{"title":"Reimagining the Needs of Rural Schools: Teachers’ and Parents’ Experiences of Parental Involvement in School Activities","authors":"H. Mbhiza, T. Nkambule","doi":"10.1080/18146627.2023.2181727","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The nature of the relationship between parents, teachers, and the school are continuously important because of teachers’ changing social expectations. While formal education is traditionally viewed as the job of teachers, they cannot be expected to address all educational issues that are influenced by multifaceted social issues. We explore parents’ and teachers’ understanding and experiences of parental involvement, and the nature of parental involvement in rural schools. We used the phenomenological approach; semi-structured interviews were administered to comprehend teachers’ and parents’ experiences of parental involvement in school activities. Complex parental views of schooling shaped the manner of involvement in school activities, and the nature of partnerships that were imbalanced. Teachers’ discourses of parental involvement were unsurprisingly influenced by associating classroom spaces with professional qualifications and curriculum pressure, resulting in the exclusion of parents from classroom activities. The dominant nature of parental involvement that teachers mentioned was that parents’ participation was limited to helping outside the classroom to ensure the upkeep of the schools. The findings also revealed that parents’ dominant experiences relate to viewing schools as inaccessible spaces without invitation or permission, as they view themselves as outsiders, and questioned the nature of communication channels.","PeriodicalId":44749,"journal":{"name":"Africa Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Africa Education Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2023.2181727","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Abstract The nature of the relationship between parents, teachers, and the school are continuously important because of teachers’ changing social expectations. While formal education is traditionally viewed as the job of teachers, they cannot be expected to address all educational issues that are influenced by multifaceted social issues. We explore parents’ and teachers’ understanding and experiences of parental involvement, and the nature of parental involvement in rural schools. We used the phenomenological approach; semi-structured interviews were administered to comprehend teachers’ and parents’ experiences of parental involvement in school activities. Complex parental views of schooling shaped the manner of involvement in school activities, and the nature of partnerships that were imbalanced. Teachers’ discourses of parental involvement were unsurprisingly influenced by associating classroom spaces with professional qualifications and curriculum pressure, resulting in the exclusion of parents from classroom activities. The dominant nature of parental involvement that teachers mentioned was that parents’ participation was limited to helping outside the classroom to ensure the upkeep of the schools. The findings also revealed that parents’ dominant experiences relate to viewing schools as inaccessible spaces without invitation or permission, as they view themselves as outsiders, and questioned the nature of communication channels.
期刊介绍:
Africa Education Review is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal that seeks the submission of unpublished articles on current educational issues. It encourages debate on theory, policy and practice on a wide range of topics that represent a variety of disciplines, interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary and transdisciplinary interests on international and global scale. The journal therefore welcomes contributions from associated disciplines including sociology, psychology and economics. Africa Education Review is interested in stimulating scholarly and intellectual debate on education in general, and higher education in particular on a global arena. What is of particular interest to the journal are manuscripts that seek to contribute to the challenges and issues facing primary and secondary in general, and higher education on the African continent and in the global contexts in particular. The journal welcomes contributions based on sound theoretical framework relating to policy issues and practice on the various aspects of higher education.