Research indicates that the limited communication between English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers and parents is a serious problem confronting educators. However, no serious study has been done to date on ESL parent-teacher communication that adequately recognizes the problematic nature of such communication and that approaches the discourse data from a functional linguistic perspective. This study investigates the communication processes between ESL teachers and Chinese immigrant parents (chiefly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China) through a focal communication event, ESL Parents' Night, when they discuss their views of an ESL program in particular and the education of immigrant adolescent students in general. The study falls within the theoretical perspectives of learning organization, negotiation of intercultural conflict in a multilingual situation, language socialization, and sociocultural views of activity. Data were collected by multiple methods: 1) observations of twelve ESL department planning meetings and three annual Parents' Nights, 2) individual interviews of teachers and bilingual assistants who acted as intermediaries between teachers and parents, and 3) a focus group discussion. Specifically, the methodology combines qualitative research approaches and discourse analysis. Results indicate that teachers viewed the ESL program positively whereas many parents perceived it negatively. Teachers and parents were deeply divided both by what and how they were discussing at Parents' Night. This 'double difference' creates a major difficulty for intercultural negotiation of conflict, and preconditions aiding dialogue and negotiation become vitally important. Noting variation in interaction in different parts of Parents' Night, the study discusses various conditions that may have promoted or hindered the intercultural negotiation of these conflicts. The researcher's analysis of the difficulties of communication between Chinese parents and Canadian teachers at Parents' Night demonstrates less a solution to intercultural conflict than a need for continuous negotiation between the two cultural groups. Implications of this research include the need to expand the boundaries of language socialization theory to give a greater role to reflective processes, and learning organization theory to include multilingual and multicultural issues. It also provides practical suggestions for improving intercultural communication between parents and teachers in the interest of adolescent ESL learners frequently caught between conflicting sets of attitudes and expectations.

Parental involvement in schools has been contested for decades. Although it is clear that parents have a responsibility to care for and nurture their children, the legislated role of schools to educate children leaves somewhat ambiguous the role of parents. Using Hannah Arendt's notions of public and private and the emergence of a social sphere this conceptual research examines the complex relationship of parents to schools. Using the British Columbia Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils (BCCPAC) Parent Advocacy Project as one model, this study illustrates how parents can play an important role in the public school education of their children. Parental involvement and legislated governance of schools have emerged as major educational issues in Canada. The struggle for control in education has its roots in the history of public education, legislation, the emergence of unions and the postindustrial global production/consumption market place economy. These issues reveal the emergence of a "social" sphere blurring the public/private distinctions, dominated by bureaucracy and alienating citizens from their political responsibilities to determine a good life. The emerging role of parents as advocates for their children in the schools may restore some balance to the public/private relationship, however, it may also reveal some of the problems of power and control within the system.

The study is in response to the recently enacted South African Schools Act No. 84 of 1996 (SASA), which sees the legislated inclusion of parents in school governing bodies. The Act promotes four distinct representative participants or stakeholders. These include parents, who constitute the majority, educators, learners and non-teaching staff. There is an indication that the SASA has tensions, ambiguities and contradictions which could allow either &quot / consumer market&quot / or &quot / citizen equity&quot / visions to prevail in practical terms. However, I argue that the SASA in practice is becoming dominated by the consumer vision that has a danger of creating unfair competition amongst schools and perpetuating the already existing inequalities in our society. In this mini-thesis, I attempt to investigate the nature of parental involvement in school governance in practice. I focus on their responsibilities in relation to policy matters as enshrined in the SASA, their commitment to executing their functions. The aim is to determine their capacity to fulfil their responsibilities with respect to their powers and functions.

Text in Afrikaans / The focus of this qualitative study is the way teachers experience parental involvement in the learning process of mentally disabled children. Five participants, teaching at a school for disabled children for more than ten years and working with children between the ages of six and 18, participated in this study. Individual, unstructured interviews were conducted with the participants to describe how they experience parental involvement in the learning process of mentally disabled children. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Nine recurring themes were identified in the transcriptions and compared with current literature. The aim of the study was not to generalize the findings, as it was a qualitative study and the participants were given the opportunity to share their experience. The result of this study is a detailed description of how teachers experience parental involvement in the learning process of mentally disabled children. / Social Work / M.Diac

