Principal leadership for parent engagement: Using socially just practices to improve education horizons for parents and students
Author(s)
Willis, Linda-Dianne
Povey, Jenny
Hodges, Julie
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2019
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In the last several decades, recognition of parent engagement as crucial to improving student learning and wellbeing at school and home has gained momentum worldwide. Research evidence about the benefits of parent engagement has driven major government education reform initiatives in countries such as Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. These reforms have communicated that parent engagement is essential not only for student and school success, but also enhanced social cohesion and national economic prosperity. Overseeing the translation of these reforms into practice mostly falls to school principals. ...
View more >In the last several decades, recognition of parent engagement as crucial to improving student learning and wellbeing at school and home has gained momentum worldwide. Research evidence about the benefits of parent engagement has driven major government education reform initiatives in countries such as Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. These reforms have communicated that parent engagement is essential not only for student and school success, but also enhanced social cohesion and national economic prosperity. Overseeing the translation of these reforms into practice mostly falls to school principals. Their role as parent engagement leaders is little disputed yet the strategies they use to achieve engagement are under-researched. In Australia, implementing a new curriculum, meeting national principal and teacher standards, and preparing students for standardised tests pose additional and possibly contradictory mandates to parent engagement. Reconciling these apparent contradictions combined with the complexities of working in diverse contexts which comprise populations of parents from different cultural, language and education backgrounds make achieving parent engagement even more elusive. In this presentation, University of Queensland researchers and principals present strategies from practice on ways these challenges may begin to be addressed. The strategies are among findings from 2016-2019 research funded by Queensland’s Department of Education and supported by partners Parents and Citizens’ Association Queensland to investigate principal leadership for parent-school-community engagement. Data from 12 schools and over 700 participants were collected and included principal interviews and teacher, parent, and student focus groups together with survey data. These data were analysed using Schwab’s curriculum of commonplaces which comprises four coordinated spheres of influence (students, teachers, curriculum, milieus). Emirbayer and Mische’s notion of agency, together with Biesta and Tedder’s concept of agency as achievement, were used to deepen understanding about what and how principal strategies enhanced parent engagement. The presentation describes and explains a range of strategies principals in the research used to enable parents to engage in their child’s learning at home and school. The strategies include student agency, parent feedback, developing cultural awareness, coplanning curriculum and virtual classrooms. The presentation also explores the success of these strategies given findings which highlighted the importance of voice, choice, inclusion, reciprocity, dialogue, collaboration and empathy. Principal presenters contextualise the findings from their school’s perspective and provide insights into how they achieve parent engagement given the challenges they face and needs of the systems within which they work.
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View more >In the last several decades, recognition of parent engagement as crucial to improving student learning and wellbeing at school and home has gained momentum worldwide. Research evidence about the benefits of parent engagement has driven major government education reform initiatives in countries such as Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. These reforms have communicated that parent engagement is essential not only for student and school success, but also enhanced social cohesion and national economic prosperity. Overseeing the translation of these reforms into practice mostly falls to school principals. Their role as parent engagement leaders is little disputed yet the strategies they use to achieve engagement are under-researched. In Australia, implementing a new curriculum, meeting national principal and teacher standards, and preparing students for standardised tests pose additional and possibly contradictory mandates to parent engagement. Reconciling these apparent contradictions combined with the complexities of working in diverse contexts which comprise populations of parents from different cultural, language and education backgrounds make achieving parent engagement even more elusive. In this presentation, University of Queensland researchers and principals present strategies from practice on ways these challenges may begin to be addressed. The strategies are among findings from 2016-2019 research funded by Queensland’s Department of Education and supported by partners Parents and Citizens’ Association Queensland to investigate principal leadership for parent-school-community engagement. Data from 12 schools and over 700 participants were collected and included principal interviews and teacher, parent, and student focus groups together with survey data. These data were analysed using Schwab’s curriculum of commonplaces which comprises four coordinated spheres of influence (students, teachers, curriculum, milieus). Emirbayer and Mische’s notion of agency, together with Biesta and Tedder’s concept of agency as achievement, were used to deepen understanding about what and how principal strategies enhanced parent engagement. The presentation describes and explains a range of strategies principals in the research used to enable parents to engage in their child’s learning at home and school. The strategies include student agency, parent feedback, developing cultural awareness, coplanning curriculum and virtual classrooms. The presentation also explores the success of these strategies given findings which highlighted the importance of voice, choice, inclusion, reciprocity, dialogue, collaboration and empathy. Principal presenters contextualise the findings from their school’s perspective and provide insights into how they achieve parent engagement given the challenges they face and needs of the systems within which they work.
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Conference Title
Australian Association for Research in Education Conference (AARE Conference 2019)
Subject
Primary education