Guest editorial

Citation

Bywater, T. (2015), "Guest editorial", Journal of Children's Services, Vol. 10 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCS-08-2015-0026

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Children's Services, Volume 10, Issue 3.

Tracey Bywater

Professor Tracey Bywater is based at the Institute for Effective Education, University of York, York, UK.

Partners in education: families and schools

This edition builds on a previous well-received collection of articles relating to the topic of parent-school partnerships published in the Institute for Effective Education's Better magazine (www.betterevidence.org/issue-15/).

The current collection of papers focuses on this hot topic of debate and describes and explores the evidence of, strategies that parents[1] and schools implement to forge, maintain, and strengthen working links with the aim to improve outcomes for children.

I outline below some broad background around this important topic prior to passing the reins over to the experts in the field who will guide you through some extremely interesting topics, viewpoints, research, and evidence in their subsequent thought-provoking and informative papers. Authors include: Keith Aronson, Nick Axford, Julia Bishop, Gretchen Bjornstad, Tracey Bywater, Suzy Clarkson, Erica Culler, Carole Edgerton, David Farrington, Stephen Gorard, Seonaid Graham, Mallori Hamilton, Steve Higgins, Judy Hutchings, Maria Katsipataki, Barbara Kelly, Lynn McDonald, Edward Melhuish, Hannah Miller, Jeremy Moeller, Cathy Nutbrown, Daniel Perkins, Elaine Robertson, Pam Sammons, Jen Sandler, Beng Huat See, Iram Siraj, Kathy Sylva, Barry Syme, Brenda Taggart, Katalin Toth, Carolyn Webster-Stratton, Helen Wheeler, and Zoe Wrigley.

Families lay the foundations for a feeling of security, and form the solid base from which children learn to face and cope with life anxieties, build relationships, and manage emotions. Home life is also greatly important in preparing children for school life and academic learning.

School is the second most important influence in the lives of the majority of children. School experiences play a vital part in determining their academic, social and, probably, their occupational future.

A child's education begins at home. Parents and families mould and shape a child's learning consciously, or unconsciously, from the day they are born. Where a child lives becomes their "Home Learning Environment" (HLE). A HLE should be conducive to positive child development and readiness for school in so far as being socialised, able to follow instructions, and manage their own emotions. The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) study found that what parents "do" in their home with their young children makes a real difference to their development, and is more important than parents' socio-economic status or educational level (Sylva et al., 2004). Activities such as reading with their child, teaching songs and nursery rhymes, painting and drawing, playing/teaching letters and numbers, visiting the library, taking children on visits and providing opportunities for playing with their friends, were associated with higher intellectual and social/behavioural scores. Furthermore, forging links between families and educational settings in the very early years can be influential. The most effective pre-school settings share information with parents about their children's learning and encourage parents getting involved in their children's learning and development at pre-school and at home (Sylva et al., 2004).

The paper in this edition written by Sammons, Toth, Sylva, Melhuish, Siraj and Taggart demonstrates that a positive HLE at age three shapes academic success long-term, up to secondary school. However, not all HLEs are conducive to learning. This has led to crucial considerations by policy makers and funders to concentrate on supporting families with children very young children in the home and early educational settings, e.g. Big Lottery's Better Start (www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/betterstart), which concentrates on families with children under three years, and the government's initiative of providing free pre-school child care for disadvantaged two-year olds.

So, what can be done to support parents in their challenging role of caring for, providing for, and educating their child, in short, to ensure a higher quality HLE? Parent programmes that offer support in the early years and throughout primary school years may form part of the answer. They can be delivered in community and school settings by trained facilitators e.g. teachers, and can enhance the potential for child learning by promoting positive parent-child interaction, and a child's readiness to learn. The Incredible Years parent, teacher, and child programmes, and also the Families and Schools Together programme, can be extremely valuable in forging family and school partnerships to enhance learning at home and school. See papers by Webster-Stratton and Bywater (this edition), and also McDonald, Miller and Sandler (this edition), which discuss these two specific programmes.

When children start primary school they may have experienced pre-school or nursery and tackled some big challenges including; spending time away from home and familiar people and routines, managing on their own and becoming independent, meeting different children and adults, learning new skills and performing new tasks, comparing themselves with others, and learning to share with others. Parent, child and teacher programmes can "smooth the way" and support learning around problem-solving abilities, emotion regulation, and social emotional wellbeing.

School-based programmes delivered to children, such as Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) are typically delivered by teachers and may include elements for parent involvement. The paper by Kelly, Edgerton, Graham, Robertson and Syme (this edition), discusses the implementation of PATHS with increased parent involvement strategies, spontaneously initiated by schools. This case study highlights the importance levied by some schools on partnership working, and draws heavily on implementation science – a growing field of importance when considering delivery of any intervention or initiative.