A motivação para realizar a presente pesquisa decorre da necessidade de uma melhor compreensão sobre a relação entre a Família e a Escola, no que diz respeito ao estabelecimento de limites à criança. Os limites aqui estão sendo tomados como sinônimo de disciplina. Durante muito tempo, atuando em uma instituição particular de ensino, observou-se a existência de muitos conflitos entre pais e professores quando o tema em foco é disciplina. Isso implica que os pais argumentam, com a maior naturalidade, que não sabem mais que procedimentos adotar para disciplinar seus filhos e os professores, na maioria das vezes, não sabem o que fazer ou que atitude tomar ao verem um aluno agitando na sala-deaula. Em decorrência das inquietações relatadas anteriormente, cresceu a necessidade de investigar a concepção que os pais e os professores têm acerca dos limites que poderão ser aplicados às crianças, especialmente em decorrência de seus comportamentos inadequados. Nesse sentido, foi realizada uma pesquisa qualitativa, com 15 educadores (sendo cinco professores, cinco mães e cinco pais) que tinham seus filhos ou alunos matriculados regularmente no Ensino Fundamental-I de escolas particulares. Através das entrevistas realizadas, foi possível observar a dificuldade que os pais e os professores vêm sentindo quando o tema em pauta é disciplina. Por outro lado, nota-se uma convergência acerca da concepção de limites, bem como das repercussões que sua falta pode acarretar. Pode-se também constatar a influência das concepções de gênero, da mídia e das pressões às quais as pessoas são submetidas na sociedade atual: os pais sendo absorvidos pelo trabalho e outras preocupações do dia-a-dia; os professores sendo obrigados a tratar os alunos como clientes, devido à competitividade entre as escolas particulares, que precisam dos alunos, e queixosos da falta de sua educação doméstica. Acredita-se que esta pesquisa possa oferecer uma contribuição aos profissionais e estudiosos interessados nos temas família e escola. Tem-se a certeza de que ela não é conclusiva e ainda haverá muito que pesquisar e aprender ante a complexidade do assunto, sua abrangência e importância nos dias atuais / The motivation to carry through to present research elapses of the necessity of one better understanding on the accomplishment between the Family and the School, in what it says respect to the establishment of limits to the child. During much time, acting in a private institution of education, it of many conflicts between parents was observed existence and professors when the subject in focus is discipline. This implies that the parent argue, with the biggest naturalness, who do not know than procedure more to accept to discipline its. children and professors, in the majority of the times, they do not know what to make or that attitude to take when seeing a pupil agitating in the classroom. Succeeding the told fidgets previously, the necessity increased to investigate the conception that the parents and the professors have concerning the limits that could be applied the children, especially succeeding its inadequate behaviors. In this direction, a qualitative research was carried through, with 15 educators (being five professors, five mothers and five fathers) that had its children or pupils registered the basic education of private schools regularly. Because of the carried through interviews, was possible to observe the difficulty that the parents and professors come feeling when the subject in guideline discipline. On the other hand, a convergence concerning the conception of limits is noticed, as well as of the repercussions that its lack of limits can cause. The influence of the conceptions a sort can also be evidenced, of the media and of the pressures to which they are submitted in the current society. The parents bring absorbed by the work and other concerns of day-by-day; the professors bring obliged to treat the pupils as customers, had the competitiveness between the private schools that they need the complaining pupils and of the lack of domestic education give credit that this research can offer a contribution to the studious professional and interested in the subjects family and school. It is had certainty of that it is not conclusive, and still will have very what to search and to learn it enters the complexity of the subject, its extension and the importance of the current days

Thesis (MTech (Education))--Cape Technikon, 2004. / The study focuses on the level of parental involvement in the primary schools situated in informal settlements. The area of research was limited to the informal settlements of the Cape Flats in Cape Town. The identified areas were Philippi, Weltevreden valley, Khayelitsha and Crossroads. The principals, members of the governing bodies as well, as a sample of parents not serving on governing bodies were interviewed on the level of involvement. A case study of schools was undertaken on governance, communication, school involvement, home involvement as well as extra-curricular activities. The findings of the research were that parents are not innovative when it comes to school activities. They expect too much from the schools. Parents do not ask too many questions. They accept what the schools tell them. Parents generally do not help children at home with their studies. They hardly ever watch their children while participating in extra-curricular activities. The researcher made conclusions and made recommendations.

