Fuller, G. O. (2010). The Benefits of Parent Involvement: What Research Has to Say. Retrieved February 24, 2017, from https://www.education.com/reference/article/benefits-parent-involvement-research/
This resource is a meta-analysis of eighty-five studies that document benefits of parent involvement in children’s education. The resource list not only the benefits for the children, but also the parents, educators, and the school. In general, the benefits for students include higher academic achievement, self-esteem, discipline, motivation, and lower dropout rates of school when the child reaches junior high and high school. One of the most important benefits to the parents that Fuller (2010) acknowledges is that parents increase their interaction and discussion with their child about their education. They also become more responsive and sensitive to their child’s social-emotional learning and their intellectual developmental needs. The benefits for educators include a higher percentage of parental involvement and also greater respect from parent/guardians on the teaching profession.
The strength of this resource is that it is a meta-analysis so it considers many different research articles and perspectives on this topic. They break down the benefits into benefits for the student, parents, educators, and school. A drawback of this resource is that there was not full access to the article available, so there was not a list of the resources it had used to verify reliability and peer review. This resource is valuable in my inquiry quest because it looks at the benefits of the children. At the end of the day, the reasoning behind building a better home-school relationship would be for the benefit of the student.
Keel, K. (2000). Building Relationships: Parents, Students, Teachers, and Real Data. Multimedia Schools, 7(4), 36.
The purpose of this article was to assess how technology, specifically an online interface, would support the home-school relationship. K12Planet is an online student portfolio that allows parents/guardians to access their child’s grades, attendance, and transcripts. This interface also allows students to make academic plans, which the application plots their performance against afterwards. Keel states in their conclusion that this online portal allows for collaboration between home and school which ultimately supports student achievement.
A strength of this reading is relativity, in that many school districts in the Lower Mainland have been turning to online portfolios and reporting. The researcher also acknowledges that there are safety considerations to take into account when posting student information to the world wide web. However, this resource does not consider language barriers at home or home even access to a device that allows for this kind of access. In conclusion, this resource is useful for my inquiry because of the relative nature of the type of home-school communication that it is looking at. My class is using FreshGrade and so it is important to look at all types of communication and collaboration that can occur between home and school.
TedTalk. (2013). Retrieved February 24, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxJIsZsYKQQ
This resource was a TedTalk on the topic of parent-teacher relationships. The presenter discussed many ideas of how to engage parents and create open communication between teachers and parents. A couple ideas that were beneficial from this video were sending a questionnaire home with the student at the beginning of the school year to find out from the parents how that child learns and what is the child’s personality. Another idea was sharing your teaching philosophy with parents. This includes strategies to how you teach and expectations in the classroom. All-in-all this resources main message was the transparency of communication from teachers to parents is the most beneficial asset to building strong relationships.
A strength of this resource is experiences of the presenter; she is both a mother and a teacher so she understands the complications and difficulties of both sides. A drawback of this resource is that the presenter relied solely on anecdotal evidence without citing any of the research done on this topic. In conclusion, this resource provided some interesting approaches to fostering parent-teacher relationships like sharing your teaching philosophy with students and meeting parents where they’re at. A line that the presenter said that really stood out to me was “teacher’s working conditions are students learning conditions”. I think that speaks to the importance of transparency in communication to parents.