Multi-ethnic schools\' parental involvement policies and practices 1 Multi-ethnic schools\' parental involvement policies and practices

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 1

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices

Eddie Denessen, Joep Bakker, and Marieke Gierveld

Behavioral Science Institute Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Corresponding author:

Eddie Denessen Department of Educational Sciences University of Nijmegen P.O. Box 9104 6500 HE Nijmegen The Netherlands Phone: +31 24 361 30 80 E-mail: [email protected]

Running head: Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 2 Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices

Eddie Denessen, Joep Bakker and Merieke Gierveld Behavioral Science Institute Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Summary

Culture differences within parent communities are challenging for schools to succeed in their policy regarding parental involvement. In this study, we explore schools’ practices and policies with respect to parental involvement. This study has been carried out at five elementary schools in the Netherlands. Interviews concerning schools’experiences with parental involvement of diverse groups of parents have been held with the schools’ principals. The results of this study indicate that schools recognize difficulties in getting migrant parents involved in their children’s school. The two main barriers to get migrant parents involved in the school were language problems and culture differences between school and families. The five stories of the schools reveal one basic dilemma that underlies the schools’ perspective of parental involvement. Schools vary in their expectation of parents to comply with the schools’ expectations and cultures. Schools differ in their view of the right balance between school and family culture. It is suggested that schools share their experiences in networks that can help them to deal with involvement of diverse groups of parents.

In educational research, and in national and local educational policies, parental involvement has become a topic of interest for promoting children’s academic, social and personal development. Partnerships between parents and schools are supposed to link home and school practices from which children would benefit (Epstein & Sanders, 2000). A lot of research has been performed on parents’ levels of involvement (e.g. Goldenberg, 2001; Reynolds, 1992). This research mainly focuses on the effects of different types of involvement on children’s academic performance. Studies on parental involvement suggest that high levels of parental involvement positively effect children’s achievement. Also, results of these studies indicate that parents’ levels of involvement vary along sociocultural and ethnic lines. Parents from low income families as well as minority parents seem to be less involved at their child’s school than middle class parents and parents from high income families (see for example Denessen, Driessen, Smit, & Sleegers, 2001).

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 3 In addition to socio-cultural and ethnic differences in parental involvement, the level of parental involvement seems to depend on schools’ policies on parental involvement (Epstein & Sanders, 2000). Schools that actively encourage parental involvement seem to be successful in getting parents actually involved (Deslandes, 2001). In educational research, though, relatively little attention has been paid to the role that schools play in the relationship between parents and schools. Some conditions for schools’ successful parental involvement policies and promising involvement practices have been documented in the literature, mainly based on the work of Epstein and her colleagues, but still research on schools’ perspectives is scarce. This study, therefore, focuses on varying positions that schools hold with respect to the issue of parental involvement.

Schools are faced with the challenging task of developing school-based policies and practices to support families and creating links with their students’ parents. To increase parental involvement, it is presumed that the school should focus upon parents’ perspectives on the issue (Deslandes, 2001; Lopéz, Sribner, & Mahitivanichcha, 2001). Thus, in order to build strong parent-school links, schools should put some effort in recognizing various cultural contexts of families and the community (or communities) at stake. This holds especially for schools with high degrees of diversity regarding family cultures, so-called multi-ethnic schools. As mentioned before, parents with different cultural backgrounds appear to differ with regard to types and levels of involvement. Also, parents may vary in their views regarding their role towards their child’s school and the expectations of their child’s education. Schools are challenged to deal with those differences. Van Daal et al. (2002) pointed at difficulties that multi-ethnic schools perceive in their relation with parents. Some specific problems regarding minority parents were reported: - minority parents seem to lack language skills to communicate with the school - minority parents seem to hold the school fully responsible for their child’s education - minority parents do not seem to be interested in school matters. Stanley and Wyness (1999) argue that formal and structured approaches of involvement of ethnic minority families are inappropriate and impractical means of communicating with parents. When schools hold a more informal stance towards these parents, it seems to be easier to stimulate minority parents’ involvement. Moreover, Tett (2004, p. 259) suggests that policy statements in the UK appear to use an implicit deficit model, where parents from minority ethnic communities are assumed to be unwilling

