Parents’ engagement in the education of lower secondary school students with and without special educational needs – which strategies bring expected results?

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of approaches to the engagement of parents in the education of lower secondary school students with and without special educational needs (SEN), as well as its effect on school achievement. The analysis of the results from almost 1500 Polish lower secondary school students, including almost 300 students assessed as SEN, showed that parents in both groups varied in their strategies to help their children. Parents of students with SEN more often directly helped their children with homework, although this strategy negatively correlated with school achievement for both groups. The results opposed a widely held claim that students with SEN require alternative types of parental support. These findings may, therefore, have a practical role for shaping parental and teacher' beliefs about the most effective ways to improve the achievement of lower secondary school students.

Parental involvement in remote learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic—Dominant approaches and their diverse implications

“…The greatest of these were school-related requirements that were perceived by respondents as inadequate and related to child overload due to too many tasks, excessively difficult content that had to be learned autonomously, or fatigue. According to Pomerantz et al (2007) and Szumski and Karwowski (2017), the scope and strength of parental involvement is related to, among other factors, beliefs about a child's potential. It seems that parents who represent this approach (cluster 3) noticed the gap between the child's competences and the expectations formulated by teachers (their survey comments were dominated by language related to school expectations and requirements).…”

“…According to Pomerantz et al. ( 2007 ) and Szumski and Karwowski ( 2017 ), the scope and strength of parental involvement is related to, among other factors, beliefs about a child's potential. It seems that parents who represent this approach (cluster 3) noticed the gap between the child's competences and the expectations formulated by teachers (their survey comments were dominated by language related to school expectations and requirements ).…”

“…In the broadest sense, parental involvement in children's education can be understood as active measures to support them in the learning process, taking into account their cognitive, emotional, social and personality development (Szumski & Karwowski, 2017 ). Teachers expect parents to help them create a positive collaborative learning environment that has no hard school–home boundaries.…”

“…It is based on the methodical creation of scaffolding for new cognitive schemas (Filipiak, 2012 ). Although both parenting strategies may contribute to an increase in the effects of education, only the latter (a) leads to the development of abstract thinking skills and the acquisition of competences that are transferable to a wider range of problems and areas of knowledge (Szumski & Karwowski, 2017 ) and (b) refers to meta‐components responsible for universal strategies of knowledge acquisition (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2000 ).…”

“…and those directly related to the learning process (task implementation, preparing notes, finding sources, etc.). However, parents can be involved in the remote teaching of their children using a variety of strategies (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995;Szumski & Karwowski, 2017;Walker & Hoover-Dempsey, 2008).…”