Thursday, February 1, 2007

Moving along..

As I was putting my video on my computer, I was listening again to the interviews that I had with the students and the teachers. Basically the teachers dont think the students are as motivated as they should be and the students say they want to do well in school they just dont try as hard as they should at times. So, now that I know that much, I'm going to try and see how this can be fixed. Can it be fixed by parent involvement, the psychological motication theories that teachers must pick and use in the classroom, or using goal setting? Or all three?

I am continuing to read my motivation books and will post more on the theories next week, but right now I am going to post on a few of the articles that I have been reading. I read an article on Parent Involvement in Education. It told about all the things that parents can do to be involved in their child's education such as goign to school functions, going to parent teacher conferences, providing encouragement, arranging study time with their child, monitoring desired behavior and tutoring their children at home.

The research that was found in this study overwhelmingly demonstrated that parent involvement in childrens learning was positively related to acheievment. The more intensively parents are involved the better the child does. The most effective form of parent involvement was doing learning activities at home. Reading with their children, supporting their homework, or tutoring shows impressive results. The earlier this begins in the child's education, the better.

There is a much higher incidence of parenst involved in teh preschool and primary grades than in middle school and high school. They say that this is because the schools are bigger and farther away, the curriculum is more sophisticated, students are beginning to establish a sense of separation from their parents, and the parents are generally working.

When it speaks about low income and minority students and parent involvement, it says that the parents are unrepresented. The reasons they give are: lack of time or energy (due to long hours of work), embarressment or shyness about their own educational level, lack of understanding of information, and a perceived lack of welcome by teachers or administrators. It goes onto to say that no matter the level of the parents own education, they can still make a difference in their students lives.

I am going to see if I can ask a few parents a few questions about their child's education. I am also reading about self-efficacy right now, which is a prediction that one will be able to meet hte demands of the situation effectively. So a student with feelings of self-efficacy thinks that he or she can do well in school. It talks about how minority student's self esteem is usually damagned not only by failure, but by negative perceptions and low expectations of other students and teachers. I will have more info on this and other theories in my next blog.

6 comments:

Angela said...

I would have to agree that parents at schools have their own concerns that prevent them from attending school functions and encouraging their kids to work hard in school. When I was doing my fieldwork at Morgan the kindergarden teacher I was working with said that many of the parents were first time parents and had little education. They are incredibly nervous of coming to parent teacher conferences and scared of Mrs. Koehler, the teacher. Mrs. Koehler offered me a ton of tips on making parents comfortable and involving them. For instance, she suggested that the parents sit in a larger, more higher up chair than her so that they can feel in control of their child's education. She said little details like that make a huge difference. This research sounds interesting and I'm sure it will be meaningful to all of us. I know I'd like to find out what I can do to ensure every student participates and cares about their work. Keep up the good work!

JuliaLB said...

The self-efficacy reading sounds really fascinating. I am interested to hear what you find out.
I thought the facts about parental involvement are interesting. I think alot of schools fail to see the importance of making their school an inviting place. I know that Wright Elementary has really made alot of effort to obtain interpreters for parent teacher conferences and send home all newsletters and flyers in spanish to families who have recently immigrated. They also have family movie nights and other events to get parents to feel comfortable coming to the school. One thing they also started was a parent resource library. Apparently some families use it religiously but there is not quite as much interest from the vast majority of the parents. Reading your post made me appreciate the fact that some may not be able to read at a level that the library would be useful. I would be interested in what ways schools should be encouraging parents and helping them know how to get involved in their child's education.

Adventures in Belize said...

The fact that parent involvement drops in middle school makes sense, as you were saying. I know that many "teenagers" resent their parents and are becoming more and more idependent- essentially they are looking to take more power in their decision making. Yet, this is countered by the intense need for peer acceptance and "fitting into the mold". It will be interesting to see what you hear from the parents. Your interviews are very candid and the students responses seem to follow a pattern that reflects the concerns with achievement in the Beloit School District.

Chelsea Miller said...

The information on parental involvement really caught my eye. I was wondering if you thought that maybe the reason that low income parents are underrepresented is not only because of their schedule, but also because of a self-efficacy effect on the parent. For example: maybe the parent doesn't want to get involved in the child's life because she doesn't think that she will be of much help; " I am poor and undereducated, how can I possibly help my child" I don't know if that made any sense. I also don't think this attitude is a good one, but I know for a fact that it exists.

JuliaLB said...

I got this reading off of JSTOR and thought it might be applicable to what you are doing...

Connecting Content and Motivation: Education's Missing Link
By Daniel J. Burke

Unknown said...

First, it's great to see so many people involved in this conversation. That will motivate you to keep writing, knowing that you have an audience. I also found the material on parent involvement interesting in relation to middle schoolers. It made me think about my own involvement with my middle-schooler in comparison with my/our earlier involvement. For one, my wife has gone back to work full-time in the last couple years because our kids are more independent, and can be left home alone. I think this is a common phenomena. We/I don't spend much time working with our son on his homework (because he is generally uncooperative with us, while being quite responsive to his teachers) but we spend enormous amounts of time on his extra-curriculars (sports, music, friend) and we are very vigilant about his grades and his general "attitude." Of course, we know how school works and we expect him to go to college etc. But this brings me to the final point in motivation which you don't mention - you could look at Hannah's post on Math for another source -- which is the meaningfulness of the curricula and the sense that the student has any agency in deciding what he/she learns or why. This gets to the "diversity" issue to some degree, which of course is also central to the "parental involvement" issue -- see Angela's comment on kindergarten parent conferences.