Parent Engagement in Rural and Urban Contexts

• In Event: 1-013 - Family Engagement in Early Childhood: New Findings Across Developmental Periods, Intervention Types, and Ecological Settings

Integrative Statement

Parents play a critical role in establishing a stimulating learning environment for young children that will optimize their academic and social-emotional development. There are many ways in which parents demonstrate engagement in their children’s learning. Some are structural, aimed at encouraging parent practices that demonstrate their involvement at home (e.g., shared book reading) or school (e.g., attendance at classroom events). Others are relational, with the intent of creating connections between a parent and child, or home and school (e.g., communicating about a child’s progress or partnering around learning goals).
The manner in which parental engagement manifests is likely a function of a number of ecological factors. Consistent with ecological theory, at a proximal level, parents can engage directly in learning experiences in the home and/or school. Connections across home/school influence engagement practices and are recognized as important for cross-system continuities. Despite what we know about the importance of parenting practices and relationships within and across systems, less well understood are distal ecological factors that may influence the development of parent engagement practices. PreK is a time when parents are beginning to create a notion about roles in their child’s learning, yet little is known about the nature of parent engagement in PreK, how engagement changes over the PreK year, and how broad community factors impact practices and change over time.
The purpose of this study is to better understand the effect of ecological systems associated with parent engagement in PreK. Specifically, we will determine whether family engagement practices in PreK differ in rural versus urban settings, and whether patterns of change vary across the year, by community type. The study was conducted in one Midwest, highly rural state. In all, 252 parents and 65 PreK teachers across ten rural and two urban districts participated. The Family Involvement Questionnaire (home-based and school-based involvement, home-school conferencing; Fantuzzo et al., 2000) and Parent-Teacher Relationship Scale (joining, communication; Vickers & Minke, 1995) assessed structural and relational engagement practices. Demographic and descriptive data are in Table 1.
In PreK, urban parents reported greater home-based involvement (p = .001, d = -.56), home-school conferencing (p = .001, d = -.80) and parent-teacher communication (p = .022, d = -0.33) than rural parents. Regarding change over time, both rural and urban parents reported an increase in school-based involvement across the preK year (p < .001; d = .17), and an increase in communication with teachers (p = .019; d = .14). However, change in communication for teachers depended on setting; for rural teachers, significant increases in communication with parents were noted across the preK year, whereas urban teachers remained stable in their reports of communication with parents over time.
The differences in parent engagement between rural and urban contexts during PreK could be due to limited opportunities for interaction in rural communities. Significant differences between groups in teacher-reported communication with parents over time suggests a relative desire to improve connections with families, a characteristic common among rural schools. Limitations and implications will be presented.

Authors

• Susan Sheridan, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Lisa Knoche, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Witte, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  Non-Presenting Author

• Natalie Koziol, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  Non-Presenting Author