Over the coming months we will be thinking, talking and writing about parental engagement, and asking you to share your thoughts and ideas. Why, you ask? Well, parental engagement is crucial to successful family learning and raising children’s attainment.
Parents are a child's first teachers. But many parents don't realise their importance and the difference they can make (Goodall 2007). At age 7, parents have six times the influence of schools, which is unsurprising when 79% of children's waking hours aren’t spent in school. This drives a detrimental attainment gap, where reception-age children from lower socio-economic backgrounds are 4.6 months behind their better-off peers.
Many organisations deliver family interventions, family learning and parenting programmes and provide practical support for parents. We are interested in what fundamentally changes parents’ attitudes and behaviours around learning to increase the support they can give to their child. This is essential if we are serious about unlocking children’s potential to ensure that no child’s success is limited by their socio-economic background. We aim to boost parents’ and their children’s motivation and confidence to learn, and inspire them to love learning together.
Parental engagement – definitions
The following sector-specific quotes raise issues that we’ll be exploring during the coming months. They also show that the term ‘parental engagement’ holds different meanings for different stakeholders, in varying learning environments. Without a shared understanding of engagement with practical examples, we can’t hope to change and boost engagement in the family, home and school-partnership learning environments, or to demonstrate the importance of parental engagement as essential to family learning policy and practice.
'There is often a difference between what is perceived as ’parental engagement’ and what actually goes on in the homes of children' (Desforges and Abouchaar 2003; Harris and Goodall 2009 in Goodall and Vorhaus, 2011, 28).
'...'Parental engagement’ does not always mean the same thing to parents and schools (Martinez and Velazquez 2000; Harris and Goodall 2006; Harris, Andrew- Power 2009) and many activities valued by parents as engaging with their children’s learning are neither recognised nor acknowledged by schools' (Conteh and Kawashima 2008 in Goodall and Vorhause 2011, 28).
'More evidence is required on how parents engage with their children in the home, in order to inform interventions that are appropriate to the needs, behaviours and values of families' (Goodall and Vorhaus 2011, 31).
‘Parental engagement’ sometimes refers to institution or practitioner involvement with parents, e.g., schools inviting parents to take part in school activities such as parents evenings or recruiting parents to participate in family learning activities.
On the other hand, we may be talking about parental engagement which means parents engaged in supporting their children’s learning.
The first type of parental engagement often and should of course have the second as its ultimate goal, and the second is often a strong motivator for parents taking up the first. But if we use these interchangeably, the understanding and value of what happens, what is effective and what works in the home and other learning environments, can be confused.
Campaign for Learning proposes that the term ‘parental engagement’ should be used to refer to the active engagement of parents in their children’s learning.
What do we mean by ‘engagement’?
Our work on parental engagement is shaped by the questions: what is engagement? What does engagement feel like? Why does it matter? How can we measure it?
The motivation for attempting to unravel what engagement could mean is to develop a deeper understanding of what parental engagement could be to support optimal parental engagement, in children’s learning, and in different learning environments. In the research and consultations so far, we have encountered varying understandings of engagement and what it looks like in practice.
To enrich our thinking, several months’ ago we brought together colleagues and peers from different sectors involved in education to explore possible answers to the question: ‘what is engagement?’.
We asked ‘what does engagement feel like?’. My theory is that if we can zero in on the feeling, then we can create a practice that catalyses and repeats what stimulates that feeling.
And, whilst we can’t claim we’ve cracked it, the following peer quote pinpoints a fundamental attribute of what engagement is:
“True engagement feels awesome because you feel like you've got this connection.”
Optimised learning is social, implying connection. On that basis, (parental) engagement in any environment requires relational connection: a sharing of time, space and ideas; communication and collaboration; empathy and interpersonal bonding; the gift of focused attention. Could it be as simple as sharing a bedtime story and having a conversation? These are some of the things we will be contemplating.
How do you facilitate connection with your family learners? What are your favourite activities to connect family learners? Tell us here.
Boosting parental engagement in learning - our project
We want all parents to know how important they are to their child’s learning and feel motivated and confident to engage. At Campaign for Learning, we are developing a parent-focused campaign using high-quality film to boost parental engagement in learning and widen understanding about what it is.
Alongside the Family Learning Festival (5 October – 3 November), we will launch a short film to highlight the importance of parental engagement in learning produced by the Volunteers’ Film Scheme 2024 X Media Trust with director Scott Pickup. This is all part of a larger project supported by the Fair Education Alliance Innovation Award.
In July, we have an upcoming workshop, ‘Rethinking parental engagement in learning’, delivered by our Director, Juliette Collier. A parental engagement themed networking event will also be taking place on Wednesday 16 October.
We hope you will join the conversation and we look forward to seeing you at one of our upcoming events!