Latinos are the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States. Academically, they are significantly trailing their non-Latino peers in graduation and overall educational attainment. Among many socioeconomic factors, parent engagement has been identified as being a defining indicator of student success. Reflective of racial and class disparities, this study explored with the use of critical race and intersectionality theory, that low Latino parent engagement is a result of the historical devaluing and omission of Latino culture, history and language from formal academic settings, and compounding social factors that make engagement complex for Latino immigrants in America today. In search of programmatic designs that better engage Latino families, this study explored a culturally specific program in San Francisco and its impact on engaging Latino immigrant parents. Using ethnographic methodologies, this study found via direct observation, a parent focus group, nine parent interviews and seven school personnel interviews that culturally specific programs can successful build relationships, create inclusive spaces, counter ideas of deficit thinking, interrupt systems of oppression, and strengthen community engagement. Implications of this study on social work education, practice, and policy will be discussed.

Thesis (MPA) --University of Limpopo, 2013 / The study investigated the involvement of parents in school governance in Sibasa Circuit. Among others the study found that parents experience various challenges with their role in this regard. School Governing Bodies struggle to maintain a full complement of the parent’s component. However, there are various ways and means that can be used in order to improve the situation. The study used both qualitative and quantitative approaches in both data collection and analysis. The result from the study indicates that lack of capacity is a challenge to parents in contributing positively towards the involvement of school governance. The findings of this study have shown that there is a major concern that parents need to be given the opportunity to make inputs in the school. The study shows that the level of capacity and lack of ownership by parents is still a challenge; however the interest to change the status is still available by the parents. The recommendations suggest the following: • Parents should first be made familiar with the South African Schools Act of 84 of 1996. If parents could be educated on this Act, they would know the duties of governing bodies and what is expected from them. • The training should be conducted among all chairpersons, secretaries and treasurers in order for them to be taught how to conduct their duties; Effective consultation should be introduced in schools in order to encourage parents to be involved in school governance. Establishment of parental association can improve the involvement of parents in school governance. Parental association must educate parent members about the importance of communication. They must know that they have to communicate with other parents who are not members of the school governing body, because their duty is to represent their interests. This will help to foster parent involvement in school. Lastly, the National Department of Education needs to review Section 27 of South African Schools Act 84 of 1996 to include remuneration of school governing body members. This section is the one that states that no remuneration must be given to people for governing body duties. Remuneration can help to motivate parents to participate fully in governing body duties.

Thesis (M.ED. (Educational management)) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / Refer to document

No description available.

While home schooling is by no means a new phenomenon, the last three decades have seen an increasing trend in the engagement of this educational alternative. In many countries, including Australia, a growing number of families are opting to remove their children from the traditional schooling system for numerous reasons and educate them at home. In response to the recent home schooling movement a research base in this area of education has emerged. However, the majority of research has been undertaken primarily in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, with very few studies having examined home schooling in Australia. The existing corpus of research is also relatively small and incomplete. Also, certain categories of home schoolers and the processes involved in their undertaking of this modern version of a historically enduring educational alternative have been overlooked. In particular, children with disabilities appear to be one of the home schooling groups that have attracted very little research world wide. This group constituted the focus of the study reported in this thesis. Its particular concern was with generating theory regarding how parents deal with educating their children with intellectual disabilities from a home base over a period of one year. Data gathering was largely carried out through individual, face-to-face semi-structured interviewing and participant observation in the interpretivist qualitative research tradition. However, informal interviews, telephone interviews and documents were also used to gather supplementary data for the study. Data were coded and analysed using the open coding method of the grounded theory model and through the development and testing of propositions. The central research question which guided theory generation was as follows: 'How do parents within the Perth metropolitan area in the state of Western Australia deal with educating their children with intellectual disabilities from a home base over a period of one year?' The central proposition of the theory generated is that parents do so through progressive modification and that this involves them progressing through three stages over a period of one year. The first stage is designated the stage of drawing upon readily-available resources. The second stage is designated the stage of drawing upon support networks in a systematic fashion. The third stage is designated the stage of proceeding with confidence on the basis of having a set of principles for establishing a workable pattern of home schooling individualised for each circumstance. This theory provides a new perspective on how parents deal with the home schooling of their children with intellectual disabilities over a period of one year. A number of implications for further theory development, policy and practice are drawn from it. Several recommendations for further research are also made.

