The Progressing Parental Engagement in the ACT project was an opportunity to develop a coherent and systematic approach to how parental engagement is conceptualised and measured within the ACT. It was designed to enable schools to develop a more comprehensive understanding of beliefs, values, expectations and practices of parents in terms of their engagement in their children's learning. Schools need to measure change over time and therefore the long-term impact of strategies, practices or programs they implement. Having robust and consensus-based efficacy measures is empowering for schools. Consistent outcome measures will enable schools and the ACT Government to identify strategies that are working and where additional effort or alternative strategies are needed. The process involved the development of a conceptual model, the articulation of a definition of parent engagement and the measurement and evaluation of it. The complete story is articulated in three interrelated technical reports and a suite of fact sheets that were produced for the ACT Government that are available on the website. 1
In order to progress parent engagement we developed a conceptual model built on an ecological theory of change from the perspectives of family-led learning and family-school partnership. In a nutshell, the theory of change articulated in the Conceptual Model is that if: schools use evidence-informed strategies to develop a school culture that enables parental engagement, parents are equipped and supported to provide family-led learning activities, and parental engagement activities are focused on building children’s orientation towards learning and sense of academic confidence and competence, then Parents’ beliefs, confidence and family -led learning practices will be strengthened resulting in improved learning and wellbeing outcomes for children. The Conceptual Model provides a coherent and evidence- informed narrative about the ‘how, why and what’ of parental engagement and creating a basis for informing practice, directing consistent measurement and strengthening the empirical evidence. The conceptual model developed for this project draws on work from Hoover-Dempsey et al. (2005) and Pomerantz et al. (2007), among others, describing why parents engage and the mechanisms through which engagement improves children’s outcomes. • Why parents engage: primary drivers of parental engagement include: what parents believe their role is in terms of supporting their children’s learning (role construction); their confidence in their ability to make a difference (self-efficacy); invitations and expectations communicated by children, teachers and school; and contextual factors (time, energy, resources) that enable or inhibit engagement. • How engagement influences academic achievement: recent evidence suggests that engagement influences academic outcomes indirectly rather than directly (through direct instruction, academic coaching or help with homework content, for instance). It appears that parents’ greatest influence may be on: children’s motivation and engagement; their sense of academic competence and self - efficacy; whether they believe education is important; and broader social and emotional wellbeing. 2
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The aim of the exercise was to map behaviours and aspects of parent engagement to the enabling factors and key actions and then progress to identifying a short term indicator that could be articulated in a survey question. The actual process was two-way so that the literature review and qualitative research led from left to right and the pilot test of the survey led from right to left. 4
Parent response slightly above average for education surveys but low for a pilot. 5
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Schools have stable teaching populations 7
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There were 12 questions where parents and teachers were asked the same question but from each other’s viewpoint where they differ significantly from each other. Teachers were more positive on 9 and parents more positive on 3. All of the differences are statistically significant. Teachers more positive on most questions but only 9% agree parents pay attention to their suggestions but 51% of parents say teachers listen to parents suggestions. There is a 22% difference between parents and teachers on working together to meet child learning needs. Scales were 5 point Likert with the two positive responses forming the response basis for the comparison between parents and teachers. The fifth point was no opinion 9
We used a conservative min factor loading of 0.50 as opposed to the normal practice of 0.30. This was done to increase the robustness of the factors. The original survey had 25 items for parents and 26 for teachers. Factor analysis reduced this to 10 questions. 10
Together these dimensions explained 62% of the variance in the data. Items in red are shared with the teacher responses 11
Together these factors account for 65% of the variance in the dataset 12
There were five questions that appeared in both parent and teacher factors Each of the three dimensions has at least one common question between parents and teachers. Due to this level of shared experience we believe that this three- dimension model of “ Belonging to the school community”, Keeping track of children’s learning ” and “ Relationships and communication ” best represents the survey data and includes both similar and different aspects of parent engagement that are important for both parents and teachers. Although only three distinct dimensions were extrapolated from the data they represent 6 of the original conceptual dimensions for parents and five for teachers. Having reduced the number of questions to ten for both parents and teachers this is a strong result of confidence in the underlying dimensions of the conceptual model. The use of consistent measures of parental engagement across schools and systems can contribute significantly to the development of an Australian evidence base about the types of engagement strategies that have the greatest impact. In combination with the development of a shared understanding and definition of parent engagement, the ability to measure parent engagement consistently across cohorts is a significant contribution to the research area and especially so in an Australian context. The suite of work contained within the three technical reports has established a shared, evidence- informed understanding of what parent engagement is, developed a strong link between the key conceptual elements and enabled a consistent approach to measuring parent engagement in the ACT. This provides a strong foundation for future policy and practice that emphasizes continuities and relationships between the home and school environments, reflecting the most recent theoretical and empirical research on parent engagement (Kim & Sheridan, 2015). Limitations – small sample, response rate for parents, is it a true representation of the school populations? 13
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