Parent Involvement in Education in Terms of Their Socio-Economic Status

Abstract

ProblemStatement:Increasing the quality of education and educating well-qualifiedstudents is one of the most important objectives of formal education. Informalresources are as important as formal resources in improving this efficiency andproductivity. In this respect, it can be said that family is the most importantinformal structure affecting the education of the child. In order to evaluatethe involvement of family in education, various ways of categorizing have beenimplemented. One of these systems provides six categories in parental involvement,which are parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decisionmaking and collaborating with the community. Whilst the meaning andsignificance of parental involvement is the starting point of this study, determiningthe level of involvement of the families in the educational activities atschools in terms of their socio-economic status is the main purpose of thisstudy. Consideringthe fact that research on parental involvement in schools in terms of the socio-economicstatus of parents is scarce, the present study may serve as an important datasource for researchers and policy makers in regard to comparing the effects of thisinvolvement.Purposeof the Study: The purpose of this studyis to examine the viewpoints of administrators, teachers and parents oninvolvement of the families in the process of education in terms ofsocio-economic status in public and private primary and secondary schools.Method: Interview and document analysis methods, which are both qualitativeresearch methods, were used in the study. The study group was 11 teachers, fouradministrators working at public and private primary and secondary schools inMugla and six parents. The data were collected through semi-structuredinterview methods. In addition, the documents related to the involvement ofparents to education were analysed—school newspapers, the announcements, newsand the activities section of the schools’ Web pages. In analysing the datacollected in this study, the NVivo8 package program and the descriptiveanalysis technique were used. The findings are presented with a descriptiveanalysis method. Findings:The results of the study indicate that parents from differentsocio-economic backgrounds do not have very different ideas about the processof involvement in the process of education. However, because school-familyinteraction in public schools and the trainings on parenting are not verysystematic even if socio-economic status is high, the interaction is not at adesired level. The reasons parents communicate with the schools were found tobe to evaluate student’s academic success and personal development. Both inpublic and private schools, involvement of parents in the decisions was in theform of asking parents their ideas. It was found that parents having a goodsocio-economic status were more willing and active in the procedure ofparticipating in the process of education.Conclusion and Recommendations: In order toincrease parent involvement in education, the guidance services at schoolsshould be used more functionally. For example, needs analysis towardsdetermining the needs of the parents and the students in their school lifeshould be made, and based on the results of the analysis, programmes to supportparent involvement in education should be prepared.