Research School Network: Re-establishing rich, rigorous and reflective relationships with your parents Sonia shares a range of EEF resources and tools that the schools can employ to support effective work with parents.

Learning Behaviours 360°
Effective learning behaviours have emerged from the rich and diverse evidence base represented in the EEF guidance reports on, Improving Behaviour, Metacognition and Self-regulation, Special educational Needs in Mainstream Schools, Social and Emotional Learning and the focus of this blog, Working with Parents to Support Children’s Learning. Successful learning behaviours rely on layering all these areas to provide a 360° wrap around provision, around every child in our schools. As the EEF What are Learning Behaviours video succinctly explains, each is part of a puzzle makes best sense when all parts click together, building strong foundations for deeper learning.

Be optimistic, so parents feel a real sense of belonging
Parents play such a crucial role in this puzzle clicking together. When supporting their children’s learning, the levels of parental engagement are consistently associated with better academic outcomes. The Teaching and Learning Toolkit suggests that effective parental engagement can lead to learning gains of +3 months over the course of a year. Yet we know, that it can be difficult to involve all parents, especially if their own experiences of school were not totally positive. So, what can schools do?

When discussing the barriers to parental engagement, the evidence suggests that staff should consider this point from the first recommendation ​‘Schools should be optimistic about the potential of working with parents’. It is easy to fall into the opposite pole, particularly when relationships – whether real or perceived – are challenging. Yet the evidence clearly iterates, that optimism and positivity about our potential interactions with parents can motivate all staff to reframe their thinking from ​‘hard to reach families’ to how do we ​‘reach harder families’. For us at St Matthew’s, this optimism must be driven forward, sustained and enriched by the school leadership. It is our role to stem any negativity and always work towards re-aligning rich, reciprocal relationships.

We strive to do this, through building a sense of belonging and ownership of the school. We often reference the work of Luis Moll, who challenged the persistence of the deficit model of education, particularly in disadvantaged communities. This work revealed that families and communities contain extensive ​‘funds of knowledge’ – their lived experience – and that this rich resource, is used by children as part of their learning. In order for this to be unlocked, parents must feel a sense of belonging and there must space for a reciprocal relationships (an exchange of knowledge), to be established. We strive to achieve through a range of ways, including:

• Meet the Head (1 per ½ term)
• Parent Workshops/​Coffee mornings
• Parent to School Days (1 per ½ term) – a chance for parents to sit/​take part in lessons
• Parent Consultation Day – where we invite in local support agencies (e.g. local Councillor, Early Help)
• Google Classroom – opportunities to Interact with staff
• Open door policy
• Senior Mental Health Lead/​Mental Health First Aider – available to staff, children and parents
• Parent Book Groups
• Wonders of Nechells Event – a celebration of Nechells and the culture/​heritage of our parents
• Learning Behaviours Team

Be critical
Re-establishing rich, rigorous and reflective relationships with parents is not an event. It is most definitely a process and as the research suggests, it is a process worth the investment.​‘Some families will continue to have anxiety and a lack trust around issues, which are linked to the school community’. These ​‘work harder to reach families’ needed careful consideration with clear understanding of their individual needs. As recommendation 1 states, ​‘school should start by critically reviewing their aims and current approaches’. When we delivered Learning Behaviours training to schools, the following simple reflective tool and discussion questions, was also offered as a possible way forward for schools .

• How are parents supported in developing routines and organisation to support children’s homework completion?
• How do you communicate with parents regarding learning routines, identifying/​regulating behaviour, reading etc.?
• How are successes celebrated and shared with parents?
• How do you know parents feel welcomed in the school environment?
• Is input regarding children’s social and emotional development actively sought from parents? What do they have to say?
  

Further reading:

1. What are Learning Behaviours?

https://youtu.be/J7E8ouAeHsw

2. Working with Parents to support Children’s Learning: Recommendations Poster – This EEF guidance report offers schools and teachers four recommendations to support parental engagement in children’s learning.

https://d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/production/eef-guidance-reports/supporting-parents/EEF_Parental_Engagement_Summary_of_recommendations.pdf?v=1712580538

3. How Can Schools Support Parents’ Engagement in their Children’s Learning? Evidence from Research and Practice

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/evidence-reviews/behaviour

References:

Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. C. and Amanti, C. (eds.) (2005) Funds of knowledge: Theorising practices in households, communities and classrooms. Marwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.