Supervisors' Attitudes toward Family Involvement in Kuwait Middle Schools

This quantitative descriptive study investigated the attitudes of educational supervisors (i.e., head teachers) in Kuwaiti middle schools toward the involvement of families in the education of their adolescent children. Joyce Epstein's model of family involvement (1996c) provided the theoretical framework. A survey instrument, Supervisor's Attitudes toward Family Involvement in Kuwait Middle Schools, was adapted and translated into the Arabic language to collect data from male and female Kuwaiti middle schools supervisors in the six school districts. As anticipated, the results of this study identified (a) any significant differences, by gender and district, in attitudes about family involvement among Kuwaiti middle school supervisors; (b) the level of responsibility for encouraging family-school relationships among administrators, teachers, parents, and students; (c) the level of importance of different types of family involvement; (d) the barriers preventing families from being more involved in their children's middle schools in Kuwait; and (e) the degree of importance of each type of educational involvement for family participation during their children's middle school years. Independent sample t-tests were conducted to compare the mean scores by gender for supervisors' attitudes. One–way ANOVA was conducted to determine whether there were significant differences in the mean scores by district. The results indicated there were no significant differences in supervisors' attitudes by geographical district. There were some significant differences in supervisors' attitudes toward family involvement by gender. These findings might be related to traditional culture that affects women in Arabic societies, including the Kuwaiti community. Frequency distributions were calculated to determine the participants' responses to the subsequent research questions. The results indicated that administrators and families were perceived as more responsible for initiating family involvement than supervisors, teachers, and students. All six types of family involvement in Epstein's model (1996c) were important to the supervisors. Lack of time was a serious barrier to family involvement for both teachers and parents and the perceived problem of parent-adolescent conflict during later childhood was an additional barrier. Providing a home environment that supported learning, regular communication with teachers and administrators, and assisting students at home were considered to be highly important.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

Department dc:contributor.department

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Aldaihani, Sultan

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Crockett, Jean B.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Bodenhorn, Nancy E.
• Salmon, Richard G.
• Driscoll, Lisa G.

• Middle Schools
• Supervisors and Head Teachers
• Kuwait
• Family Involvement

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-05252005-210603

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/27886