Parent Participation in Elementary Schools: The Experience of Hispanic Immigrants

This study focussed on immigrant parents’ experiences and attitudes toward parent involvement in elementary school. We collected reports from parents at three elementary schools in the metropolitan region of Toronto through surveys, focus groups and in-depth interviews. The study was designed to provide timely information relevant to public policy development around parent involvement in elementary schools and school councils (cf., Ontario Education Improvement Commission, 1998), to extend the literature on parent involvement to include dimensions of diversity which have been given little attention, and to complement other lines of ongoing research by the investigators on parent involvement in schools, and on more general parenting issues among the Hispanic community. The results indicate that despite barriers to some institutionalized forms of involvement, these parents report interest and involvement in their children’s schooling in other forms that can be recognized and supported by schools.

Maria (Maru) Barrera, Co-Lead Researcher. Department of Psychology, The Hospital for Sick Children.

Carl Corter, Co-Lead Researcher. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Felipe Ibarra-Martinez, Community Researcher.

Rosemarie Gibson, Community Researcher.

Maria Ciampini, Graduate Assistant. PhD program in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning. OISE/UT

Carmen Escobar, Work Study Assistant. MA in Child Study program, Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology.OISE/UT

Than Trieu, Graduate Assistant. MA in Child Study program, Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology.OISE/UT

Mary-Louise Vanderlee, Graduate Assistant. PhD program in Early Childhood, Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology.OISE/UT

The study focussed on immigrant parents’ experiences and attitudes toward parent involvement in elementary school. We collected reports from parents at three elementary schools in the metropolitan region of Toronto through surveys, focus groups and in-depth interviews. The study was designed to provide timely information relevant to public policy development around parent involvement in elementary schools and school councils (cf., Ontario Education Improvement Commission, 1998), to extend the literature on parent involvement to include dimensions of diversity which have been given little attention, and to complement other lines of ongoing research by the investigators on parent involvement in schools (Corter, Harris, & Pelletier, 1998) and on more general parenting issues among the Hispanic community (Barrera, Corter, Bashirullah,1997; Corter, Barrera, Ragazzi, Saenz, Valenzuela, & Volpe,1997; Corter, Barrera, Ragazzi, & Valenzuela, 1996).

Dramatic changes in the Ontario public education system include the recently mandated School Advisory Councils (SACs). These have ostensibly been set up to make the system more open and accountable to parents and communities and similar councils have been recently set up all across Canada (McKenna & Willms, 1998) and in many other parts of the western world. Much of the effectiveness of these councils will depend on the degree to which they can involve diverse elements of the parent and community populations. At the same time, funding cuts to education and reorganization of boards of education place existing programs at risk, including those such as heritage/international language programs which may indirectly support parental involvement among some immigrant groups. Understanding the challenges of parent involvement among immigrant, visible minority, and economically disadvantaged parents in the GTA is crucial to the success of this major shift in educational service. Our research begins to build this understanding by focussing on immigrant parents facing the challenge of participating in their children’s school experiences.The perspective adopted in the research focuses on the elementary years as a time of opportunity for successful induction of parents into the work of schools, a time that begins as children enter kindergarten.

Active roles for parents in the education of children are prescribed in many of the effective preschool and kindergarten intervention programs (eg., Lazar et al., 1982), as well as in visions of school reform for older children (eg., Comer, 1985). Partnerships require understanding of parents’ perspectives as well as attempts to foster participation. It has long been an article of faith that parents can help to prepare young children for school by providing a stimulating environment during the preschool years and a secure social-emotional foundation for adapting to the transition to school. Depending on their own backgrounds, beliefs, and opportunities afforded by the educational system, parents can also participate in a variety of ways once their children enter school.(eg., Epstein, 1995). School councils represent one attempt to bring parents and community into the work of the schools; their growth is rapid and includes a number of variants with different degrees of structure, roles, and levels of participation in governance. An important lesson from the literature to date is that not all councils are equally effective, not all parent participation works well, and not all groups are equally represented in the councils. For example, our own normative surveys across several boards in Ontario, showed that approximately one-third of more than 400 parents in the sample identified themselves as ESL and one-quarter as members of visible minorities, but less than 10% of the sample of parent representatives on school councils self-identified as either minority status (Corter, Harris, & Pelletier, 1998). A crucial point to note is that parents’ participation in councils and other traditional parental roles such as volunteering are not options for most immigrant parents. Nevertheless, other forms of involvement may be more usual and just as important for children’s school success (see Sui-Chu & Willms, 1996). In our research team meetings one of our student members, a child of immigrants, reported that her parents never set foot in her school until she graduated from Grade 8, but they discussed her school work almost daily and exhorted her to do well. Can new policies on partnerships between parents and services be made flexible enough to accommodate and gain strength from approaches which don’t match the current mainstream?

Forty-eight parents at three elementary schools in the Toronto Catholic District School Board took part in focus groups and the majority completed a survey form in Spanish.The majority of parents were mothers. Thirteen parents across the three schools also took part in in-depth interviews, including a few fathers. Similar questions were posed in each form of data gathering

• How do parents see the goals of schooling?

