeholder qualitative study with parents and professionals.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in school closures worldwide and unexcused absences have increased since schools reopened. Drawing on multiple stakeholders' perspectives, we aimed to (i) develop a detailed understanding of how school attendance problems (SAPs) have manifested for primary school-aged children in the context of COVID-19; and (ii) identify promising community-based intervention strategies. We used a qualitative design with two sequential phases of data collection. Phase 1 involved insight generation using qualitative surveys with parents and professionals working in primary education settings. These results were used to guide in-depth stakeholder interviews in Phase 2. Phase 1 included 29 parents of primary-school children experiencing SAPs and 19 professionals. Phase 2 included 10 parents and 12 professionals. Parents were recruited through social media; professionals were identified through schools and associated networks in Southern England. Attendance was particularly challenging for children with special educational needs and pre-existing anxiety problems. Compounding factors included COVID-related anxiety, difficulties adapting to new school routines, poor home-school communication and collaboration, and concerns about academic catch-up. Effective support was characterized by schools and families working closely together. Recommendations for practice improvements centred on early intervention, re-building parent-school relationships, peer support for parents, and improving special educational provision. New interventions for SAPs must be sensitive to the ongoing COVID-19 context. Help should be easily accessible in the community and address modifiable risk and protective factors for individual children, in family systems, and at the home-school interface.

“What about special ed?“: Barriers and enablers for teaching with technology in special education

Technology integration in school is an increasingly important equity issue, but little is known about how technology is used for teaching the 7 million K-12 special education students in the US (NCES, 2019). Though special education is often overlooked in technology integration research, what does exist suggests that technology use in schools often exacerbates opportunity gaps for students with disabilities (Ciampa, 2017; Dolan, 2016; Shaheen & Watulak, 2019). The rapid shift to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to better explore enablers and barriers to technology-enabled learning for special education (SPED) because of the widespread reliance on technology for teaching and learning. Using in-depth interviews (N = 20) with special educators during remote learning, the present study seeks to (1) describe important enablers and barriers for SPED teacher use of technology in K-12 before and during remote learning, (2) understand how structural, teacher, and student-level factors influence SPED teachers’ opportunities for teaching with technology, and (3) highlight emerging problems for SPED populations in technology-enabled learning. Results suggest that the most prominent enablers and barriers for technology use in special education are structural (e.g., decision-making around teacher training and technology resources, structures for student digital literacy training), but manifest at the teacher and student levels. SPED teachers described significant barriers to providing accessible technology-enabled instruction, largely due to school-based structures for resource allocation, student digital literacy training, teacher training, decision-making for technology, SPED job roles, and home-school communication. Recommendations are made for providing high-quality digital learning for all students, especially students with diverse learning needs.

“They Were Saying That I Was a Typical Chinese Mum” : Chinese Parents’ Experiences of Parent-Teacher Partnerships for Their Autistic Children

Effective parent-teacher partnerships improve outcomes for autistic students. Yet, we know little about what effective partnerships look like for parents of autistic children from different backgrounds. We conducted interviews with 17 Chinese parents of autistic children attending Australian kindergartens/schools to understand their experiences. Parents appreciated the acceptance, opportunities and supports they received in Australia. They had high expectations of children; expectations not often shared by educators. Parents were respectful of teachers’ expertise and polite and undemanding in interactions. Nevertheless, parents were frustrated by inconsistent teaching quality and inadequate communication. Navigating systems was also challenging and parents faced discrimination from teachers and their community. Recommendations include fostering open home-school communication, proactively seeking parents’ expertise about children and explicitly scaffolding parents’ self-advocacy.

Teachers' Perceptions of Supporting Young Carers in Schools: Identifying Support Needs and the Importance of Home-School Relationships.

Recognition and support for young carers has improved steadily in the past two decades; with stronger legislation and more visibility and awareness of the challenges that many of the YC face, especially with respect to their education. Recent UK-based initiatives providing toolkits and guidance for school staff have provided much needed direction for schools, to support the loosely defined statutory requirements. The aim of the current research was to hear from school staff about their experiences in identifying and supporting young carers, to better understand any enablers and barriers. The thematic analysis of the interview data from 18 school staff was organized into two main themes: perceptions regarding the characteristics of young carers; and perceptions regarding the importance of home–school communication. Each superordinate theme contained several sub-themes. Overall, the teachers perceived many difficulties identifying young carers who did not volunteer this information and felt that the main enabler of identification was the trust relationships between the school and the pupil and parents. Once identified, the schools perceived the main areas of need that they could provide support for were the emotional wellbeing of the pupils and additional academic opportunities. They spoke too of the difficulties balancing the provision of this extra support within the constraints of the school context, both in terms of the school day, and the competing priorities relating to academic and social–emotional needs. School staff recognized that extra time outside of school was difficult for young carers to attend. Other subthemes are discussed with consideration to enablers and barriers. The implications for the dissemination of good practice, and addressing policy are considered.

