Successful Family Participation in Schools: INCLUD-ED's Contributions to Family and Family Education

• In Event: Beyond Traditional Family Engagement: Building Educational Communities to Foster Students' Academic Success and Social Cohesion

Abstract

1) This paper draws on the contributions to family education reached within INCLUD-ED and discuss one type of family education that allows family and community members to get involved in children’ learning successfully.

2) According to previous studies (Delpit, 1995; Valdes, 1996), family status’ variables (i.e. parents’ SES or level of attainment) influence children’s educational opportunities. Thus, we can expect that children whose parents have low educational levels will not achieve good educational outcomes. However, Valencia (2010) draws attention to the ‘deficit thinking’ underlying the negative analysis regarding families without an academic background.
While international assessments have focused on the number of books at home or parents’ qualifications, less attention has been paid to the impact of having families and communities involved in educational activities or children’s learning processes. Prior research has shown the positive effects of promoting learning interactions between students and family members (HFRP, 2006; Garcia, Girbés & Gómez, 2015). But not all kinds of participation may end with the same positive impact on students’ learning. Flecha (2015) provides a family involvement taxonomy, in which the higher levels of engagement correspond to the educative participation, which entails: 1) participation in students’ learning activities; 2) participation in educational programs for families and community members.

3) Six longitudinal case studies in five European countries were conducted, using the Communicative Methodology (Flecha & Soler, 2014), which entails a permanent dialogue with the participants during the whole research process to achieve social impact. In this paper, methods and modes of inquiry were qualitative, for gaining a deeper understanding of the actions developed, as well as quantitative, for providing a whole description of the situation.

4) Qualitative data was collected through 5 in-depth interviews, 13 communicative daily-life stories and 5 observations in educative participation settings. Moreover, two different surveys were distributed among families and children respectively (n= 4,484) to collect quantitative data on the impact of educative participation in the school.

5) Educative participation has a positive impact on children’s outcomes (i.e. in one of the schools analyzed, between 2001 -when these actions began to be implemented- and 2007, the percentage of students performing above the average in reading skills, as assessed by external tests, raised from 17% to 85%, while the rate of migrant students increased from 12% to 46%). Furthermore, participants’ satisfaction, which is attributed to the educational improvement observed in the school, makes these practices sustainable over time. Finally, the two forms of educative participation are mutually reinforcing. As shown in the qualitative analysis, family education increases participants’ awareness of curricular issues, which ultimately make them feel more confident to support their children’s learning.

6) The results of this study inform of effective ways of involving family and community members that (1) benefit students outcomes, (2) are sustainable over time and (3) are mutually reinforcing. The results of the project marked a landmark in European research, advancing knowledge on the identification of those forms of family participation that promote family involvement in students’ learning and increase their own educational opportunities.

Authors

• Rocio Garcia Carrion, University of Deusto

• Gisela Redondo-Sama, University of Cambridge