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Family-School Partnerships in Improving Academic Performance of Grade 10 Learners in a Rural Public School
42-51Views:212Family-school partnerships address academic difficulties and ensure the performance of learners, thus, they are crucial for the improvement of learners. However, these collaborative partnerships can occasionally be hampered by problems including inadequate communication, and limited parental involvement. Research acknowledges the significance of these partnerships, but their successful implementation is hampered by a variety of institutional and socioeconomic barriers, which lessens their impact on learner academic performance. This study examined how essential forming family-school partnerships are for enhancing the academic performance of Grade 10 learners in a rural public school in Limpopo, South Africa. The study aimed to better learner performance and provide support strategies to foster improvement. An interpretivism paradigm was adopted, employing semi-structured individual interviews and document analysis. Purposefully selected participants included four academically underperforming learners, their parents, and two teachers. The study was grounded in Epstein’s model of school, family, and community partnership, advocating for parental collaboration with school personnel through six key guidelines, promoting mutual responsibility among stakeholders. Findings revealed that parents understood the value of family-school partnerships and their roles within these. However, challenges such as other obligations, transportation issues, and time constraints were identified as hindrances preventing them from fully supporting their children’s academic integrity.
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Teacher-Driven Strategies for Enhancing Parental Involvement in Rural Education
Views:85Parental involvement is widely acknowledged as a vital contributor to learners’ academic achievement and overall school success. While much is known about the benefits of parental engagement, particularly in urban and well-resourced settings, the dynamics and challenges in rural schools remain underexplored. This study addresses that gap by investigating how teachers perceive and implement strategies to enhance parental involvement in rural contexts. Specifically, the study aimed to answer the following question: (1) What are teachers’ perceptions and experiences regarding parental involvement in rural schools? and (2) What teacher-driven strategies do they propose to improve collaboration with parents? This qualitative case study draws on Rotter’s Social Learning Theory to explain how behaviour is shaped by observation, reinforcement, and social interaction. The study was conducted at a rural high school in Mandlanzini Agri-village, KwaZulu-Natal, with ten purposively selected teachers as participants. Data were collected through a semi-structured online questionnaire and analysed thematically following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) coding process. The findings reveal a pressing need for structured, teacher-driven strategies that extend beyond standard parent-teacher meetings to include structured and culturally responsive interventions. The study highlights the practical value of teacher agency in facilitating parental involvement and offers context-specific insights that may guide future interventions in similar rural settings.
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Opportunities and Barriers in the Partnership Between Foster Families and Schools
Views:60The primary socialisation area is the family, and the secondary socialisation area is educational institutions. From the point of view of educational sociology, the meeting between the family and the school institution represents the intersection of these socialisation areas (Kozma, 2001; cited in Bacskai, 2020). This issue and its methodological development is something that Joyce Epstein has been working since the 1980s (Epstein, 1986; Epstein, 1987). According to Pusztai (2020a), parenting can be understood as a multifaceted concept, typically referring to the mutual relationship between parent and child. Researchers have focused on this parenting resource mainly from the perspective of the child's progress at school and learning at home, with the parent acting as an external supporter of the work in school. In this research we focus on the specific characteristics of the cooperation between foster parents and schools, and examine the characteristics of foster parent involvement, along with the supporting and detrimental factors of the partnership between foster parents and teachers at the intersection of child protection and public education. Recently, the number of research studies on foster care has increased (Erdei, 2019; Rácz, 2021), but the relationship between foster parents and teachers is still a little-researched area in Hungary. The novelty of our qualitative research lies in the fact that we are dealing with a special, rarely studied group of parents in Hajdú-Bihar County in terms of family-school relations. The second phase of the analysis has us exploring the narratives of teachers. Our basic research questions are: (1) How can the relationship between foster families and school be characterized? (2) What are the forms of contact and cooperation between foster families and teachers? (3) What factors support or hinder the development of partnerships between foster families and teachers? The focus group data collection was based on semi-structured interview schedules. The research participants were foster parents (N=15) and teachers (N=10). The interviews were coded and analysed using Atlas.ti software. The results show that, overall, there is regular, daily, mainly personal contact between foster parents and teachers. The teacher's tolerant attitude, taking into account the specific educational situation, appeared as a supportive factor. However, there were also a number of cases reported by foster parents where they had been received negatively by teachers. In order to facilitate collaboration between the two parties, teachers would like to receive training (foster families, foster-parent-school collaboration) and would find it useful to have ongoing supervision.