Effectiveness of Parents’ Workshop on Home-School Partnership and Students’ Mathematics Performance. The Case of a Public Secondary school in Botswana

It is undisputable that an effective home-school partnership has an impact on their children’s learning and subsequent academic performance. However, the extent of parental involvement is found to be lacking due to various reasons according to the literature. This paper reports on the effectiveness of utilizing workshops as an intervention strategy to facilitate a home-school partnership that could enhance student mathematics performance in a public senior secondary school in Botswana. Parents from one, purposively selected public senior secondary school, participated in this study. The study used a pragmatist paradigm to draw on a mixed-methods approach and employ a quasi-experimental research design with experimental and control groups. Questionnaires for parents and their children, parents’ interviews, and tests in mathematics were the main data collection instruments for this study and were used as pre and post-interventions. The parents’ workshops intervention was implemented for a period of three weeks on the experimental group. Parents were provided with knowledge and skills through presentations on parental involvement. The results demonstrated that the parents’ workshops intervention improved home-school partnership. The results showed that the intervention had a large positive impact on Home-school communication with an effect size difference of 2.260 between pre-test and post-test mean scores for the parents in the experimental group. Consequently, children’s mathematics performance positively changed after the intervention. The difference between pre-test and post-test within the control group showed a small effect size (0.308) while a large and practical effect size (2.215) was found between pre-test and post-test within the experimental students.

Between School and Home: TPACK-in-Practice in Elementary Special Education Contexts

This qualitative study traced the development and enactment of five elementary special education teachers’ technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) as they learned to use flexible digital tools and implemented them with students and their families before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings highlight how changing contextual factors shaped the evolution of special educators’ TPACK for using Seesaw, which served as a “mesosystem tool” connecting school and home contexts. Teachers responded positively to Seesaw, relying on a variety of sources to cultivate their TPACK for using it. Key areas of TPACK application in the special education context included multi-modal learning, motivation/engagement, assessment, feedback, adaptation, and school-home communication. Recognizing how teachers develop and apply TPACK in different contexts broadens understanding of teacher knowledge development and informs efforts to support the use of digital communication tools in special education settings.

Social Media Networks and Parents’ Motivations for Involvement

The technological revolution has filtered into the sector of education and among other things, impacts the dynamic interpersonal connections between parents and teachers through digital means and social media networks. The current study aims at examining the relationship between teacher use of social networks for home-school communication and parent motivations for involvement in their child's schooling in Moroccan public schools. A sample comprising 430 participants, 214 parents (N214) and 216 teachers (N216) of grades 1 through 12 from both urban and rural areas, were invited to participate in two distinct and separate online surveys. The surveys adapted versions of scales used by Hoover- Dempsey et al. (2002) and Walker et al. (2005) to apply Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s (1995, 1997) model of the parent involvement process. The results of a Spearman Rho correlation test revealed a positive correlation between teacher use of social media platforms and most of parents perceived motivations for involvement. This finding indicates that the use of social media networks may represent an efficacious emerging strategy to surmount life-context setbacks to parental involvement. Furthermore, a significant positive correlation was also found between teacher beliefs about parental involvement's importance and efficacy and parent perceptions of contextual invitations from the child and the teacher. This additional finding extends Keyes’ (2000) seminal work, where she identified communication as the central aspect of Epstein’s typology of the parent involvement process. Results, as well as implications, are discussed herein, in addition to suggestions for practices that may enhance parent involvement in their child scholastic experience. Keywords: Parent involvement motivations, home-school communication, social media networks, students’ achievement. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-12-04 Publication date: April 30 th 2022

Social Media Invitations and Parents’ Psychological Motivators for Involvement

Rapid and unprecedented changes to family life in the technological era have left many parents feeling unable to effectively participate in their child’s educational journey. The current study aims at examining the relationship between parent perceptions of social media-based contextual invitations from the child, the teacher, and the school and parents' psychological motivations for involvement including role-activity construction as well as their self-efficacy to make a difference in their child’s scholastic journey in Moroccan public schools. A sample comprising 214 students’ parents (N214) of grades 1 through 12 from both urban and rural areas were invited to participate in an online survey. The survey adapted the pre-validated and revised versions of scales used by Walker et al. (2005) to apply Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s (1995, 1997) model of the parent involvement process. The results of a Spearman Rho correlation test revealed a positive correlation between parent perceptions of social media-based contextual invitations from the child, the teacher, and the school and parents' psychological motivations for involvement. This finding indicates that the use of social media networks may represent an efficacious emerging strategy to surmount some psychological setbacks to parental involvement. Furthermore, this finding extends Keyes’ (2000) seminal work, where she identified communication as the central aspect of Epstein’s typology of the parent involvement process. Results, as well as implications, are discussed herein, in addition to suggestions for practices that may enhance parent involvement in their child's scholastic experience. Keywords: Parent psychological motivations, home-school communication, social media networks, students’ achievement. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-12-05 Publication date: April 30 th 2022

