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Parental Involvement in Twenty-First Century Schools and the Implications of the Changing Family Structure: Recommendations for Leaders

The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to identify major factors that directly
affect parental involvement in 21st century schools. This study examined several
elements of parental involvement. It calculated the idea of the changing family
context and parental involvement, technology and parental involvement, the impact
of Cultural Capital and parental involvement, the impact of the Academic Parent
Teacher Teams program and parental involvement, and parents’ demographics
and parental involvement. Data gathered to inform the research were derived from
parent surveys and teachers and administrators interviews. The research
examined the relationship between the parental involvement and parents’
perception of the school's accessibility, parents' perception of school's
communication, parents’ perception of the school’s climate, parent’s perception
of their role in student's learning, teachers’ perceptions of the role of technology,
parents’ perceptions of the usefulness of the Academic Parent Teacher Teams
(APTT) Program, teachers’ perceptions of the usefulness of the APTT Program,
Cultural Capital, and parents’ demographics: level of education, occupation,
socioeconomic level, parental structure, ethnicity, and marital status parental. The
benefits of the research are to inform educators how to structure programs that will
directly assist parents on how to help their children more effectively at home, to
reeducate parents on how to unpack standards, and measure the successfulness
of a program that helped to bridge the gap between family and school. The surveys
and interviews were administered at the elementary school located in Atlanta.
The researcher focused this work on studies examining the associations
between family, home and school because these associations began emerging as
efforts to assess the efficacy of governmental programs and other interventions. In
the late 1990s, scholarly attention turned to “community control of schools,
especially in the education of low-income children, special education students, and
English language learners” (McKenna & Millen, 2013, p. 14). These researchers
sought to recommend strategies that would promote parent, family, and community
involvement. These areas and these children were considered as the ones that
could benefit the most from parental involvement. The results from these studies
seek to add more clarity on how educators today can enlighten schools on how to
bridge the family and school gap in the 21st century.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:auctr.edu/oai:digitalcommons.auctr.edu:cauetds-1096
Date16 May 2016
CreatorsSmith, Anetta Rena
PublisherDigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center
Source SetsAtlanta University Center
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceElectronic Theses & Dissertations Collection for Atlanta University & Clark Atlanta University

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