Faculty of Education - Theses

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Type: PhD thesis × Subject: Victoria × Start date: 1980 × End date: 1999 × Author: Hall, J. M. ×

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    Parents in the classroom
    Hall, J. M. ( 1987)
    The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the presence of parents in the classroom on children, parents, and teachers. The study took the form of a sequenced set of action research style interventions in an outer-suburban secondary school and an inner-city primary school. Attitudes of parents of students in year 7 to creativity, frustration, control, play, and teaching/learning were measured with Strom's Parent as a Teacher inventory, P A A T. Achievements of the children in word knowledge, comprehension, spelling, and maths were measured with tests of ACER. There were some significant correlations between attitudes of parents and achievements of their children. For example, attitudes of mothers to control and the achievement of their children in maths were very highly correlated (N=105, p=.001). After one year of secondary schooling, there was no significant difference between the entering and final achievements of the year 7 students in this study in comprehension and maths (N=123). End-of-year scores of students for word knowledge and spelling were below the scores that would have been expected of students one year younger (N=175, 174). The numbers in these comparisons differ because of absences from school. Classroom experiments were conducted with parents in classrooms in a junior secondary and a primary school. "Parents" means adults who may be parents, other relatives or friends of the students, or friends of the school. In year 7, three different treatments for six weeks were compared, namely, two parents for two classroom periods a week (T), two parents for four periods a week (F), and no parents (Z). There was a significant interaction between mathematical aptitude and treatment (p=.021) such that at the low level of aptitude, achievements in maths with treatments F and T were superior to treatment Z. Also, with the low and medium levels of aptitude combined, treatment T was superior to treatment F (p=.038). With respect to attitude to learning maths, treatment T was superior to treatment F at both the low and medium levels of mathematical aptitude. However the effect on post attitudes was not significant. The attitudes of students in one grade 2 and two composite grades 3/4 were measured to sixteen items that were related to their school and TV. Coincident with the presence of parents in the classrooms of grade 2 and two composite grades 3/4 , there was an increase in positive attitudes of students to eight items in which there was a high level of teacher/parent involvement (HTPI) compared with eight low TPI items (grade 2, N=26; grades 3/4, N=50). In grades 3/4, the presence of parents in the classroom over a period of eight weeks had useful cumulative effects on time on task, teacher stress, and inappropriate class behaviour. Parents, students, and teachers in this study recommended that experience with parents in the classroom should be expanded.