The recognised benefits of social capital have resulted in a focus on ways to provide support to families within their context or community. At the same time there has been an emphasis on the interplay between environment and experiences in the early years of life and long term physical, neurological, psychosocial and emotional/behavioural developments for humans. Coincidentally the use of out of home care for young children has expanded rapidly. These issues have resulted in a call to reconceptualise the role of early childhood services as a nexus of the community. Researchers are increasingly referring to early childhood services as hubs from which multi-sectoral supports can be developed and delivered. This thesis reviews the current literature about the importance of the early years; the experiences within the early childhood service; the renewed focus on supports for families; and the role of early childhood services as community hubs. Despite a growing body of literature about early childhood services as community hubs and as the basis for developing relationships with families, it was found that there is a dearth of information about the ways in which families and early childhood staff interface in defining what constitutes ‘quality’ within services. Indeed it is shown that the voices of families are rarely, if ever, taken into account in the development of curriculum and assessment practices in early childhood services. Subsequently the supports that could assist staff in undertaking meaningful connections with families are not prominent in the current literature. This thesis addresses this gap in the knowledge base about early childhood service delivery. A sociocultural approach is used to investigate the level of shared perspectives, meaningful participation and other forms of meaning making between a small sample of families in diverse situations and their early childhood service. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are applied in the analyses of how early childhood services enhance or inhibit connectivity for families with preschool-aged children. In Phase One, an in-depth study of three families with diverse situations in one urban centre of Australia (An Aboriginal1 family; a culturally and linguistically diverse family; and a family wherein the father has a physical illness) is conducted. Data collection methods involve purposeful sampling, video taping, semi-structured and structured interviews and non participant observations in both the home and early childhood setting. Findings from Phase One identify six continua of issues, reported by parents to be meaningful in terms of experiences for their children. In Phase Two these findings are incorporated into a questionnaire entitled “Experiences that are valued in the early childhood service”. The questionnaire is administered to staff and families in diverse socio economic and geographical regions in order to test for generalisability of the original findings. This thesis indicates that the role of early childhood services as community and family support services is not well articulated nor well understood by staff or families. The findings from the study include: 1. Rather than supporting families, some forms of information dissemination from early childhood services actually increase pressure on families. 2. Staff and families have differing perceptions about the frequency of communication and the experiences occurring in the early childhood service. Families report that the experiences they value highly are not valued by the service. 3. Despite a strong emphasis on a multicultural approach to early childhood service delivery, not all families value this notion. Rather, families want early childhood services to ‘teach and reflect’ the dominant cultural ways of knowing and learning because this is associated with school success. 1 The researcher uses the term Aboriginal not Indigenous throughout the thesis as this as this is the main term the family used to identify themselves. 4. Some common and widely used measures assessing quality early childhood services do not include measures associated with family and community support. This thesis concludes with a set of recommendations for service delivery and policy decision makers. These focus on the need to embrace a ‘fifth discourse’ for early childhood services – one which defines the sector as the vehicle for providing safe ‘meeting places’ where families and staff participate in meaningful ways that result in true support for the complex role of parenting. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