Computers Secured, Connection Still Needed: Understanding How COVID-19-related Remote Schooling Impacted Spanish-speaking Mothers of Emergent Bilinguals with Dis/abilities

ABSTRACT When the COVID-19 pandemic triggered shelter-in-place orders and school closures, many turned to remote schooling as a means for delivering vital instruction while observing public health guidelines. However, the swift shift to remote schooling highlighted an area of significant educational inequity across the United States, especially in urban districts and immigrant households: technology access. Centering the experiences of Spanish-speaking immigrant mothers of emergent bilinguals with disabilities in New York City, this paper presents how technology served as both burden and utility for linguistically-, economically-marginalized families and shares how direct multilingual home-school communication was the most supportive yet scarce resource.

The Benefits and Challenges of Home-School Communication in Urban Settings

The Benefits and Challenges of Home-School Communication in Urban Settings

Emotionally based school non-attendance: two successful returns to school following lockdown

ABSTRACT Emotionally based school non-attendance (EBSNA) needs are complex, with a distinctive combination of risk factors affecting each individual. This study presents an exploration of the perceived facilitators to successful returns to school for two primary-aged children who had previously experienced anxiety around school attendance. The perspectives of parents, school staff, and educational psychologists were gathered using semi-structured interviews to identify effective support. A reflexive thematic analysis was conducted to generate themes. Findings demonstrate that the support in each case was highly individualised. Key facilitators considered to achieve this included: effective home-school communication; taking a functional approach; engaging other professional support; cultivating positive relationships; and practitioners regularly reflecting on their practice. The significant overlap between themes supports an interactionist, ecological model of early identification and intervention for EBSNA difficulties. Implications for practitioners include the need to ensure a reflective, individualised approach, and the importance of facilitating the home-school relationship.

Text to talk: Effects of a home-school vocabulary texting intervention on prekindergarten vocabulary

This paper presents the results of an intervention study focused on understanding how a 5-month, vocabulary-focused texting program called Text to Talk can enhance home-school connections concerning vocabulary and preschool children's language learning. Classrooms (49) were randomly assigned to intervention or control status in an urban preschool program in the eastern United States. Intervention teachers delivered Text to Talk, a curriculum-aligned program that provides weekly texts for teachers to send to families that include vocabulary words and related activities from books being read in the classroom. Children's target word knowledge and receptive language skills (PPVT) were measured at baseline and follow-up, with treatment effects on target word knowledge (d = 0.17). Treatment families reported much higher use of texting as a source of communication with teachers, but otherwise rates of home-school communication in person, phone, and with paper were unchanged; family self-report of general home learning activities was also unaffected by treatment status. Implementation analysis showed moderate to high fidelity among teachers and families, with greater family fidelity associated with larger treatment impacts. The findings suggest that a family-focused texting-based program, aligned with the school curriculum, leads to improved taught-word knowledge among children from under-resourced communities.

Does Parental Involvement Change After Schools Assign Students an IEP?

ABSTRACT Researchers suggest that parental involvement is important for parents of students with disabilities. While some research has examined parental involvement in the special education process, no research has investigated how general forms of parental involvement changes once a child begins to receive special education services. We consider various forms of parent involvement to exist within microsystems (e.g., home-based involvement) and mesosystems (e.g., school-based involvement) and how these actions are shaped by different factors of exosystems (e.g., neighborhoods) and the overarching macrosystems (e.g., poverty). With this framework, we consider the extent to which parental involvement changes for parents of students with disabilities following the assignment of the child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP). Specifically using the ECLS-K: 2011, we exploit variation in home-based involvement, school-based involvement, and home-school communication based on children who have an IEP in one year but not the year before or after. Findings suggest that parents increased their home-based involvement actions following IEP assignment, though this was especially pronounced for parents from historically disenfranchised backgrounds. Findings also suggest that parents of English-language learners and second-generation students and parents in urban areas were more likely to increase their school-based involvement actions following IEP assignment.