Cultus
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The importance of parental involvement, as an accelerating and motivating factor in their children’s education is an accepted fact.
It can fall into three types:
1) behavioral,
2) intellectual and
3) personal.
The effect of multi-dimensional participation of parents and the resulting progress of children in their studies is well-established fact. Active participation of the parents help their children in their academic development, by going to schools and participating in open houses. By closely observing the behavior of their children they can rightly judge the kind of behavior or the allocation of resources required by their children.
Caring parents can also motivate teachers to become more attentive towards a particular student, and with this mantain the cycle of parent-teacher involvement.
The encouraging of the building of the cognitive and perception abilities in a children are a major concern in the upbringing of the child. In this sense, the way the parents involve their children in cognitive learning, is by exposing them to different cognitively stimulating activities and materials such as books, electronic media and current events at home. This helps children to practice all sorts of language comprehending skills at the school and show a remarkably positive behavior at the school and with peers.
Supportive Parenting (SP) and Harsh Parenting (HP) can be differentiated when trying to categorize the types of parents in respect to their care about the children’s education. With the adjusting of the levels of supportive parenting, different levels of successful outcomes can be observed.
Supportive parenting coming from kindergarten, yields positive results and in this direction four measures of supportive parenting can be differentiated:
- proactive teaching,
- calm discussion in disciplinary encounters,
- warmth and
- interest and involvement in peer activities.
When children entered kindergarten and when they reached grade 6, there was a factor – family adversity that was also present. This was the result of a multi-purpose negative process that included the risk of low socio-economic status, single-parenting and family stress. Children non-adjustments were more common in families with such adversities.
Regardless of the level of negative impacts were casted, SP overtime the risks associated with family adversity. SP is strongly related to adjustment procedures in grade 6 children, who had single-parents’ family or experienced low socio-economic status (SES) in their early childhood.
In the process to socialize their children, parents adopted the techniques of calm discussion and proactive teaching. They helped lessen the behavioral problems, by carrying constructive discussions with their children, by cultivating a sense of respect, calmness and peace of mind.
Mothers participated in reducing the peer stress among their children. It is widely accepted fact that supportive parenting plays an important role in the children’s development of empathy, pro-social behavious and emotional competence. The absence of supportive parenting may be related to the development of internal problems, like anxiety and depression.
Lack of necessary parental care and attention is the main factor for subsequent rise of juvenile delinquency (crime among children). The absence of parental instructions and guidance, causes children to develop irreversible behavioral and emotional problems.
In order to seek attention, they resort to crimes thinking, so that they could fulfill their wishes. They may revert to uncontrolled violence and unsocial behavior, if not kept an eye upon.
Such criminal activities can not be brought to a stopped or cured, until their distressing symptoms of low self-esteem, depression, dysphonic mood, tension and worries, and other disturbances are relieved. The importance of parents’ role must be emphasized and is much needed.
In order to describe the parental involvement in the children’s education, many researchers use a term ‘Transition’ to describe the time period in which children move from home to school, from school to after school activities from one activity to another within a pre-school or from pre-school to kindergarten.
The endeavors of the teachers in the phenomenon of transition cannot be ignored, as they prepared the children and their parents to face the problems of adjusting to elementary school programs, that have different psychology, teaching styles and structure, from the programs offered at the kindergarten level.
In the elementary level schools, the teachers have to face serious challenges in motivating the parents to take interest in their children’s activities. The teachers adopt different methods in order to involve the parents in day-to-day classroom and home activities. They send notes, invitation of parent-teacher meetings, invitation of parental guidance sessions and training sessions, continuously directing the parent’s attention towards their children. It is very important to keep the line of communication between teachers and parents open, so that the parents can interact with the teachers and get up to date information of their children’s school activities.
One way of involving parents is to schedule school events and arrange classroom activities, like volunteering for libraries, acting as classroom aides or efficiently organizing lunch breaks. The teachers opt for making phone calls at the children’s houses to keep in touch with the parents and getting to know the extent to which they are contributing towards the welfare of their children.
Apart from all these activities, the teachers assign home activities for the parents and their children, so that the parents remain indulged in their children and the children get to study at home.
It was a bad and disappointing experience for the teachers when many of the parents failed to respond as expected, i.e. many of the parents were so overwhelmed with their official work that they could hardly take out some time for their beloved children.
Moreover, for some parents their schoolings were not positive and character-boosting experiences, therefore they preferred to keep a distance from their children’s school. This made it difficult and at times impossible for teachers to bring the parental involvement to the desired level.
If the children’s academic development programs prove successful, they must share two following characteristics:
1) Developmentally appropriate practice:
Children’s academic progress is reflected by the appropriate practice he/she administers while in school life. During transitions from pre-school to kindergarten, if given the exact developmentally appropriate practice, he/she tends to learn a great deal of language and playing skills. He/she develops a keen interest in exploring freely his/her environment and interacting with his adults.
2) Supportive services:
These is the assistance that the school provides to low-income family students: including health care, childcare and community care. These strengthen the relation between school and children and create a sense of security and confidence among the children. They learn that their communities are a part of their school, since the school’s supportive services strive to help community development.
We do not have to forget the fact that the children can be good self-teachers. Their self-initiated strategies, help improve their expression, creativity, intellectual capabilities and extra-curricular skills. The amazing children’s capabilities indicate that through the unity of thinking and feeling, the young children explore their world, represent their ideas, and communicate with others at their highest level.
How would the parents know that their sincere involvements are really proving worthwhile for their children? The answer is – in the attitude of the children. The degree of parental involvement can be judged by a children’s attitude towards his school subjects, their academic desires and achievements.
There must be emphasized that there is a direct relationship between academic achievements and the attitude towards school. The level of aspiration is defined as one’s subjective probability that he or she will reach a certain level of education. Children who received adequate parental concern, are much more confident in their academic desires and achievements, than those who could not get the right amount of parental concern.
The individual involvement of mothers and fathers, also plays a vital role in the behavioral development of the children. Students from one-parent household were show less positive attitude towards schools compared to students from two-parent households.
Parental concern showed that despite mothers’ sincere endeavors, the role of fathers could not be ignored and both served as an important foundation for the future progress of the child. Children with involved fathers are more likely to have participated in educational activities with their parents (e.g., to have visited a museum or a historical site with their parents in the past month), and are more likely to have access to multiple types of resources at home (as measured by the proportion of parents who belong to community or professional organizations, or regularly volunteer in the community).
Parental involvement has been discussed and implement
ed in terms of interventions or prevention programs, which includes safety measures taken to assure healthy and perfect upbringing of the children. School-based and home-only intervention programs, established that the extent of intellectual capabilities found in children from different family backgrounds vary due to the above described factors.
Considering the fact that the education trends are moving towards the online education resources, it has to be said that the relations parents-children remain the same as in traditional educational institutions. The directing of the children and assisting them in their decisions in education is important factor in the overall upbringing process.
More on these issues can be found at :
Sciencedaily
Parent’s envolvement
Kidsource
School-parent