• How do parents see their role in schooling?

• How are parents involved in the school and education at home?

• What attitudes and experiences do parent have in regard to the new SACs?

• How do the answers to the above vary by facility with English and with demographic factors (eg. SES) and cultural differences within the Hispanic population of the GTA?

• Do parents report particular school practices which effectively involve them?

· What practices do families report about reading and family literacy activities?

The sample was diverse in terms of country of origin, time since arrival in Canada, facility with language, and socio-economic status, but was predominantly two-parent . As expected, factors such as language and time since arrival played a large part in the degree to which parents reported actively participating through in-school activities. Although all parents appeared to value education, not all parents saw themselves as able to provide regular support for school work in the home often because of constellations of work and economic strain.

The survey used in this study included many items from the "normative" study we carried out in several boards in Ontario in 1997 (Corter, Harris, & Pelletier, 1998), allowing comparisons with findings between the current sample and the broader sample. Some differences are expectable, such as reports of less volunteering by the Hispanic parents; other differences may provide new insights, such as the finding of more interest in school support for parent education among Hispanic parents. Some of the survey items asking about parent support for learning and literacy at home were unique to the present study. Since these items were also assessed in interviews and focus groups, some triangulation was possible in looking for patterns. However, in some cases there was divergence between the survey and the qualitative conclusions, usually in the direction of a more positive picture emerging on the survey. The field notes of the community researchers who conducted the surveys and interviews reveal that there were concerns about reading comprehension for some of the parents, even though the survey was in Spanish, and even more pervasive concerns about the social desirability bias in responses to the survey. Nevertheless, a number of points of convergence have appeared in our preliminary analyses. Some of these are listed below as examples of tentative conclusions with relevance for policy.

Project timelines were considerably delayed by a province-wide strike in the fall of 1997. Consequently, data analysis is still underway and reporting activities are just beginning. A report will be presented at the Third National Metropolis Conference taking place in Vancouver in January. We also plan to arrange a meeting with a representative of the Ontario Education Improvement Commission and will be reporting as well to the Board and Schools and parents groups who participated in the research.We will also use professional preservice and inservice channels to bring the findings of the study to educators, such as: Ontario-wide school board contacts, and various educational and scholarly outlets such as ERIC (educational database) documentation, convention papers, and journal publication, including professional educator’s journals. Reports will be provided to interested preservice programs (including ICS/OISE/UT) and school boards in Ontario.

Our previous research (Corter and Harris, 1997; Corter, Pelletier, & Harris, 1998) has been reported to the Ministry of Education and Training and the Education Improvement Commission of Ontario and we met with a member of the writing team which produced the EIC report on school councils. On the basis of the initial survey work, we were able to strongly recommend that action needed to be taken on the underepresention of minority parents on school councils. The report of the EIC reflects this concern in its list of recommendations:

This statement of good intentions needs to be supported by a better understanding of the challenges and multiple paths that need to be taken in working with immigrant families. We expect to bring a number of additional points to the policy arena from our just-completed work on immigrant parents. Based on our preliminary analyses, we expect the message may include the points that:

·Challenges to immigrant parents in becoming involved go beyond language to include other factors such as experience in the country of origin which may operate against the idea of "partnership" with government agencies or institutions

·Policy support for general parent participation may actually increase inequities in learning outcomes for students unless the multiple challenges involving language, poverty and work faced by many immigrant parents are dealt with schools, boards, and ministries and their communities

·The importance of home support for learning be recognized and extended among immigrant families; this in an area where some of the forces of exclusion do not operate.

·Capacity for direct involvement with in-school activities may develop through the school’s supporting other, more accessible, forms of involvement, such as home support for learning.

·Immigrant parents’ views on the goals of schooling at the elementary level are more global than the current emphasis on academic skill in curriculum and accountability in government policy; concerns about community and respect are common themes.

·School climate and initiatives such as cultural studies for children, parent education and first language family literacy may boost parental buy-in.

·Board programs and policies, such as heritage/international languages teaching, can make a substantial difference to parents’ contacts with the school.

·Parents wish to be better known as a community and have a number of ideas for building community participation, for example by volunteering to do translations for school communication.

We hope to arrange a meeting with a representative of the EIC and will be reporting as well to the board and schools and parents groups who participated in the research. As part of the dissemination effort, we hope that these meetings will have an impact on further policy development at the local and provincial level. We also hope that broader dissemination efforts will make our findings available at the national level where the policy implications may be considered.