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 4 educators of their children. Evidence, though, shows minority parents to strongly support their children’s education by showing interest and giving encouragement, but not by relating strongly to the school. Parent involvement practices seem, thus, to be linked to parents’ socio-cultural background. Given group-differences with respect to the types of parent involvement, schools face the task to address the customs and needs of a diversity of parents. Kessler-Sklar and Baker (2000) identified several different positive approaches for dealing with the issue of diversity within a school. These approaches involve special programs for minorities and training staff to reach out to diverse families. Staff training seems to be valuable, given the different values, behaviors, beliefs and expectations of different cultural/ethnic groups (Kessler-Sklar & Baker, 2000, p. 113). For the development of policies and practices in parental involvement, schools may seek assistance from school-counseling agencies. Despite the widely recognized importance of parental involvement, in the Netherlands, a lot of school-counseling agencies, though, are not well equipped for assisting schools in this respect. They often show a lack of expertise in this field. Moreover, there seems to be a lack of coordinated action, which leads to a situation where a lot of schools face the development of parental involvement policies isolated from other schools; schools don’t seem to benefit from good practices of other schools (Van Daal et al., 2002). At the moment, some local governmental agencies in the Netherlands, like the ‘Multicultural Institute Utrecht’, have taken the initiative to develop school counseling programs. With this study, which is the result of collaboration between the Multicultural Institute Utrecht and the Radboud University Nijmegen, school policies and practices have been investigated from a small sample of five multi-ethnic schools. This study serves two goals. First, we aimed at increasing our knowledge of schools’ perspectives and practices in dealing with diverse groups of parents. Second, the knowledge obtained may help school counseling agencies to develop programs for assisting multi-ethnic schools to help to realize schools’ aims and to meet their needs.

Method

Interviews were held with principals of five multi-ethnic schools in the Netherlands. However, at one school (Dukendonck) the interview was held with the person who was given the responsibility for parental involvement policy at this particular school. All the five schools

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 5 in our study are elementary schools, located in the province of Utrecht, which lies in the center of the Netherlands. The schools vary in their percentage of migrant pupils, ranging from 20% to 100%. Most of the minority families are Muslim families of Turkish or Moroccan origin. The schools were contacted by the Multicultural Institute Utrecht and agreed to participate in this study. Below we give a short description of the five schools in our study.

Appelhof. The population at Appelhof, a public school with 123 pupils, consists for approximately 65 percent of minority pupils. The school has been relocated twice: form a mixed neighborhood to a totally ‘black’ neighborhood and back to their original location after a couple of years. This means that the oldest and the youngest groups are more mixed than the middle groups, which consist for 90% of minority pupils.

Bolster The population at Bolster, a public school with approximately 120 pupils, consists for 100 percent of minority pupils. The school is located in a mixed community, but the native Dutch pupils attend a Protestant primary school that is located close to Bolster. In the case of the Netherlands, schools with a religious affiliation can legally limit the number of (nonprotestant) minority children from entering the school. The Protestant school refers these children to Bolster. Bolster’s population is mixed. Minority pupils come from varying countries of origin (mostly Turkey and Morocco). According to the school’s principal, Mr. Bloem, parents from different countries do not seem to have a lot of contact, although the social cohesion within the different communities is quite strong.

Central Elementary School Central Elementary School is also a public school. It is a relatively small school with 70 pupils. Around 65 percent of the pupils are minority pupils. Head of the school, Mr. Croes, expects that a renovation of houses in the area attracts native Dutch families to the neighborhood, wich would lead to a less segregated situation in the neighborhood, as well as in the school.

Dukendonck

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 6 Dukendonck is a primary school with a Protestant denomination with approximately 200 pupils. The school has set a limit for migrant pupils of 20 percent. When more migrant pupils would enter the school, the religious affiliation of the school is said to be in danger. Therefore, the actual percentage of minority pupils is 20 percent. Mrs. Davids, responsible for parental involvement issues in the school, reports that parents from different communities are segregated: ‘migrant mothers indicate that no one greets them at the school gate.’

