Browsing by Subject "Parental Involvement"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Bringing parent and community engagement back into the education reform spotlight: a comparative case study.
    (2010-03) Gordon, Molly F.
    In this study I argue that educational practitioners and policy makers cannot solve the problem of increasing student learning and growth by organizationally isolating the work of schools from communities. The purpose of this study was to explore which organizational conditions have enabled and which have hindered schools and communities from successfully working together to help students learn and grow. In addition, I explore why some districts and schools continue to struggle with engaging outside stakeholders despite their efforts. I used a comparative case study design and chose to investigate three districts and two schools within each of those districts in order to see how district engagement policies and practices filter down into schools. I used neo-institutional and organizational theories as conceptual tools. Results showed that district level engagement efforts were loosely-coupled with school level policies and practices. Policies that did exist around engagement were vaguely worded and weakly monitored. In addition, few innovative approaches existed to actively engage outside stakeholders. This study confirms the neo-institutional framework and its usefulness in examining engagement policies and practices.
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    A model for suppport: meeting the needs of English language learners in a small community.
    (2009-07) Tahtinen, Sarah Ellen
    As the population of language minority families significantly increases in our nation (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2002), schools are trying to meet the needs of a growing number of students with limited English skills. This qualitative research study examined the types of academic, social, and linguistic support currently available to immigrant school-aged children and their families as they enter into a small mid-western community in the United States. The forty-nine participants in this study included immigrant parents, school staff, and community members, who shared insight into the types of support most needed and helpful for newcomer students and their families. Using grounded theory methods of research, three major themes emerged and were used to create a model for support. Each of the three levels of support includes a précis of ideas for assisting schools, communities and families, as they develop ways to support newcomer students in their academic, linguistic, and socio-cultural development. Major findings of this study include: a.) the need for increased communication and access to services, b.) the need for more opportunities to learn English, and c.) the importance of maintaining native language skills and culture as an asset to the community.
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    Parental Involvement in U.S. Study Abroad: Helicopters or Helpers
    (2017-05) Dostal Dauer, Kevin
    Parental involvement in higher education has received much attention since the 1990s, though mostly through mainstream media sources. The term “helicopter parents” is now used to describe over-involved parents who ‘hover’ over their children, intent on ensuring that their children’s needs are addressed. The perception within higher education is that such parenting is detrimental to student development and unnecessarily complicates the relationship between the student and their institution of higher education. Study abroad has been widely shown to have wide-ranging positive impacts on the development of undergraduate students including gains in academic success, life skills, and psychosocial development. Parental involvement in study abroad has been reported as one of the top ten concerns for international education professionals for the past decade, but relatively little research has been done that explores the intersection of parental involvement and study abroad. Research has not definitively ascertained whether the notion of parental over-involvement in study abroad is anecdotally-driven or a documented reality. This study examined the extent to which parents are involved in the undergraduate study abroad experience of their student and the ways in which particular characteristics of the parents and students are related to that involvement. The study was conducted using an original, web-based survey instrument and was administered to undergraduate students at three study abroad providing institutions, two public land-grant research universities and one study abroad consortium of 14 private liberal arts colleges. The survey was completed by 382 students for a 19.7% response rate. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, correlation, and three regression model analyses. Findings indicated that parents were significantly less involved in initial choice of study abroad program than they are in other higher education experiences prior to study abroad, thus lending support to the idea that helicopter parenting may not apply uniformly to all aspects of study abroad. A relationship was found between parental involvement in student choice of study abroad and the geographic location of the student’s program. Parents were found to be more likely to communicate more frequently with a female student and more likely to communicate more frequently if their student was participating in a long-duration program. Numerous variables were shown to be related to parents’ decision to visit their student during a study abroad experience, including previous parental study abroad experience, level of previous student travel, type of institution from which the student was studying abroad, the geographic location of the study abroad program, and the duration of the program. Findings support a framework for understanding parental involvement in study abroad and provide helpful insights for future design and allocation of resources for parental interactions with study abroad offices.
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    Storying Multilingual Family School Involvement and Resistance To White-Centering and Monolingual Policies
    (2023-05) Perez, Gabriella
    This study uses storying and fiction-based research to uplift the voices and experiences of multilingual students and families marginalized and silenced in public schools. How do the experiences of multilingual parents and students in public schools affect their school involvement, and how do parental engagement challenge White-centering and monolingual policies and dominant discourses? To address these questions, I analyze data from the Youth Participatory Evaluation Program at Minneapolis Public Schools and the parent survey led by the Latino Youth Development Collaborative Minneapolis Public Schools parents. Next, I expand on school policies' implications on the experiences of multilingual families by creating a story using the data gathered from the surveys. Finally, I advocate for policy changes grounded in cultural equity and social justice.