Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1997. / Title from title page screen, viewed June 13, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Dent M. Rhodes (chair), Wayne A. Benenson, Gayle Flickinger, Connie Burrows Horton. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-170) and abstract. Also available in print.

M.Ed. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Ed. (Educational Management) / Meaningful education in schools can only take place if their is a close relationship between school and home. The parent must protect his rightful share in the education of his child by active involvement in the school. The school is not an independent or isolated entity but it operates in a social context within a community. Parents are compelled to make use of specialised assistance to extend their educative endeavours, and that is the task of the school. Every principal needs to develop a good understanding and competency in bUilding and maintaining effective school-parent-relationships. The principal is both leader and manager of a school. As principal he strives towards set goals, aided by his staff, pupils and parents. The effectiveness of parental involvement will depend primarily on the principal's managerial skill. The principal needs to create a certain school climate by means of his managerial style, in which parents will feel the need to participate. School-parent relationships and communication are important tasks for the school principal. The goal of the school principal in performing these tasks, should not be to manipulate parent-opinion, but to develop understanding, perspective and commitment with the parents of the school. The principal should endeavour to develop the ideal leadership style, in order to establish a climate which will be conductive to parental involvement. Partnership implies relationships, duties and responsibilities. The clear understanding of partnership and how it will effect the teacher and the parent, is crucially important in education today. In the partnership between the teacher and the parent, the teacher may be regarded as a cornerstone of the partnership. The partnership between teacher and parent forms the basis and the only real hope for a superior school programme at all levels. Parents should be more involved in the affairs of the school and the major responsibility for further parent involvement and partnership between teacher and parent rests with the school and indeed mostly with the school principal.

In school library research programs involving enquiry-based learning, a challenge for students doing research emerges when they take their projects home and turn to their parents for assistance. Often parents do not have sufficient knowledge of the research program and critical thinking to be able to effectively help their children. Many of them are unfamiliar with an inquiry-based research process and this inevitably leads to anxiety for both parents and children. A literature review revealed that parents do want to help their children at home with schoolwork, but are confused about the amount and kind of assistance they should provide. Moreover, research on parent involvement in school library research programs is virtually nonexistent, which stimulated the researcher to conduct this study. The purpose of this study was to investigate a parent/teacher-librarian (PTL) collaboration process intended to assist parents wanting to help their children more effectively with research homework. Before the implementation of this study, a school library research program was well-established (1988-1999), but it included no formal integration of parent involvement. The study investigated (a) parent, student, and teacher-librarian concerns that arose during collaboration, (b) resolutions of those concerns, (c) techniques that facilitated collaboration and parent assistance, and (d) the benefits and disadvantages of the collaboration process. One questionnaire was mailed at the beginning of the study to the parents of all 72 grade seven students in one Lower Mainland elementary school and, as a final evaluation, a second questionnaire was mailed to the parents of 28 grade seven students who had committed time to be in the study. Between the two questionnaires, a subset of eight parents and their corresponding children became primary subjects and were interviewed after they had worked with their children on research question formulation at home. Previous to working with their children, these eight parents had received a detailed overview of the student research program, two training sessions with the teacher-librarian and a variety of options for communicating directly with her at any time during the study. A major objective of the study was to collaboratively solve the major concerns that emerged during the study and a procedure was developed for that purpose. The parents and teacher-librarian together created guidelines for future parent involvement where resolutions of the concerns were stated. The greatest concern for all parties was the dilemma of balancing the student desire for independence and ownership of the projects with the parents' offer of help. The guidelines helped clarify the right kind of assistance for parents to give, while the overview and two training sessions increased parents' research knowledge base and allowed them to suggest improvements to strengthen the collaboration process and the library program. Because the PTL collaboration process provided all participants with more benefits than disadvantages, both the parents and teacher-librarian unanimously agreed that the PTL collaboration process merited continuance. With the supporting structure of a parent/ teacher collaboration process attached to learning activities at home, parent confidence about guiding children can be increased, the students can see positive results in learning, and a school library research program can thereby be strengthened. The teacher-librarian, the researcher in this study, felt her practice was improved with the addition of the PTL collaboration process. Moreover, its continuance could contribute ultimately to the development of students whose convictions are based on more reflective enquiry and thoughtful research. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

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This study examined the relationship between maternal education, the home environment, educational expectations and children’s math skills. The aim of this research was to determine how well these measures individually and collectively explained the variation in children’s mathematical achievement at the start of kindergarten. This analysis was done within the context of the unique biological mother-child relationship, how frequently they engaged with their children in shared activities at home, the warmth of their relationship with their children, their perspectives on parenting, and finally their aspirations for their children’s educational attainment. Relying on a large, nationally representative sample of 10,863 biological mothers and their children, this study found a persistent and moderate association between maternal education and children’s mathematical skills, even after adjusting for both the home environment and educational expectations measures, and several other select maternal, child, and family characteristics. The home environment, measured by maternal self-reports of the frequency of engagement in eight pre-selected activities and by maternal self-ratings of the warmth of the relationship with their children, was addressed using Principal Component Analysis. The findings in this area were mixed. A higher self-reported frequency of time spent playing games, talking about nature, playing with construction toys, and helping with arts and crafts was positively linked to children’s early math achievement. The frequency of shared book reading, storytelling, and working with numbers was negatively linked to children’s mathematical achievement. Both of these effect sizes were statistically significant, yet quite small. No relationship was found between maternal warmth and children’s mathematical skills or between parenting perspectives and children’s math achievement. The findings also demonstrated a small, positive association between maternal expectations and children’s mathematical achievement. Children whose mothers believed they would graduate from college or beyond had stronger math skills than those whose mothers expected them to experience some college. This finding was more pronounced among mothers from different cultural backgrounds. The continued significance of both the maternal education and maternal expectations effects helped to explain some of the variation in children’s math achievement and contributed to the important research aimed at reducing these gaps early in children’s formative education.

Latina/o students do not perform at the same level of achievement as their peers, and often lack of parent presence is mistaken for apathy towards their children’s educational success. This research examines the strategies Latina/o parents take in navigating the school system and advocating for their students. A local nonprofit organization with the goal of achieving educational equity for Latina/o parents will utilize these findings and recommendations to develop curricula for a parent literacy program.

Research has demonstrated various ways of improving academic performance of students in public-school classrooms (e.g., Barrish, Saunders, & Wolf, 1969), some of which may be clinically effective but not practical within present school systems. A more practical method is the use of a program involving home-based contingencies. Home-based contingencies simply means that: When children are reinforced by their parents for their appropriate behavior and performance at school, school behavior and performance will improve (Broughton, Barton, & Owen;. 1981). The current study employed a program including home-based contingencies modeled after one created by Shumaker, Hovell, and Sherman (1977), and tested the program's effect on academic performance of disadvantaged middle school youths. The independent variable was the home-based contingency component of the program, and the dependent variables were daily report cards, grades, truancy, attendance, and archival data reflecting previous grades, truancy, and attendance. Results indicated that the home-based contingency program significantly increased appropriate school behavior (t(25) = 13.85, p<0.00), but, did not have any substantial impact on grades (t(2) = 1.53, p>0.08), truancy, or attendance.

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