Elckerlyc Elckerlyc is a Roman-Catholic school with 192 pupils of whom 25 percent to 30 percent are minority pupils. According to the school’s principal, Mrs. Evers, the composition of the school population does well reflect the composition of the neighborhood.

Content and analysis of the interviews The interviews were semi-structured and focused on two major topics: (1) what are the schools’ experiences with parents’ involvement? (2) how do schools deal with parents from different backgrounds? The interviews lasted approximately one hour. The interviews were transcribed and split into fragments concerning one topic. Two independent researchers coded the fragments. The codes referred to the topics of the interviews. After coding of the transcripts, the results were subjected to second analysis. During this second phase of analysis of the interviews we were able to identify some dilemma’s that schools face when dealing with parental involvement of ethnic diverse groups. Also some conditions for effective parental involvement policies have been identified.

Results

Schools’ experiences with parents’ involvement All five schools emphasize the importance of parental involvement. All interviewees indicated that their schools face difficulties in getting migrant parents involved. At all schools, migrant parents seem less involved than native Dutch parents. The two main barriers to get migrant parents involved in the school were language problems (many migrant parents don’t speak Dutch) and culture differences between school and families. When asked about the goals the schools aim to realise, most of the schools didn’t seem to have clear goals. In general all schools stress that good contact between school and parents is

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 7 important for children’s development. At Bolster, Mr. Bloem states that his school tries to attune parents’ and school’s practices, for ‘… raising children at home and educating them at school should be seen as one shared activity.’ The schools experience some specific difficulties in dealing with migrant parents. Appelhof’s principal, Mrs. Appels, fears that an increase in the number of minority pupils negatively affects the relationships between the families and the school: ‘when the school becomes a totally black school, it will be very difficult to get the parents into the school. There will be a larger tension between the school and the families. We try to cope with these families by coffee-mornings and a more personal approach, but the situation still remains problematic.’

How do schools deal with parents from different backgrounds? The interviewees indicated that their efforts to get migrant parents involved hardly succeed, which may lead to frustrations. As Mrs. Evers puts it: ‘When a teacher organizes a meeting for the parents and puts a lot of effort in organizing a nice meeting and has arranged an interpreter, and when only four parents come and the rest of the parents are absent without notice, that can be very demotivating.’ The five stories of the schools reveal one basic dilemma that underlies the schools’ perspective of parental involvement. In their approach of parents, schools can hold varying positions regarding the group-specificity of policies and activities. These positions depend on the extent to which schools expect parents to comply with the schools’ expectations and cultures and the extent to which the school takes parents’ expectations and cultures into account. The abovementioned dilemma points at the extent to which migrant parents are seen as a specific group of parents for whom the school has to formulate specific goals and policies. Some respondents indicated that there should be a uniform parent involvement approach for all parents. Appelhof does not have different expectations of involvement of migrant parents. Mrs. Appels indicates that her school expects parents to learn the Dutch language themselves, in order to be able to communicate with the school. The school doesn’t translate newsletters and no interpreter is available for parent-teacher conferences. This approach leads to low levels of involvement of migrant parents, but the school holds the parents responsible for their own involvement: ‘we hope we can expect the same from all parents, but in practice it doesn’t seem to be possible.’ Also, Mrs. Appels is reluctant to have high expectations of migrant parents. She fears the parents would feel ashamed or guilty for not being involved.

