Abstract:

This study explored the beliefs, and perceptions of educational leaders (administrators and teacher leaders) in high performing, high poverty schools related to engaging parents in the schooling process. Data was drawn from a broader study of high performing, high poverty schools, which examined educational leaders' perceptions of the factors that had contributed to their school's success. Participants were recruited from 16 public schools in ten U.S. states and Ontario, Canada where 65% or more of the students came from low-income households and average standardized test scores exceeded state/provincial averages in all subjects tested for at least a period of three years.

Parents who live in poverty face many barriers to school involvement. In addition to long working hours, lack of child care, and limited transportation, one of the more subtle barriers is the influence of educators' mental maps. Mental maps are the images, stories, and assumptions that shape our attitude and behavior (Argyris & Schon, 1974; Senge, 2006). Because stereotypes about poverty, and people who live in poverty, are deeply embedded in the U.S. and Canadian societies, it is likely educators' mental maps are influenced by those stereotypes in ways that are counterproductive in terms of facilitating parental involvement. It is not uncommon for educators to believe parents who live in poverty do not value education and studies have demonstrated they expect less from students when they perceive parents as being uninvolved (Mandara, 2006). Parents in poverty may also be perceived as uninvolved in their child(ren)'s education as a result of educators' beliefs about what constitutes involvement. Many, if not most, educators view parent involvement as engagement in only those activities that occur within the walls of the school itself; such as parent-teacher conferences, "back to school" nights, and extra-curricular events.

This study sought to answer the following research questions:
(1) Do educational leaders in the participating schools view improved or increased parent involvement as contributing to the school's success,
(2) how do they conceptualize parent involvement, and
(3) how, if at all, did they address barriers to parental involvement often posed by poverty-related intervening factors?

Participants in this study attributed parental engagement, at least in part, to the school’s relative high performance. The tendency to blame parents and families in poverty for student failure was rare in the participating schools, and making the school more welcoming to parents was a common goal. While the educational leaders explicitly addressed and removed barriers to traditional forms of involvement and in some cases were developing innovative approaches to increase parents’ capacity to support their child(ren) academic success, for the most part, parental involvement continued to be viewed as primarily that which occurred within the school.

References:
[1] Argyris, C. & Schon, D.A. (1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
[2] Mandara, J. (2006). The impact of family functioning on African American male’s academic achievement: A review and clarification of the empirical literature. Teachers College Record, 108, 206–223.
[3] Senge, P.M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Currency Doubleday.

Keywords:

Parent Involvement, Poverty, Mental Maps.