Teacher Impact on Supporting the Parent-Teacher Partnership During the Middle School Years

<p>The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions and experiences of middle school teachers in supporting parents as they move from traditional forms of parental involvement and towards engagement to support their children as they move into the middle school years of education. The design of this study was qualitative using in-depth interviews of middle school teachers. Bronfenbrenner's bioecological system theory of human development was the theoretical framework for this study to examine the factors influencing the child's development during the middle school years. Participants demonstrated that their perceptions and experiences did impact how they viewed parental involvement based on their understanding of culture and the needs of diverse families, especially if they were willing to challenge their own belief system when necessary. The findings of this study discovered that several well supported principles of parental involvement and engagement were evident. The consequences associated with lack of parental involvement/engagement were the missing key components of the theoretical framework and models of parental involvement. Parental engagement cannot occur in isolation, administrators and community agencies also need to support the efforts of teachers. Teachers need to learn how to support parents in providing social-emotional and executive functioning skills to students. Finally, it is important for teachers to develop a learning agenda that includes how to engage the culturally, generationally and socioeconomic diverse families that they will be working with in order to support the educational success of their students.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School of Education

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Love, Karen R

• Bronfenbrenner
• family engagement
• home-school partnerships
• middle school students
• parental engagement
• parental involvement
• Education

Repository record dc:identifier

https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/902

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ecommons.luc.edu:luc_diss-1901