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 8 Contrarily, at Bolster, Dukendonck, and Elckerlyc, specific activities for migrant parents have been developed. At these schools, an interpreter is available at parent-teacher conferences and important newsletters are translated in Turkish and Arab. These schools aim at reaching all parents, although they are disappointed in the low levels of language skills of the parents and their unwillingness to improve their language skills. According to Mrs. Davids of Dukendonck, the school wants to meet migrant families’ needs, but she emphasizes that when the school puts some effort to get parents involved, the parents should show willingness to do the same: ‘The migrant fathers indicated that their wives were afraid to come to school, because they didn’t know Dutch. We immediately reacted by saying we wanted to meet the mothers and arranged an interpreter. We expected the fathers then to stimulate their wives to visit the school.’ With regard to the communication with the parents, all interviewees indicated that formal, written communication does not work. This counts especially for migrant parents. The respondents reported it to be frustrating that parents hardly read the schools’ newsletters. It is the shared experience of all the respondents that informal communications is far more fruitful. According to Mr. Bloem, it is habituary at Bolster to address parents when they are bringing their children to school. At Bolster, reports are not given home with pupils, but parents are obligated to collect them from the school: ‘By this, we force parents to come to school.’ Bolster has developed specific communication strategies with migrant families: ‘when an appointment is made with a health care worker, we receive a note. The day before the child has to see the health care worker we tell the child: ‘tomorrow you will see the health care worker. Would you remind your mother of this appointment?’’ At Dukendonck, there is a strong group-specific approach of the parents. At Dukendonck, there is no opportunity for migrant parents to become a member of the school board. Because of its Protestant denomination, the school does not want parents from other religions to take seat in the school board. Since the majority of the migrant parents are Muslim, they are deliberately excluded from formal involvement at school. At the other schools, migrant parents do have the opportunity to take seat in the school board, but at none of the schools any migrant parent has taken this opportunity. The respondents suggest that migrant parents do not see it as their task to participate in a school board. Their formal distance to the school seems to be quite large. Two of the schools (Bolster and Dukendonck) have developed policies and activities, specifically for migrant parents. At Dukendonck, there is a migrant parents’ workgroup. This group initiates and coordinates parent involvement activities especially for migrant parents.

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 9 This group, which consists of migrant fathers, is able to reach other parents within the migrant communities. At Bolster, one migrant father has been given the responsibility for getting migrant parents involved. He is asked to write a plan for the future. With these activities, the schools aim to benefit from the social cohesion within migrant communities. Bolster and Dukendonck, furthermore, follow a different line than the other three schools. Bolster, as well as Dukendonck, focuses on the cultures of migrant families. Mr. Bloem: ‘This year the teachers will receive training in communication with migrant parents. For example, in some migrant cultures it is impolite to look each other into the eyes during conversations.’ To get acquainted with migrant family cultures, all the schools, except Central Elementary School, have developed a policy that each child should be visited at home on a regular basis. At Central Elementary School, the teachers resisted to home visits, because of the time home visits would take. At Dukendonck, Christian festivities were usually celebrated in church, but they relocated those celebrations away from church, to give migrant pupils the opportunity to attend these meetings. The Roman-Catholic school, Elckerlyc, also celebrates Christian festivities at church, and they still do so, although they are aware of the fact that migrant parents may not allow their children to go there: ‘after the opening of the year celebration in church, one mother was a little angry, because her child had joined the celebration. I said: ‘you haven’t told us that your child was not allowed to. She reacted: ‘Yes, but you know that we would never allow that.’’ Bolster and Dukendonck also capitalize on the specific gender differences in migrant families. They started meetings for migrant fathers and migrant mothers separately. Bolster: ‘you cannot ask mothers and fathers to participate in one joint group. Some mothers are not even allowed by their husbands to leave the house.’ Also, Mr. Bloem asked the female teachers to take care of the communication with mothers. At Elckerlyc, group specific activities have been organized incidentally: ‘We have organized a meeting about children’s social-emotional development. Because of the absence of migrant parents, we have arranged a separate meeting for migrant mothers.’ Apparently, schools are facing the difficult task of setting boundaries to their adaptation to migrant cultures. Mr. Bloem said he still wants his school to be a Dutch school, so there are some limits regarding compliance with foreign cultures. Mr. Bloem gives the example that many parents have satellites installed on their roofs: ‘They mainly watch Turkish or Moroccan television. I told parents to buy another TV for their children so that

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 10 they can watch Dutch television.’ Mrs. Davids also points at mutual responsibilities of school and parents: ‘I educated the parents. I told them that when they are going to miss an appointment, they should call to inform me about that. I used to see it too much from their perspective.’ Contrary to the other schools, at Central Elementary School, the attitude towards parental involvement is more distant: ‘we have our own school policy. Parents are not always available, and some parents have such different ideas that it is impossible to satisfy everyone’s needs. Instead of spending much time and energy on parents, we decided to focus on the child.’ Finally, to some extent, all schools have brought food and drinks in their meetings with parents. When parents are invited to provide foods and drinks for activities at school, the attendance of migrant families is very high. An example at Bolster: ‘with Christmas, we had a huge buffet. Previous years, the school provided the food. This year the mothers took care of it. They prepared the most wonderful dishes. Great!’