School Performance Review and Development (SPRAD) was a major innovation in school evaluation in the Australian Capital Territory. One of its aims was to encourage teachers and parents to work together in evaluating and developing policy across all areas of school life: Administration and Management, Finances, Curriculum and Assessment, Staff and Student Welfare and overall School Climate. SPRAD is different from other forms of school review in that it is system-initiated but kept under the control of the participants. The ACT Department of Education and Training supplies the resourcing and consultative assistance. One of the hopes for SPRAD was that, in bringing teachers and parents closer together, it would create a greater understanding of where each group stood in relation to the other and strengthen parent/teacher relationships. The focus areas for this study were parent participation in classroom and related activities, the various channels of information employed within the school such as school newsletters, reports and interviews, specific notices and letters relaying matters peculiar to class groups and school sectors, parent/teacher information-sharing sessions, parent/teacher involvement in board and P & C activities, and other forms of formal and informal contact. The study highlights the differences and similarities between teachers and parents in relation to "professionalism" and "partnership", and areas of conflict highlighted by Beacham & Hoadley (1979) who discuss the Fortress Model of Schooling, and Darland (lanni et al: 1975) who writes of the "anyone can teach attitude" displayed by many members of the public, i.e. the attitude that because all people have had some experience of schooling, then their opinions on education carry as much weight as those of the professionals; the feeling that what was good for them is good for their children, because they have "been there, done that" and teachers do not really know very much more than they (the public) do. SPRAD was seen to be a helpful factor in developing some aspects of parent/teacher relationships. Satisfaction with parent participation in classroom activities had increased overall despite some drops in actual parent presence at the activities because of the movement of children into the Senior areas of the school. Another example was the lessening of the degree of dissatisfaction with teachers' professional development programmes, especially pupil-free school development days.

The study addressed immigrant families' and mainstream school systems' support for young children's home language learning in Basel, Switzerland. In Switzerland, as in many European countries and in Australia, early childhood educators work with growing numbers of children from immigrant, refugee and asylum seeking families. The culturally, linguistically and ethnically diverse groups of children that now characterise childcare centres, kindergartens and primary schools result from these patterns of immigration and present challenges for teachers and other educators who cater for the needs of increasingly diverse student populations. The literature on home languages acknowledges the importance of the relationship between a child's first language and development in the second language and the essential role of language proficiency in academic success. Despite knowledge from extensive studies on the interdependency of first and second language development (Cummins, 1979, 1981b, 1991, 2001) and evidence that continued development in a child's first language is crucial for overall cognitive development and transfer to second language learning (Collier, 1995), there is little focus on helping children maintain their home language in the early years of education. Arguably too, information and communication technologies (ICTs) lead to increased availability and opportunities for global communication, affecting the nature of communication, and creating possibilities for new forms of learning in the home and school. Children must therefore have the opportunity to become proficient users of these new and evolving forms of technology in order to acquire the skills, including language skills that they will need for future employment. In the light of this conceptual background, the present research focused on: (1) Immigrant parent beliefs and attitudes to home language use and how languages were used at home. (2) The strategies families used to promote home language learning in oral and written forms. (3) The extent to which ICTs were used as a tool to support home languages in the family and school environment. (4) The kinds of support offered in school and communities and what government policies and initiatives were afforded to home languages. (5) The nature of school and community policies and practices on the promotion and maintenance on home languages. These issues were addressed through a qualitative interpretive research approach drawing on the traditions of phenomenography (Marton 1986) and Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The research was based on three main data sources: (1) analysis of policy and curriculum documents from school systems, (2) interviews with key education personnel and (3) interviews with ?immigrant? parents (n=58) from diverse socio-economic backgrounds living in Basel. Families were drawn from 16 countries including the former Yugoslavia, (Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia), Spain, South and Central America, and Turkey. All children, whose parents participated in the study, attended state run kindergartens and primary schools. A major focus in the data collection and analysis was on (a) parents' perspectives and experiences as they negotiated home language learning in the home, school and community and the extent to which they used ICTs to enrich home language development, and (b) mainstream teachers' perspectives on the role home languages played in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms, as well as the role ICTs and media played in teaching children from immigrant families. The results of the study showed that: (a) immigrant children's home languages and culture as well as bilingualism and multilingualism are prominent features in Basel integration policy and curriculum documents but this focus is rarely translated to early childhood classroom practice, (b) classroom teachers focus predominantly on children learning their second language (German), (c) immigrant children's home language and culture is valued and respected but formal opportunities for children to learn to read and write in their home languages begin only when they have reached second grade, (d) there were a range of perspectives, reasons and strategies for maintaining and promoting home languages within families, (e) ICT was not an integral part of children's classroom experiences in kindergarten and scarcely integrated in primary classrooms, but was used in a variety of ways within homes to promote home language and communication, (f) there were wide variations in parents' and teachers' perspectives on what constitutes parent involvement in children's learning and education, and (g) links between home and school were mostly 'one way' and formal and some parents desired more frequent, more informal and spontaneous contact with teachers. These findings have considerable implications for Basel school and classroom practice and for early and middle year policy makers. They show that embedded assumptions of both teachers and parents may have a negative impact on children's positive identification with both majority and minority language learning. Limited financial support for home language classes is likely to have a negative effect on immigrant children's home language literacy learning. Dialogue needs to be sought on the potential for ICT use in home language learning. Policy makers' efforts towards developing multilingualism in all children are problematic. Some parents drew attention to the challenge of learning a third language through a second language, L1 + L2a +L2b + L3+L4. (L1 = home language, L2a= German Swiss dialect, L2b = Standard German, L3= French, L4 = English). To help better explain and increase awareness of the interrelationship between home languages, ICT use and the home-school connection, a model was developed that reflects the range of immigrant family perspectives on home language learning and the influences that appear to promote home language development within children's environments. This 'multilingual social cohesive communications model' should assist in understanding the important links between home languages, ICTs and home-school communication. The model emphasises the importance of developing bottom up local level strategies and recognises the vital role of positive interactions between parents and teachers. It builds on a sociocultural view of language learning, tapping on the potential of new learning tools (ICTs) in real and virtual communities. It recognises the importance of intercultural identity formation and at the same time the inhibiting effects of discrimination both overt and covert. The model incorporates the strategies schools need to improve communication with families and to strengthen links between home and school with the view to improving educational outcomes and prospects for immigrant children.

