Building Family-School Partnership

Clarke, Sheridan and Woods (2010, 61) define family-school partnership as “a child-centered connection between individuals in the home and school settings who share responsibility for supporting the growth and development of children”. Whereas parental involvement is more related to learning, partnership is an interpersonal relationship between home and school that is supportive and enables collaboration.

However, there are parents who can be hard to reach, and appear to be uninterested in being reached in any way, and so, trying to build a relationship with them can feel fruitless.

Christenson (2004, 87–88) presents various psychological and structural barriers to family-school partnerships. Lack of time, emotional and economic constraints, families and teachers’

limited skills and knowledge on how to go about it, and fear of conflict can result in reluctance to work together with teachers. Inadequate management of conflict situations, blaming and labeling is harmful. Also, educators’ own attitudes, beliefs of fears regarding families or their role may be an obstacle. For example, it has been shown that schools may assume that parents with lower socioeconomic status are less likely to be involved due to lack of knowledge, skills, time or motivation, and thus end up providing less support or resources for them to actively participate, which can effectively limit their access to involvement. (Hoover‐Dempsey, Walker, Sandler, Whetsel, Green, Wilkins & Closson 2005, 114.) Mapp and Hong (2010, 346) summarize that the school practices may not be welcoming or answering the parents’ needs. At times the parents’ meetings are heavy on information, rules and policies, focusing on the number of attendees rather than cultivating interpersonal relationships. These meetings can be intimidating to parents. According to Valdés, (1996) cited by Mapp et al. (2010), families coming from backgrounds that are racially, ethically, socioeconomically and educationally different from those of the school staff, can find the events unwelcoming and frightening, especially if they have had have negative school experiences. Further, narrow understanding of parental involvement can push families away, especially those with limited means, time, or capacity to take part in specific activities such as volunteering or parent-teacher associations (Mapp & Hong 2010, 349–350).

Which may hinder building a partnership between schools and parents of English language learners (ELLs) are related especially to the school having little knowledge of the culturally and linguistically diverse families, and the families’ lack of familiarity with the school system. Not

just difficulties to communicate in oral or written manner, but culturally different expectations from both the school’s and the families’ behalf affect developing efficient family-school partnerships. (Waterman & Harry 2008.)

Fundamental to a healthy family-school partnership is sharing the goals and beliefs regarding a child’s development and achievement, and understanding that both families and the educators in the school context have important roles in the child’s life—and also that together both in-school and out-of-in-school experiences contribute to the child’s educational success. A good relationship needs maintaining and commitment. It should be recognized that its development requires time, accessibility, flexibility and sensitivity as well as continuity from both sides. This partnership is based on trust, which is also linked with parents having “more positive attitudes with regard to the value of their involvement in schools”. (Clarke, Sheridan & Woods 2010, 64–69.)

The focus of family-school partnership should shift from school-centeredness to parent-centeredness (Mapp & Hong 2010, 359), and in its core is understanding different families and their life contexts (Christenson 2004, 93). Clarke et al. (2010) argues that effective communication works as a medium to exchange information and resources, and to understand each other’s goals and needs, which creates a network of support. Frequent informal communication enhances the quality of parent-teacher relationship. Paying attention to the quality and quantity of communication is helpful when aiming to improve effective communication practices. Most important to parents and teachers, according to the study conducted by Blue-Banning et al (2004) as cited by Clarke et al. (2010, 70) is “listening carefully to the other person; avoiding the use of jargon; being nonjudgmental, sensitive, and non-blaming; and including positive comments in addition to describing the challenges that a child currently experiences at home and school.” (Clarke, Sheridan & Woods 2010, 70.) It is important, especially in the case of ELL parents, that teachers initiate communication with the parents, and offer them information in a clear, comprehensible way which allows them to follow up, ask questions and make comments (Waterman & Harry 2008).

In building a family-school partnership, equality takes an essential role. Conflicts between families and educators are often due to questions of authority and power. The expertise of both the teachers and the parents should be acknowledged, valued and utilized in supporting the child. It’s critical that teachers regard families as co-equal educators and provide them information that helps them to extend the learning environment at home, be more involved and

support the child’s learning and development through different practices. The families can then share their experiences with the teacher and give feedback; both parties thus gain valuable information from the other in a reciprocal manner. In conflict situations avoidance is a common practice, but even then, and especially then, openness should be the priority in order to maintain a good relationship which will not impaired with unresolved displeasure. (Clarke, Sheridan &

Woods 2010, 69–73.)

Open-ended parents ‘meetings, with the help of an interpreter if needed, can promote two-way interaction and encourage parents to discuss and become more aware of the school practices.

Skill-based workshops about meaningful topics be helpful to answer the different needs that parents have. Moreover, parents should be made more engaged in school decision making as cultivating parental leadership can contribute to a collaborative partnership. (Waterman &

Harry 2008.)

5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The objective of this research is to view the parents and teachers’ perspectives regarding parent–

teacher partnership and parental involvement in English education in the context of the bilingual school in Honduras. By including both points of view it is possible to get a more holistic understanding of the phenomenon and see in which respect they align.

The research questions are following:

1. What are parents’ views related to family–school partnership?

o What kind of experiences do parents have related to family–school partnership?

o How could family–school partnership be developed according to the parents?

2. How do parents describe their involvement in their children’s English education?

3. What are teachers’ views related to family–school partnership?

o What kind of experiences do teachers have related to family–school partnership?

o How could family–school partnership be developed according to the teachers?

4. How do teachers describe parental involvement from teacher perspective?

o How do teachers describe the importance of parental involvement in the children’s English education to children’s learning from teacher perspective?

• How do teachers describe supporting parental involvement in English education in practice?

6 METHODOLOGY