Original scientific paper
Parental involvement in child education: teacher attitudes and practices
Katarina Sušanj Gregorović
orcid.org/0000-0002-4705-0836
; "Sveti Matej" Elementary School, Viškovo, Croatia
Abstract
Establishing effective practices for parental involvement in child education requires developing partnership-based cooperation between parents and schools. The extent to which such partnerships are achieved depends on parents and teachers as the main ‘representatives’ of these two primary surroundings of children. Teachers and their attitudes towards parents and parental involvement play a key role in establishing and maintaining communication with parents, as well as in choosing the way parents, as active partners, are invited to become involved in schools. The aim of the research, therefore, is to examine the attitudes of teachers on parental involvement in child education in general, as well as practices they apply in communicating with parents and involving them as volunteers in school. A questionnaire was used to survey 200 primary school teachers in the Primorsko-goranska županija. The results reveal that teachers have positive attitudes towards parental inclusion and its importance, that they apply various practices and methods of communicating with parents, but they never or rarely have recourse to applying practices that involve involving parents as volunteers in class and school activities. Also, a statistical significance was uncovered linking certain sociodemographic characteristics of teachers (sex, working position – class teaching/subject teaching, age, work experience in the profession) and their attitudes as well as practices they apply in communicating with parents and involving them as volunteers in school.
Keywords
parental and teacher communication; parental and teacher partnership; parental and teacher cooperation; parental volunteering in classrooms and school
Hrčak ID:
193277
URI
Publication date:
21.9.2017.
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