Evaluating Barriers to Family Partnerships

Watch the video for an introduction to Evaluating Barriers to Family Partnerships.

Hornby and Lafaele (2011) have identified four different categories of barriers that can prevent families from being involved in their child’s education. The factors that act as barriers include; individual parent and family factors, child factors, parent-teacher factors and societal factors (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). This part of the learning module will evaluate the four categories and their accompanying factors that act as barriers as identified by Hornby and Lafaele as well as other authors. Each barrier will be briefly described. Finally, possible solutions will be explored.

Individual Parent and Family Factors

  • Parents’ beliefs about parental involvement: If a parent sees their role as only to make sure the child gets to school, then they will not be willing to be actively involved by being present at the school or by being involved in education at home. Parents get the child to school, and the school takes over with educating the child (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Lack of confidence in parents: For some parents, their lack of confidence is the result of a language barrier. For other parents, it is the result of negative experiences with education when they were students. Some parents also believe they do not possess the academic competence needed to effectively help their children (Christenson, Palan & Scullin, 2009; Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Parent perceptions of invitations for involvement: Sometimes educators leave parents wondering if they are really wanted at school. If parents perceive that involvement is not valued at their child’s school, they will be less likely to get involved (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Family circumstances: Solo parents, families with young children, large families and families needing special care for older family members can all experience difficult getting involved (Baker, Wise, Kelley & Skiba, 2016; Christenson et al., 2009; Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Work schedules and transportation: Those parents with a job may find it difficult to arrange time off to attend functions at school. When both parents work, it can leave less time for parents to be involved in home-based and school-based involvement. On the other hand, those who are unemployed might have difficulty affording transportation to attend school functions (Christenson et al., 2009; Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Class, ethnicity and gender: Parental involvement involves a bias toward the values of white middle-class families (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). A family’s culture might not be similar to the dominant culture of the school. This can lead to misunderstandings and differences in expectations (Christenson et al., 2009).


Child Factors

  • Age of children: As children grow older, the level of parent involvement decreases (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). Younger students are overall more excited about parents attending field trips and volunteering in the classroom than are older students (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Parent confidence: Parents can lose confidence in the school if they perceive the school and the child’s teachers are not serving the needs of their children (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). This is true for students with learning difficulties and disabilities as well as students with gifts and talents (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Behavior: Parents of students who have developed a reputation of having behavior problems are reluctant to get involved for fear of receiving more bad news (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). Conflict between the school and parents becomes inevitable when student behavior escalates to the point where suspension or expulsion has to be considered (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).


Parent-Teacher Factors

  • Conflicting agendas: The agendas that parents and teachers have in mind for parent-teacher meetings often differ from one another. Teachers often cover the child’s progress, difficulties they are having, ways to help the child at home, and identification of potential conflicts with parents (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). On the other hand, in addition to covering their child’s progress and difficulties, parents want to know how their child is progressing compared to other students in the class (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). They also want to know more about the teaching methods being used in the classroom (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Equal partners: Parents and other critical adults are not seen as equal partners in the success of students (Baker et al., 2016). The idea of parent engagement is limited to physical presence at school (Baker, et al., 2016; Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Parent responsibility: There is a perception that parents are not meeting their responsibilities as parents once did in the past (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Training: Lack of administrator and teacher training on partnering with families and the community is cited as one of the biggest barriers to creating effective partnerships (Christenson et al., 2009; Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).


Societal factors

  • Legislation: There is no specific legislation to guide parent involvement in school (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). As a result, the practice of parental involvement is inconsistent and uneven among schools (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
  • Finances: Economic factors cause difficulty in finding the financial resources for family/community involvement (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). When looking at funding, little or no money is assigned to the efforts and development of parental involvement (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).

Ideas for Overcoming Barriers

  • Meet parents where they are:
    • Communicate in their native language (Christenson et al., 2009).
    • Hold conferences and events at times that are convenient to parents (Christenson et al., 2009; Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).
    • Problem solve with families by establishing a task force to address issues in school (Christenson et al., 2009).
  • Make positive contact about students with parents early and often (Christenson et al., 2009).
  • Be creative in coming up with solutions to overcoming barriers such as language, transportation, child care and schedule conflicts.
  • Ensure a welcoming school climate (Christenson et al., 2009).
  • Identify families that are not being reached and make extra effort to reach out to them (Christenson et al., 2009).
  • Ask families what needs they have and what resources would be helpful and take action (Baker et al., 2016; Christenson et al., 2009).

References

Baker, T. L., Wise, J., Kelley, G., & Skiba, R. J. (2016). Identifying barriers: Creating solutions to improve family

engagement. School Community Journal, 26(2), 161.

Christenson, S., Palan, R., & Scullin, S. (2009). Family-school partnerships: An essential component of student

achievement. Principal Leadership, 9(9), 10.

Hornby, G., & Lafaele, R. (2011). Barriers to parental involvement in education: an explanatory model. Educational

Review, 63(1), 37-52. doi:10.1080/00131911.2010.488049


With potential barriers in mind, proceed to the Creating an Implementation Plan page to begin designing an event to increase family and community involvement at your school, or back to the Perspectives and Resources page to choose your next step.