Insights for Action from Research: Communication.
There’s no question that students are making progress in literacy development as they participate in varied activities. We know that parent participatio
n in their children’s learning and school is crucial to students’ increased achievement. A question on school-parent partnerships that research can help us answer is how best to share the good news with families?
Research Findings 1: How we communicate matters. When the North Central Regional Educational Labora-tory (NCREL), conducted a literature search on parent involvement in 1995, the authors found that research showed that how strategies were implemented was key in parents’ per-ception that they would want to be more involved at their children’s school. NCREL cites research by Ames (1995) about successful school-family communication. The important features were that the “school communicated, continually, in varied ways, covered both class-room content, and individ-ual information about their child or children,” (Ames 1995 as cited in Literature Review of Home-Family Partnerships/ Home Page [1] /Overview, 1995).
Research Finding 2: What we communicate matters too. Research Finding 1 tells us that how we communicate is important. What then, does research say about the content of our communication? An earlier study also by Ames (1993), as cited by Christenson (1995 online, University of Minnesota), showed that “those elementary school teachers who were high users of school-to-home communications more often reported that they felt they could reach difficult students and help all students to make progress. These teachers focused communication on information about: classroom learning, activities (goals, curriculum and materials), students’ progress, and direction to enable parents to help children in learning activities at home. Thus we
learn from Ames that the teachers’ communication influenced parents’ feelings of comfort with the school, which, in turn influenced their involvement in their children’s learning.
Rich (1998, 38-39) underscores the importance of the nature of teachers’ communication with parents, suggesting that teachers provide “clear information about class expectations—a written set of expectations about the curriculum, goals for class achievement, standards for quality of work, and class behavior code.”
Insights for Action. Clearly where our communication is successful, it most likely mirrors some of these research findings. In the box above are some additional ideas.
BUILD ON IDEAS FROM RESEARCH
• Students can customize flyers about class or school activities by adding their names and writ-ing in notes (and illustrating these).
• Create three-way interactive dialogue journals (parent-student-teacher) to ask questions, offer input, or tell an interesting story about or by stu-dents or family.
• Send home class rubrics (in any content area) with students’ work-in-progress to let parents ‘see’ goals and progress.
• Send work-folders home—asking students to dis-cuss and parents to comment on these. • Develop a class library Loan-A-Book program to allow students to select books for independent reading and pick passages to read to younger as well as older family members.
• On ‘author day’ (or another special day) arrange for video taping so students can take turns sharing their successes with families.
• Create a cassette tape of students’ reading to take home to share with family.
REFERENCES
Ames, C. (1993). How school-home-communications influence parent beliefs and perceptions. Equity and Choice, 9 (3), 44-491. _______ (1995) Teachers’ school-to-home communication and parent involvement: The role of parent perceptions and beliefs (Report # 28). East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, College of Education, Center on Families, Communities, Schools, and Children’s Learning.
Christenson, S.L. (1995). Supporting home-school collabo-ration, in A. Thomas and J. Grines. (eds.), Best Practices in School Psychology III, (253-267). Washington, DC: National Association of School Psychologists, or, _________ (1995). Supporting home-school collaboration, on the Internet at University of Minnesota website, Child Youth and Family Consortium, http://www.cyfc.umn.edu/Learn/supporting.html Rich, D. (May, 1998). What parents want from teachers. Educational Leadership. (37-39). Center for School Community Development (CSCD) at North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL). (1999). Literature Review of School-Family Partnerships. Online: http://www.-ncrel.org/sdrs/pidata/pi0ltrev.htm or call 1-800-356-2735.