Parental involvement is now a widely-recognized approach of augmenting the educational process.
No less than the Department for Education has declared it is crucial for the family, the community, and other institutions to actively support to fulfill its mission.
In general, authorities support the view that parents can help the school as supporters who assist teachers in reinforcing the schools initiatives.
In their book, Dekker and Lemmer (2004) call for partnership between the home and the school to help the school become a meaningful and purposeful environment for the child.
They assert that there is a need for two-way communication between the home and the school for the school and the parents together to exert maximum positive influence on the development and the education of the child.
Parents used different styles of interacting with their children. Their style of parenting could positively or negatively motivate their children’s school performance.
Jubber (2004) conducted a longitudinal study in 1996, and used the same sample of children again in 2002. The study aimed to determine whether there is an association between home variables and school performance.
The variables used were socio-economic status, mother’s level of education, father’s level of education, mother’s occupation and father’s occupation, family structure and family size.
The findings of the study indicated that the family income, parental education, and parental occupation are strongly associated with school performance, while family structure and family size are not so strongly associated with school performance.
He added that the home is the most important institution in the development of the child from birth up to 10 years.
In her study, Jantjes (2005) investigated the impact of home environment which included the following factors: parental pressure for achievement, language level and exposure, academic guidance, intellectuality, activity in the home, and work habits.
She argued that changes in the home environment in the form of the introduction of positive attitudes and behaviors can bring about significant improvements in the child’s learning when the school involves the parents in a systematic manner.
She further encouraged the school and the community to play a part in training parents to motivate and enhance the educational achievement of their children as reflected in improved school performance.
Another authority, Mashishi (2004) examined parents’ perception of their role in their children’s education. Her research aimed at changing parents’ attitudes to learning by forging links between parent and child and home and school.
Her researched supports the argument that the existing expertise among parents can be utilized to enhance parental involvement in the education of their children, and concluded by taking the position that parental involvement helps in the followings ways: 1) counters some negative viewing of television; 2) increases parent awareness of the need to be actively involved in their children’s education; 3) transforms learning from being a solitary activity to being a collaborative activity in which the society at large is involved; and 4) acts as an instrument to create the targeted culture in schools.
Setati (2006), in her paper about how parents can help children learn mathematics, made the important point that parents need to be trained. She argued that parents and other family members are children’s first and most influential “teachers”.
She further reported on the pilot study done by her NGO on the establishment of family mathematics groups, which helped parents to learn about their children’s mathematics curriculum, practice problem —solving skills and encourages them to continue learning once mathematics had become optional. Parents attended classes with or without a child, but no child was to attend without an adult. The reason for this was to empower parents to help their children and not just to conduct another tutorial for those children needing extra help.
This writer takes the position that parents could be of great help their children’s learning. Thus, their interest, motivation, participation, and capacity for guiding children and language proficiency would improve.
Alejandra V. Miramon
Candau-ay Elementary School, Dumaguete City
