Needed But Disconnected – Parents As Volunteers In A New Zealand Secondary School

• In Event: The Role of Civil Society in Educational Systems

Abstract

Volunteer involvement is influenced by the interplay between the volunteerability of the individual volunteer (their willingness, capability, and availability) and the recruitability of the organisation (its accessibility, resources, networks and cooperation) (Meijs et al., 2007; Haski-Leventhal et al., 2010). Organisational affordances represent the routes, pathways, and opportunities for volunteer engagement offered by the organisation and subsequently embraced by individuals (Ingold, 2018). The examination of organisational affordances and the experience of negotiating these holds the potential to expand upon the concepts of volunteerability and recruitability, thus contributing to enhanced understanding of volunteer engagement.
This paper investigates the interaction of volunteerability, recruitability and organisational affordances in the context of parent volunteering in secondary education. Parents and whānau (the Māori-language term for extended family) are the mainstay of volunteers in Aotearoa New Zealand’s education system (Jones & Smith, 2022). However, research on education settings for volunteering has been dominated by studies of tertiary education and student volunteering. In the compulsory education sector, volunteering has largely been framed as home-school relationships with parents in early childhood or primary school settings, and secondary education settings have been overlooked (Jones & Smith, In Press). The study employs focused ethnography (Higginbottom et al., 2013) in a single case study site: “River City College”, a state-run secondary school. The lead researcher was embedded in the school for an academic year, collecting data through field observations, document analysis, and semi-structured interviews. Participant recruitment used snowball sampling and included parents, school staff, and representatives of external organisations. The analysis employs Situational Analysis, an extension of Grounded Theory by Clarke (2003), to visually represent situational elements, acknowledging the complexity and individuality within the context (Clarke et al., 2018).
Emerging themes from initial analysis include the transition of families into the secondary school environment, differing expectations of parental involvement, and the sense of community evoked through organisational communications and actions. For some parents, the transition into the environment of secondary school has created a disconnection with their experiences of volunteering during their child's earlier education journey. This can be traumatic and impacts parents’ sense of community and their ability to make connections in the new school community. Embedded and perpetuated organisational assumptions about the volunteerability of the parent as a potential volunteer reduces potential opportunities for involvement. In addition, access to community information is impacted as communication channels change from being parent-orientated to directed at the teen-audience. Permission seeking preferences rather than proactive self-organisation also appears to reduce parent involvement as volunteers. Contextual factors play a key role in the situational analysis, including geographic elements, local and national events, the political environment, existing relationships between parents and the school, previous volunteering experiences and wider community elements. The paper concludes that the concepts of recruitability of the volunteering involving organisation and the volunteerability of the volunteer can be understood separately, but the added concept element of organisational affordances offers consideration for how these might interact.

References

References
Clarke, A. E. (2003). Situational analyses: grounded theory mapping after the postmodern turn. Symbolic Interaction, 26(4), 553–576.
Clarke, Friese, C., & Washburn, R. (2018). Situational analysis: grounded theory after the interpretive turn (Second edition.). SAGE Publications, Inc. 
Haski-Leventhal, D., Meijs, L. C. P. M. & Hustinx, L. (2010). The third-party model: enhancing volunteering through governments, corporations and educational institutes. Journal of Social Policy, 39(1), 139–158.  
Higginbottom, G. M. A., Pillay, J. J., & Boadu, N. Y. (2013). Guidance on performing focused ethnographies with an emphasis on healthcare research. Qualitative Report, 18(9), 1–16. 
Ingold, T. (2018). Back to the future with the theory of affordances. HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 8(1-2), 39–44.   
Jones, T. & Smith, K.A. (2022). Volunteers Enriching Education in Aotearoa New Zealand. Report. Wellington School of Business and Government, Victoria University of Wellington.
Jones, T. & Smith, K.A. (In Press). Volunteerism in Aotearoa New Zealand: an exploratory study examining volunteerism through the eyes of secondary school principals. Third Sector Review.
Meijs, L., Ten Hoorn, E., & Brudney, J. (2007). Improving societal use of human resources: from employability to volunteerability. Voluntary Action, 8(2), 36–54. 

Authors

• Karen A. Smith, Victoria University of Wellington

• Tania Jones