What comes across strongly from the aforementioned papers outlining parent, child, and teacher programmes, and the wider literature, is the importance for a child to be mentally "in the right place" to learn. As previously mentioned the home and school environment should be a nurturing, supporting, setting to ensure child mental wellbeing and learning potential. This, of course, is not always the case. A negative, or ineffective, HLE may be somewhat negated by a positive school environment however, if a school environment is also negative, for example because it has bullying issues, then the chance of academic success for some may be bleak. Unfortunately there is strong link between being negatively parented and becoming a victim or perpetrator of bullying (Lereya et al., 2013). Axford, Farrington, Clarkson, Bjornstad, Wrigley and Hutchings (this edition) discuss the potential impact of parental inclusion in anti-bullying school strategies or programmes.

As highlighted above, parents' involvement is crucial in ensuring children have the broad pre-requisites to learning, however a variety of strategies or programmes include parents to raise academic outcomes in specific areas. The focus for these strategies may be, for instance, literacy, mathematics, or science.

There is some evidence that parental involvement has a modest and positive impact on pupil attainment (Castro et al., 2015), yet a recent review of evaluation studies of parental involvement interventions have found such studies to be lacking in quality, which has led to inconclusive results in whether these interventions improve educational outcomes (Gorard and See, 2013). This edition includes a paper by See and Gorard, which reviews the available evidence about the impact of parental involvement on attainment in the early years and primary school years. The review considers any evaluation of parental involvement programmes intended to enhance parents' participation in their child's learning and so raise attainment.

Structured interventions, such as those examined in See and Gorard's review, are regarded by many (e.g. Allen, 2012) as an important vehicle to promote behaviour/outcome change. However, with a lack of robust evidence around specific interventions to improve, e.g. literacy outcomes, alternative methods or strategies to include parents in their child's learning deserve some exploration. Advocates example of structured, collaborative co-production of knowledge with parents and practitioners in raising literacy outcomes include presented by Nutbrown, Bishop and Wheeler (this edition). This example of working together is encouraging as, in comparison to improving the curriculum and teaching duties, family engagement is sometimes not considered a priority, even though it is included in most school mission statements. Some schools may consider family engagement as "extra work", although others believe that goal-linked family and community engagement is central to the success of all other school improvements, and that it can help more students meet curricular standards and remain in education (Epstein et al., 2009). In this edition Higgins and Katsipataki looks specifically at three types of parental involvement based on Epstein's parental involvement framework: first, general approaches to develop parent and school partnerships (which may include a number of components); second, specific family literacy interventions; and third, targeted interventions for families in particular need. The authors suggest some excellent pointers for schools by, in light of a lack of robust evidence, providing some "best bets" strategies for potential academic gain. This is an important move, as schools and families have been working together in various ways for some time now, and it is crucial that the hard work and preliminary evidence, or potential for benefit, should not be lost, and that schools do not become discouraged.

But what of cases where parents are unable to be regularly involved in their child's learning; where, to all intents and purposes, schools become the "primary" carer of a child with parents often-times absent, such as in military families? What structures or processes do schools utilise to overcome this potential barrier to learning? Are we to expect that child outcomes are poorer due to parental absence? The paper by Moeller, Culler, Hamilton, Aronson and Perkins discusses parental absence in military families, and includes potential lessons for schools that are unable, for whatever reason, to engage with parents.

This edition provides an excellent opportunity to reinforce, discuss, or relay new, important research and policy messages concerning parent and school partnership working. It is difficult to make definite recommendations, as there is still much to be learned about how best to engage with, and involve, parents and families in children's education to produce increased academic gain.

Note

The term "parent" in this edition is defined as any adult undertaking a parenting role.

Acknowledgements

This special edition would not have been possible without the authors playing their lead roles; no lead roles can be successful without a terrific supporting cast, in this case of reviewers, publishers, and editorial teams. The author would like to acknowledge and thank all involved for their commitment and support in co-producing such an excellent edition.

References

Allen, G. (2012), Early Intervention: The Next Steps – An independent Report to Her Majesty's Government, HM Government, London

Castro, M., Expósito-Casas, E., López-Martín, E., Lizasoain, L., Navarro-Ascencio, E. and Gaviria, J.L. (2015), "Parental involvement on student academic achievement: a meta-analysis", Educational Research Review, Vol. 14, pp. 33-46

Epstein, J.L., Sanders, M., Simon, B., Salinas, K., Jansorn, N. and Van Voorhis, F. (2009), School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, 3rd ed., Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA

Gorard, S. and See, B.H. (2013), Do Parental Involvement Interventions Increase Attainment? Nuffield Foundation, London

Lereya, S.T., Samara, M. and Wolke, D. (2013), "Parenting behavior and the risk of becoming a victim and a bully/victim: a meta-analysis study", Child Abuse & Neglect, Vol. 37 No. 12, pp. 1091-108

Sylva, K., Melhuish, E., Sammons, P., Siraj-Blatchford, I. and Taggart, B. (2004), The Final Report: Effective Pre-School Education, Institute of Education, University of London, London