In recent years interorganizational collaboration has increasingly been emphasized as an important step for addressing inefficiencies in the delivery of human services. Among the many benefits of collaboration described by human service authors are the creation of a more consumer-friendly service system, more efficient use of available resources, and avoiding service duplication. During the Spring and Summer of 1996, six focus groups were conducted in Oregon to assess the quality of collaboration between local social service providers and Even Start, a federally funded family literacy program. The federal Even Start legislation required that all Even Start programs collaborate with social service providers in their local communities to improve services for families and avoid duplication of services. This study examined data from the Even Start focus groups using a three-level hierarchical model to determine the approximate level of collaboration that existed in each of six Even Start communities. Results of the analysis indicated that collaboration in three of the six Even Start communities was at or near coordination, the middle level of the three-level model. Collaboration in the other three communities appeared to be somewhere below the lowest level of the model, cooperation. Although agencies at such a minimal level of collaboration may consider each other partners, they are likely to have limited knowledge about each other's operations and clients. Because three of six Even Start communities fit below the lowest level of the model, the model had limited utility for this analysis. However, for interagency relationships at higher levels, the model was effective in helping to find the approximate intensity of collaboration. Although the primary focus of the model used in this analysis was on collaboration intensity, a comprehensive evaluation of collaboration would include numerous additional variables, especially outcomes related to the purposes of the interagency relationship. Several lessons learned during the course of this study have implications for future research. First, by creating data sets that are amenable to examination from multiple perspectives, qualitative methods offer unique flexibility for data collection in secondary circumstances such as the present study. Second, it is likely that collaboration in occurs in varied patterns, few of which resemble the highest levels of collaboration advocated by authors in the field. Finally, rather than broadly encouraging human service organizations to move toward the highest levels of collaboration, researchers need to provide answers to basic questions about what forms of collaboration are most helpful, in which circumstances, and why. / Graduation date: 1999

Graduation date: 1996