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Family-School Partnership in Supporting Level 4 Students at a Community Education and Training College
52-59Views:220Family-school partnership is essential for achieving quality school and academic performance to level 4 students at a Community Education and Training (CET) College. The partnership comprises the ability of families and schools to provide holistic support and guidance to students as they progress toward independence and becoming responsible community members themselves. However, this is not prevalent in the majority of CET centres, particularly those in low-income communities (Madzinga, 2021). This study explored the role of different stakeholders within the CET Colleges in enhancing family-school partnership and supporting level 4 students. The current study intends to assist schools/centres with strategies that could be used by the centres to involve families and communities to enhance the academic performance of students in the CET College. This study was underpinned by the interpretivism paradigm. Data was gathered using semi-structured individual interviews. Epstein's model of school, family, and community interaction served as the foundation for the study. The idea was deemed appropriate for this study because it promotes parental and family involvement through mutual collaboration among many stakeholders. The findings of this study show that families want to be involved in their children's education, but they don't have the time owing to various commitments.
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The Relations between Students’ Intercultural Communication Competencies and Employability
72-79.Views:372In today’s globalised world, businesses operate on an international level. Most business and economics graduates will interact with colleagues, clients, and partners from diverse cultural backgrounds. Intercultural competencies are essential for their success and effective collaboration in the labour market. A special questionnaire was compiled to investigate students’ intercultural competencies. Based on the statements and responses of the questionnaire, the examination aimed to establish the principal components of the intercultural communication competencies of the students of a Hungarian university. In the next phase of the research, the principal components served to create student clusters which were analysed from a labour market point of view, focusing on advantages and disadvantages. The crucial question was: which cluster is in demand the most in the labour market? By utilizing a principal component analysis, the dataset was reduced to three key components. Subsequently, to classify the students into groups, a multivariate statistical procedure, i.e., cluster analysis, was used to reveal the structures by clearly considering the similarities of a relatively heterogeneous population and to create a relatively homogeneous subset. The study revealed five distinct student clusters, each with varying advantages and disadvantages for employers. In this context, the Interculturally Active and Open with Good Language Skills cluster proved to be the most competent, with the least ideal collection indisputably being the Interculturally Reluctant in Cooperating cluster. The research underscores the importance of intercultural communication competencies for employees and enriches our understanding of the dynamics between intercultural communication competencies and workforce readiness. Developing these competencies in foreign language classes will significantly facilitate our students’ employment.
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Characteristics of Teaching Community Capital - Focus on Teachers in Reformed Public Education Institutions
48-55Views:447The issue of the effectiveness of teaching is constantly at the center of research. "Teachers count", presents the OECD report (2005), which confirms the research of the day that the work of the teacher contributes significantly to the performance of students. The question is how to capture the factors that influence school performance. The focus of the examination of the theoretical background is on the professional capital theory, with the emphasis on the examination of social / teaching capital in addition to the human capital and decision capital components. Our research is based on a secondary analysis of a questionnaire among teachers working in Calvinist institutions in 2017. The focus of our interest is on identifying the characteristics (frequency) and content (agreeing with norms) of staff capital and the need for teachers to develop collaborative networking opportunities for future professional development.
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Examining challenges to Parental Involvement in Enhancing Academic Performance Among Grade 7 Learners/Students
Views:86Parental involvement is a critical determining factor of learners' academic success, particularly during transitional educational phases such as Grade 7. This study explores the factors challenging parental engagement in supporting their children's academic performance at this crucial stage in South Africa, Tshwane South District. Although extensive research has been conducted on parental involvement, there is limited studies focusing on the transitional phase of grade 7 within the South African context. Employing a qualitative approach, and purposively selected 11 participants (6 parents, 5 educators). Furthermore, data were collected through interviews, focus group discussions and document analysis. Findings indicate that socioeconomic constraints, limited parental education, communication gaps between schools and families, and parents' time constraints significantly hinder effective involvement. Additionally, cultural perceptions of parental roles in education and students' increasing need for autonomy in adolescence further complicate engagement efforts. The study also identifies systemic barriers, such as inadequate school initiatives to foster parent-teacher collaboration. Recommendations include capacity-building workshops for parents, and the development of inclusive communication strategies by schools. This paper highlights the need for a holistic, community-driven approach to overcoming barriers and fostering sustained parental involvement to enhance student achievement in Grade 7, offering insights that are particularly relevant within South African context.