Generative Mechanisms of Parental Involvement in the Romanian Schools

Abstract: The research project we have carried out here targets to highlight the relation between parental involvement and family characteristics, on the one hand, and management/infrastructure’ characteristics, on the other hand. We were particularly interested in this former aspect as it defines a space where public intervention is able to find room for manoeuvre. The statistical data collected as a part of the 2008 Cross-National Survey of School Principals in South East Europe countries allowed us to reach this objective. The results show that in the case of Romania, the pupils' family characteristics (parents’ interest, communication skills, ethnic background, spare time, on parent’s emigration abroad for labour purposes, etc) are highly relevant for parental involvement but certain school management practices are important as well (visits made by teacher and school staff to pupil’s domicile, the right of Parents’ council in initiating school management measures, providing information to parents for home learning environment, parents-school principals meetings) or certain characteristics of school infrastructure (number of pupils enrolled in school or the share of fully qualified teaching professionals). These results allowed us to propose a set of recommendations as starting point for potential public policies as incentives for parental involvement in Romania.

Keywords: Parental involvement, Family characteristics, Management characteristics of schools, Binomial logistic regression method, 2008 Cross-National Survey of School Principals in South East Europe countries, Public policies as incentives for parental involvement in Romania