The work was carried out with the cooperation of Hispanic community groups, the Toronto Catholic District School Board and NGOs serving the immigrant population in the GTA. Community research assistants were recruited through community groups. Administrative support for the study came from the Psychology Department at the Hospital for Sick Children, as well as from the Laidlaw Centre of the Institute of Child Study. Mrs. Mireya Cunningham, an educator and guidance Counsellor at Jean Vanier Catholic Secondary School of the TCDSB; Mrs. Lita Gonzalez-Dickey, an educator and Community Liaison Worker in the Hispanic Community for the TCDSB; Mr. Antonio Garzon, long-term member of the Hispanic community and former member of the Asociacion de Padres de Familia de Habla Hispana; and Mr. David Morley, former head of Pueblito Canada, all assisted in giving advice and in making contacts with the Hispanic community. Mrs. Gonzalez-Dickey provided critical assistance in advising on school and community connections. Mr. Adelino da Silva of the International Languages (Elementary)/Community Relations office of the TCDSB was instrumental in setting up the collaboration with the Board. The principals of the participating schools and the international languages teachers went beyond the call of duty to assist the research. Finally, the parents themselves made the study possible through their enthusiastic participation; the degree of their collaboration is shown by their suggestion of what we should do in our next study: "You should ask the children what they think...".

The graduate students working on the project have contributed in a number of ways and have had varied training experiences. Students have been analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data and have had the opportunity to contribute to survey design and coding systems for analyzing the qualitative data. Students have also done translation of focus group transcripts, conducted literature searches, constructed data bases on references, and written summary reports of relevant issues in the literature. Regular team meetings of the Parent Participation research team provided opportunity for training and discussion of the project with graduate students. Since two of the students are in a preservice teacher education graduate program (MA in Child Study), their research training is directly relevant to their professional training and the necessity of learning how to work with diverse parents.

REFERENCES

Barrera, M.E., Corter, C., Bashirullah, T.(1997) Cultural adaptation of mexican women in Canada. Paper presented as part of a Symposium on Multiculturalism at the 74th Annual meeting of the Am. Orthopsychiatric Assoc., Toronto, March.

Comer, J. (1985). The Yale-New Haven Primary Prevention Project: A follow-up study. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 25, 154-160.

Corter, C., Barrera, M., Ragazzi, A., & Valenzuela, M. (1996). Parents in transition across cultural contexts: Exploration of supports for Hispanic immigrants in Canada, Mexico, and Chile. Paper at the International Roundtable on Family, Community, and School Partnerships. NY, NY.

Corter, C., Barrera,M.,Ragazzi, A., Saenz, I.,Valenzuela, M. and Volpe, R. (1997). The Social Ecology of Adapting to Parenting and Immigration. Paper presented to the annual meetings of the American Orthopsychiatry Association, Toronto, March.

Corter, C.& Harris, P.(1997). Parent participation in elementary schools: The role of school councils. Interim report to the Ministry of Education and Training, Ontario.

Corter, C., Harris, P.& Pelletier, J. (1998). Parent participation in elementary schools: The role of school advisory councils. Paper presented at the annual meetings of AERA, San Diego.

Education Improvement Commission, Ontario. (1998, Nov.). The road ahead: A report on the role of school councils. http://eic.edu.gov.on.ca/schoolcouncils/html/report.html

Epstein, J. (1995). School/family/community partnerships, caring for the children we share, Phi Delta Kappan.

Lazar, L., Darlington, R. Murray, H. Royce, J. and Snipper, A. (1982). Lasting effects of early education. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 47, 1-151.

McKenna, & Willms, D. (1998). The Challenge facing parent councils in Canada. Journal of the Association for Childhood Education International., 378-382.

Sui-Chu, E., & Willms, D. (1996). Effects of parental involvement on Eighth-Grade Achievement. Sociology of Education, 69, 126-141.

RECOMMENDATION 23: That principals and school councils be jointly responsible for ensuring that school council membership is representative of the school's entire community or communities.

To represent the community, the principal and school council members must conduct outreach activities aimed at attracting parent and community members from all groups in the community, including visible minorities, Native people, people with disabilities or the physically challenged, and people from socio- economically disadvantaged areas. In addition, they should balance representation from parents of students at various grade levels and divisions within the school. Beyond persuading people who represent different aspects of the community to act as school council members, councils should also solicit their assistance on council committees and encourage their participation in other

volunteer activities at the school. We have dedicated a considerable amount of time to this issue and gathered examples of effective outreach strategies. They include consulting and seeking the assistance of cultural mentors in the community, asking community members to participate in specific projects or ad hoc committees, meeting in barrier-free venues, providing child care during meetings, organizing transportation pools, and seeking community members from among seniors. Individual parents may require translation assistance to ensure they are able to participate.Exemplary practices in this area include councils seeking volunteer translators to help out and council members partnering with parents to provide translation services.

We acknowledge that community representation is a challenge and that many school councils are working hard to meet it. Where councils are unsuccessful in recruiting representatives of a certain part of the community, we urge them to take care to consider the views of these groups in their work.

Education Improvement Commission, Ontario. (1998, Nov.). The road ahead: A report on the role of school councils. http://eic.edu.gov.on.ca/schoolcouncils/html/report.html

Toronto. Department of the City Clerk, Information and Communication Services Division. 1992. TheSpanish-Speaking Community in Toronto. #8 In a Series of Ethnocultural and Health Profiles of Communities in Toronto produced for the City of Toronto Department of Public Health, Health Promotion and Advocacy Section. Toronto: Department of Public Health, Health Promotion and Advocacy Section. 19pp. 

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