Families as Partners in Learning

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Families as Partners in Learning

• Principals and teaching staff
• Why are partnerships important?

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The National Context

• Commitment to Action Developing stronger
  partnerships
• Parents, carers and families are the first and
  most important influence in a child's life,
  instilling the values that will support young
  people to participate in schooling and contribute
  to broader local and global communities.
• (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment,
  Training and Youth Affairs, December 2008)

The Victorian Context
School Community Integration Parental and
family involvement in schooling and learning is a
key lever to improving outcomes. Through
integration with parents, the local community,
business, government and community organisations,
schools can lift outcomes for their
students (Minister Dixons Victoria as a
Learning Community presentation, November 2011)
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We need a change in focus

• From
• Involving families only when it suits the school
• The attitude this is the way weve always done
  it
• Family engagement is just helping with homework
• Parents in this school are not interested in
  their childs education
• To
• All families can play a role in their childs
  learning throughout their school years.
• Family engagement in learning can take many forms
  and includes
• asking their child to explain what they are
  learning
• ensuring their child has a space to study
• helping their child access sporting or community
  based programs
• ensuring the child is getting adequate rest.

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• if educators make use of the informal learning
  that occurs in the homes and communities of
  students, the achievement gap between
  marginalized students and mainstream students can
  be reduced.
• (LIFE Center University of Washington, Stanford
  University SRI International supported by the
  National Science Foundation)

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Life-long and life-wide learning

Source LIFE Centre http//www.life-slc.org/life-
center/about
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The research in unequivocal

• Family involvement can have a major impact on
  student learning, regardless of the social or
  cultural background of the family
• High performing schools have high levels of
  family and community involvement
• Family participation in education has been found
  to be twice as predictive of students academic
  success as family socio-economic status

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Benefits for children young people

• Improved literacy and numeracy outcomes
• Higher self-esteem
• Improved social competence and language skills
• Increased retention rates
• Increased enrolment in post-compulsory education
• Improved attendance and homework completion
• Improved connection to culture and sense of pride

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Benefits for families

• Their children do better and achieve more
• More aware of their childrens social, emotional
  and intellectual developmental needs
• Better able to help encourage their children
• Have more information about their childrens
  education
• Build their own confidence skills
• Improved relationships with school staff
• Concerns are quickly addressed when parents have
  a positive relationship with staff

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Benefits for staff

• Improvements in
• communication to and from families
• community support
• Additional support from families by
• bringing skills which complement the teachers
  skills expertise
• reinforcing the learning from school at home
• Which ultimately lead to better
• student behaviour
• student achievement

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Barriers to the formation of Partnerships Parent
perspective

• Feel they have little to offer
• Embarrassed about own education level /
  linguistic abilities
• Feel unwelcome / intimidated / talked down to by
  the school or its parent organisations
• Have little time during the school day to come
  into the school but no other avenues of
  partnership offered
• Teacher's assumptions of parental disinterest or
  inability to help with children's schooling
• Have negative memories of their school years

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Barriers to the formation of Partnerships School
perspective

• Perception that families
• dont understand the school or the education
  system
• dont care about their children/dont know how to
  parent
• are too demanding and interfere too much in the
  school
• Other factors
• Lack of knowledge of research on the value of
  family partnerships
• Little understanding of how to effectively engage
  with parents
• Structural constraints e.g. lack of child care,
  access to transport
• Schools only contact families when something is
  wrong
• Language cultural differences

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Leadership is critical

• School leadership
• Principal critical in signaling intent to engage
  families
• Need to role model effective engagement with
  families
• Encourage whole of school approaches
• Provide orientation / training for parents
• Parent leadership
• Schools tend to rely on pre-existing capacities
  of a small number of parents
• Alternative is to increase capacity of larger
  number of parents eg via training and support

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So what does this mean for our school?

• 136 discussion, consider
• What does this means for our school?
• Where might be opportunities for exploring,
  commencing or building partnerships?
• What barriers might exist?
• What are the implications of not doing anything
  to advance family-school partnerships?
• Be prepared to share your responses with all
  staff

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Families as Partners in Learning website

• For early childhood services and schools
• DEECDs vision of family partnerships
• Provides information on the importance of family
  partnerships
• Summarises the research and evidence around
  effective family partnerships
• Outlines the benefits and challenges to effective
  family partnerships

• Resources for Schools section
• Conversation starters for staff and families to
  raise awareness
• Identifies 7 dimensions of Family School
  Partnerships and provides for each
• Examples of success including case studies of
  effective practice
• Links to other DEECD resources
• Tools

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How to get started

• The website is a tool that you can dip into at
  your own pace
• Schools are not required to implement every
  strategy across each dimension  
• The website contains a number of surveys to help
  schools reflect on their family-school
  partnerships.
• These include
• Understanding family engagement in your school
• Teachers beliefs about family involvement
• Teacher reports of invitations to parental
  involvement
• Teacher beliefs about the importance of
  specific involvement practices
• Preparing for family-school partnerships

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For further information

• Families as Partners in Learning website, DEECD
• (www.education.vic.gov.au/partnerships)
• Family-School Community Partnerships Bureau
• (www.familyschool.org.au)