Discussion

The stories of five multi-ethnic schools in the Netherlands point at some discussion points regarding schools’ perspectives on and problems with the issue of parental involvement. First, the schools have very general and often very ill-defined goals regarding parents’involvement. Getting migrant parents involved seems to be a goal in itself. However, some schools aim at congruence between families and the school for the benefit of the children. As is the case in a couple of schools, parental involvement has not been put on top of the agenda. This finding is consistent with previous studies, that parental involvement isn’t a priority issue for many schools (Griffith, 1998). Also, none of the schools has a clear action plan, nor are activities evaluated. Helping schools to formulate clear goals, concrete action plans and evaluation of the actions seems a welcome contribution to the schools’ policies (Epstein et al., 2002; Martínez-González, 2001). Second, there seems to be a lack of coordination of policies and activities of different schools. Schools do not seem to benefit from good practices of other schools. They are quite unaware of policies and activities at other schools. For improving schools in dealing with various groups of parents, it seems very fruitful to share ideas with colleagues. Schools could form so-called communities of practice or communities of learners on this issue (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 11 Third, schools focus specifically on migrant parents in their approach of parental involvement. Two schools, Bolster and Dukendonck, explicitly appeal to social networks within different groups of parents, which can be a very effective strategy of building social capital (Coleman, 1988), but there seems to be a lack of attention to the social capital between these groups. At the schools in our study, little contact has been observed between native Dutch and migrant parents and between different groups of migrant parents (e.g. Turkish and Moroccan parents). None of the schools did actively address this segregated situation. This can be a side-effect of paying too much attention to well-defined groups of less involved parents. Fourth, schools differ in their view of the right balance between school and family culture. Two schools in our study, Bolster and Dukendonck, seem to be very effective in getting migrant parents involved in their school. They invest in parental involvement and take cultures of migrant parents seriously into account. They try to meet these parents’ expectations, although they see limits to this approach. They expect parents to be committed to activities the schools engages for their benefit. At the other schools, which hold a more distant position towards minority parents, the situation seems more problematic. These schools seem to formulate rather harsh expectations of minority parents. They should learn the Dutch language and comply with the schools’ values, although some initiatives were undertaken to meet differing needs of groups of parents. Several reasons for the differences between the schools in our study can be put forward. Some schools may lack a basic conviction that it is worth spending a large amount of time and energy on migrant parents’ involvement. For reasons of convenience, little attention is paid to the encouragement of less involved parents. One other reason could be that the schools’ staff lacks the skills for dealing with parents from minority cultures. A lot of teachers have received insufficient training to cope with different groups of parents (Epstein, 2003). For the development of teachers’ ability to communicate with parents, teachers training might be needed, or schools can learn from the good practices of effective schools (Kessler-Sklar & Baker, 2000). Furthermore, schools may have gotten discouraged or even frustrated by past experiences with uninvolved parents. When a lot of schools’ initiatives remain unanswered by parents, schools could lose their interest in trying to get parents involved. Providing these schools with examples of good practices, again, may stimulate and encourage schools to remain responsive to all parents. Finally, due to the current political climate in Western societies, where threats of terrorism put multicultural societies under pressure, there may

Multi-ethnic schools’ parental involvement policies and practices 12 emerge a negative attitude towards minority families. Current debates on multiculturalism focus on forcing migrant families to disband their background culture and to embrace western values and norms. In the Netherlands, the policy of providing migrant (that is Turkish and Arab) language education has been abandoned for this sake. Parents are forced to learn the Dutch language (it recently has become a prerequisite for getting migration documents). Schools that work with translations and interpreters are seen as too responsive to migrant cultures. For school counseling agencies, the results of this study may help to develop programs to help schools in their approach of parental involvement. A lot of work has been done in de US, where the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS) is a good example of ways in which schools could be assisted to improve parent involvement in schools.

References

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