Using Data on Parents’ and Teachers’ Beliefs on the Purpose of Education to Promote Greater Equity in Schools in India

• In Event: Starting Conversations with Families, Schools, and Communities to Transform Education

Proposal

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of India, as well as within the state of Maharashtra, has made family and parent/caregiver engagement a key component in supporting and transforming teaching and learning. Research conducted by a civil society (and non-governmental) organization in Maharashtra, India from June to August, 2022 on parent/caregivers’ and teachers’ beliefs was used to inform how the organization will support schools in building family, school, and community partnerships. Research will also be used to inform local governments overseeing public education systems in Maharashtra on how to promote equity in education through family engagement. In response to the governments’ push, local administrations in Maharashtra were actively interested in improving family and school engagement through various programs and activities in their schools. For example, in the Mahabaleshwar school block the administration is running programs like ‘Gharoghari shala’ (home-based school), ‘Maze ghar, Maze shala’ (my home, my school) and ‘Mata Kendrit Shala’ (Mother focused school) to further student learning at home with the help of parents and families.

Starting in 2020, this civil society organization in Maharashtra collaborated with an international research institution to collect data on the perspectives of parents, teachers, community and system leaders in ten primary and secondary schools in three different districts, Satara, Akola and Nagpur. In June 2022, further empirical data with parents/caregivers and teachers was collected with six additional schools to understand beliefs on the purpose of education, and barriers and opportunities towards family engagement. The civil society organization’s teams, working with the government education department, acted as a connecting link between the administration, schools, and parent communities to collect information around the need, outcomes, and benefits of family, school, and community engagement. The data will be used to inform conversations and discussions with schools around improving learning outcomes of children and to discuss why beliefs vary between parents and teachers. The qualitative data collected by the team will be helpful in highlighting the level of alignment and misalignment of beliefs and expectations about good quality education among different stakeholder groups in the school, jurisdiction, or community. It will most importantly help in preparing recommendations and design strategies to implement family and school engagement in the district administration schools.

The findings so far indicate that parents/caregivers’ and teachers' beliefs on what makes a quality education were highly aligned with each other, but there is misalignment in their beliefs on the purpose of school. Parents believed that the main purpose of schools was in furthering education, while teachers emphasized socioemotional learning as the main purpose. Data also showed that parents and teachers were unaware of their differences in perspectives around their beliefs, thinking they were more in alignment than they were. Despite differences in beliefs, parents/caregivers reported fairly high levels of trust and satisfaction with teachers, and vice versa, and therefore there are opportunities to build family and school partnerships. Overall, this research provides data to inform promising opportunities to transform education through school and family engagement.

Author

• Sumana Acharya, Leadership for Equity