Magister Educationis - MEd / This study was designed to investigate the current policies and practices of secondary school governance in Eritrea. There is a basic need to investigate the nature of parental involvement in school governance, particularly in relation to policies enshrined in the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) guidelines. The study examined the parents' commitment to execute their school governance role properly and to determine their capacity to fulfil their responsibilities with respect to the powers and functions vested in them. Education was merely the domain of the school and parents were discouraged from interfering in matters of school governance, therefore parental participation has been very limited. Thus, the focus of the study was to investigate the prevailing problems that curtail parental involvement and identify appropriate strategies for improving and strengthening school governance. / South Africa

This research focuses on aspects of parental involvement in homework and the differing power relations which homework uncovered within the family. It is concerned with the deeper implications of homework through exploring the attitudes, behaviours and beliefs of teachers and/or parents and/or pupils and to consider who really is in control of the homework process, the perceived and actual roles of the participants, the resistances to homework and the possible changing social factors which impinge on homework. This thesis offers a unique contribution to the homework discourses as it uses a qualitative approach, drawing on an extended version of the French and Raven (1959) conceptualisation of power as a means of interrogating the data, by labelling certain attitudes, behaviours and beliefs, to seek explanations of the patterns of power. These patterns of power are exposed through the family’s story of their engagement, or not, in the homework process. The notion of engaging pupils in the learning process is at the heart of many of the recent educational initiatives, arising from the National debate on Education (2002). At the heart of these new initiatives is the notion of learners being actively involved in the learning process, in and out of the classroom to encourage them to take responsibility for their learning. A number of implications for pupils, parents, teachers and the government are considered. These particularly relate to the effective practices of teachers and parents as a means of preventing the pupils from controlling the homework process and to the government to consider appropriate and effective means of ensuring that all concerned are engaged in conducting homework which is interesting, stimulating and motivating.

Research indicates that the limited communication between English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers and parents is a serious problem confronting educators. However, no serious study has been done to date on ESL parent-teacher communication that adequately recognizes the problematic nature of such communication and that approaches the discourse data from a functional linguistic perspective. This study investigates the communication processes between ESL teachers and Chinese immigrant parents (chiefly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China) through a focal communication event, ESL Parents' Night, when they discuss their views of an ESL program in particular and the education of immigrant adolescent students in general. The study falls within the theoretical perspectives of learning organization, negotiation of intercultural conflict in a multilingual situation, language socialization, and sociocultural views of activity. Data were collected by multiple methods: 1) observations of twelve ESL department planning meetings and three annual Parents' Nights, 2) individual interviews of teachers and bilingual assistants who acted as intermediaries between teachers and parents, and 3) a focus group discussion. Specifically, the methodology combines qualitative research approaches and discourse analysis. Results indicate that teachers viewed the ESL program positively whereas many parents perceived it negatively. Teachers and parents were deeply divided both by what and how they were discussing at Parents' Night. This 'double difference' creates a major difficulty for intercultural negotiation of conflict, and preconditions aiding dialogue and negotiation become vitally important. Noting variation in interaction in different parts of Parents' Night, the study discusses various conditions that may have promoted or hindered the intercultural negotiation of these conflicts. The researcher's analysis of the difficulties of communication between Chinese parents and Canadian teachers at Parents' Night demonstrates less a solution to intercultural conflict than a need for continuous negotiation between the two cultural groups. Implications of this research include the need to expand the boundaries of language socialization theory to give a greater role to reflective processes, and learning organization theory to include multilingual and multicultural issues. It also provides practical suggestions for improving intercultural communication between parents and teachers in the interest of adolescent ESL learners frequently caught between conflicting sets of attitudes and expectations. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

Parental involvement in schools has been contested for decades. Although it is clear that parents have a responsibility to care for and nurture their children, the legislated role of schools to educate children leaves somewhat ambiguous the role of parents. Using Hannah Arendt's notions of public and private and the emergence of a social sphere this conceptual research examines the complex relationship of parents to schools. Using the British Columbia Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils (BCCPAC) Parent Advocacy Project as one model, this study illustrates how parents can play an important role in the public school education of their children. Parental involvement and legislated governance of schools have emerged as major educational issues in Canada. The struggle for control in education has its roots in the history of public education, legislation, the emergence of unions and the postindustrial global production/consumption market place economy. These issues reveal the emergence of a "social" sphere blurring the public/private distinctions, dominated by bureaucracy and alienating citizens from their political responsibilities to determine a good life. The emerging role of parents as advocates for their children in the schools may restore some balance to the public/private relationship, however, it may also reveal some of the problems of power and control within the system. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate