Parental Involvement Policies In Ontario: A Critical Analysis
Parental Involvement Policies in Ontario:A Critical AnalysisMax Antony-NewmanAbstractIn the current climate of ever-increasing pressure on parents to becomemore responsible for the achievement of their children, which forms an elementof neo-liberal governance with its shift from public to private, it is necessaryto understand the discourses generated by parental involvement policies. Thisanalysis showed that existing policies in Ontario (Canada) are permeated withdiscourses of barriers and parental deficiency. They employ a narrow definitionof parental involvement, privilege parenting strategies of White middle classes,and represent diverse and immigrant parents as lacking. Although the difference among parents is acknowledged, parents receive no recognition for fundsof knowledge they have. Policy documents remain silent on issues of inequality and present parental involvement as a neutral tool rather than a sociallyconstructed and historically specific practice with its set of winners and losers.Implications for policymakers include adding parental involvement contentin preservice and in-service teacher education to make parent–school partnerships truly democratic and effective for all.Key Words: parental involvement, parents, engagement, barriers to involvement, critical policy analysis, schools, policies, partnerships, Ontario, CanadaIntroduction: The Rise of Parental Involvement PoliciesIt has been known for decades that parental background and family factors shape the educational experiences of students across countries. ResearchersSchool Community Journal, 2019, Vol. 29, No. 1Available at http://www.schoolcommunitynetwork.org/SCJ.aspx143
SCHOOL COMMUNITY JOURNALwho focused on social class and education paid significant attention to theways in which the school reproduces social inequality (Bourdieu & Passeron,1977; Lareau, 2011) and provides differentiated curriculum to students basedon their familial characteristics (Anyon, 1980; Luke, 2010). Social reproduction researchers showed that differences in parenting and other aspects ofhome environment shape the school experiences and achievement of childrenin profound ways (Lareau, 2011; Reay, 1998). At the same time, the idea ofparental involvement as a response to educational problems, which requiredpolicy intervention, appeared only during the mid-1960s, but became especially powerful over the last several decades (Mapp, 2012).When the U.S. president Lyndon Johnson began his “War on Poverty,”education was selected as one of the main intervention strategies with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 setting aside additionalfunding for parental involvement in poverty-stricken schools (Mapp, 2012).Parental involvement was defined as “the capabilities of parents to work withthe school in a way that supports their children’s well-being, growth, and development” (Mizell, as cited in Mapp, 2012, p. 7). A Nation at Risk reportin 1983 explicitly mentioned that parents were more important for educational reform than teachers and policymakers (Fernandez & Lopez, 2017).In the U.K., policymakers have been trying to increase social mobility sincethe late 1990s by “improving” the parenting of citizens, including increasingparental involvement in children’s education (Vincent, 2017). Such “improvement” efforts have been centered on raising aspirations among working-classparents (Spohrer, Stahl, & Bowers-Brown, 2018) and helping them make“better” educational choices for their children (Exley, 2013). The 21st centurybrought parental involvement polices into the spotlight in the field of education, especially in the English-speaking nations. The Scottish Schools (ParentalInvolvement) Act, 2006 represents one of the few stand-alone legislative documents dedicated exclusively to parental involvement (National Parent Forumof Scotland, 2017), while a Parent Engagement Policy for Ontario Schools,2010 offered the first comprehensive document of its kind in Canada (OntarioMinistry of Education, 2010).In the Ontario context, parental involvement was formalized in the late1990s, when the provincial conservative government of Mike Harris passedBill 160, Education Quality Improvement Act, 1997, which mandated schoolcouncils to be established in all schools (Ontario, 1997). In 2000, The Education Act, Ontario Regulation 612/00: School Councils and Parent InvolvementCommittees clarified that the purpose of school councils is to “improve pupilachievement and to enhance the accountability of the education system to parents” (Ontario, 2000, p. 1). This advisory body consists of several parents, the144
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT POLICIESprincipal, one teacher, one staff member, and a community representative. In2005, the Parent Voice in Education Project, after consultations with parentsacross the province, resulted in a report calling for empowering the parentalvoice in education, creating a more inclusive environment for parents, and recognizing the differences among diverse parents in Ontario (Ontario Ministryof Education, 2010). The same year, the Ontario Parent Involvement Policywas introduced as the first policy document in the province dedicated to theinvolvement of parents in their children’s education, followed by an enhancedParents in Partnership: A Parent Engagement Policy for Ontario Schools in 2010(Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010). The Parents Reaching Out Grants program was launched in 2006 to provide funding to school councils and regionalparental organizations with the goal to eliminate barriers to parental involvement (Hamlin & Flessa, 2016), whereas parent involvement committees for allOntario school boards1 became mandatory in 2009 through the amendment ofthe Regulation 612/00 (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010).If parents were always involved in their children’s education, albeit in different ways, what lies behind the current proliferation of parental involvementpolicies? What problems are parental involvement policies supposed to solve?One of the possible explanations is the discourse focusing on the achievementgap (Carey, 2013; Goodall, 2017) and the need for school improvement inthe “knowledge economies” of globalized capitalism (Rawolle, Wells, Paatsch,Tytler, & Campbell, 2016). Policy here is used as a solution to the “problem”generated by data—differences in test results from international comparisons(e.g., PISA) and local accountability measures (e.g., Education Quality andAccountability Office tests), public outcry and media coverage (e.g., discourseof failing schools), and government pressure (e.g., emphasis on education asthe key element of human capital formation; Vargas, 2017). Subsequently,parents are blamed for educational underachievement, even though the problem of involvement here is a discursive one due to the narrow definition ofnormative parental involvement (Fernandez & Lopez, 2017). Not surprisingly, such increased emphasis on parental involvement lauded as one of the besttools for such improvement is disproportionally aimed at student populationsidentified as disadvantaged (Gewirtz, 2001; Rawolle et al., 2016). Parental involvement policies are getting popular internationally because, similar to othereducational policies, they become global and “travel” through the network ofinternational organizations (OECD, 2012; Redding, 2000) and via mobileeducational researchers and private companies (Ball, Junemann, & Santori,2017), which leads to the homogenization of policies across nation states.Against this historical and cultural background, I carried out my analysisof parental involvement policy documents in Ontario guided by the following145
SCHOOL COMMUNITY JOURNALresearch questions: (1) How is parental involvement conceptualized in policydocuments compared to the latest parental involvement research? (2) How arediverse and immigrant parents represented in policy documents? Does the discourse empower one group of parents and marginalize others?Parental Involvement: Three Scholarly ApproachesParental involvement,2 one of the key topics of academic literature on student success for several decades (Epstein, 2010; Fan & Chen, 2001; Hill &Taylor, 2004; McNeal, 1999; Wilder, 2014), has been shown to affect cognitive and behavioral outcomes of school-aged children across socioeconomicsegments and ethnic groups. It could be roughly classified into school-based activities (volunteering, attending parent–teacher conferences, serving on parentcouncils) and family-based activities (setting expectations, monitoring child’sprogress, helping with homework, discussing schools). Despite the almostunanimous acknowledgement of numerous benefits of parental involvementfor children, this phenomenon has been approached by scholars from threedifferent perspectives based on variation in methodology, theoretical lens, andpositionality of researchers. I define these approaches here as involvement forachievement, involvement as capital, and involvement for equity.Involvement for achievement perspective is the dominant approach both inresearch (Henderson & Mapp, 2002; Hill & Tyson, 2009; Jeynes, 2007) andpolicymaking (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010; U.S. Department ofEducation, 2004). The appeal of this orientation lies in the possibilities parental involvement has to improve academic achievement (Nawrotzki, 2012).Prolific scholarship in this area is attested to by several meta-analytic studies,which aggregate numerous primary sources dedicated to the establishment ofrelations between parental involvement in its multiple definitions and academic achievement (Jeynes, 2005; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008; Sénéchal& Young, 2008). On the policy level, parental involvement offers promise todecrease the achievement gap (LaRocque, Kleiman, & Darling, 2011) and improve schools (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010). Parental involvementprograms are one of the explicit requirements from the federal governmentfor U.S. public schools which have high concentrations of students living inpoverty and which receive additional funding under Title I, Part A of ESEA(U.S. Department of Education, 2004). Education Act: Ontario Regulation612/00 contains provisions for the mandatory establishment of parental involvement councils in school boards across Ontario, whereas authorities inEngland and Wales experimented with the range of initiatives including home–school agreements (Gibson, 2013).146
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT POLICIESOne of the main contributions of this perspective lies in the classification oftypes of parental involvement and psychosocial explanations of why parents getinvolved in their children’s education. Epstein (2010) offered the most influential classification of types of parental involvement, which are represented byparenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making,and collaborating with the community. Despite the justified criticism that thisframework centers schools and downplays parental agency (Stitt & Brooks,2014), it is still useful due to the emphasis on psychological, educational, andsociological aspects of cooperation among families, schools, and communities.Hoover-Dempsey et al. (2005) came up with a model of parental involvementthat explains reasons for parents to become involved in their children’s learning. According to this model there are three sources of parental motivation forinvolvement: role construction and sense of self-efficacy, perception of invitation to involvement from school, and life-context variables.Despite the above-mentioned contributions of the involvement for achievement perspective that establish the benefits of parental involvement for children’slearning, provide an initial definition of the term, and look at psychosocial reasons why parents get involved, this stance has several limitations. First, thepurpose of parental involvement is narrowly defined here as a tool to improveachievement to meet the needs of governmental authorities in terms of teachers’ accountability and competition between schools. Academic performanceis the only measure taken into account. Such needs of parents and teachers asemotional support, identity formation, and reproduction of family culture areignored, because it is school-based involvement and outcomes that are emphasized here (Stitt & Brooks, 2014). Secondly, such salient social categoriesas class, race, and immigration status are not paid enough attention when theinvolvement for achievement perspective is adopted. Subsequently, more holistic approaches to parental involvement are required to capture the complexityof the phenomenon, take into account the experiences of diverse parents, andto provide insights for policy and practice that would be meaningful to bothparents and teachers.One of such alternative approaches is involvement as capital. Scholars whofollow this line of inquiry (Lareau, 2011; McNeal, 1999; Reay, 2004) payspecial attention to the way social class affects parental involvement and usethe concept of capital as developed by Pierre Bourdieu (1986). He extended the notion of capital by adding its cultural and social types to economiccapital (money and assets; Bourdieu, 1986). Cultural capital denotes a set ofvalues, skills, and dispositions that help its owners achieve social mobility orsuccessfully navigate educational systems. Social capital is expressed throughvaluable resources acquired through membership in a particular social group147
SCHOOL COMMUNITY JOURNAL(Wacquant, 2008). Going back to the central notion of education as the mainsite of social reproduction (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), researchers workingthrough the perspective of involvement as capital show how the education system is organized to provide all children with education commensurate withtheir social class (Anyon, 1980; Luke, 2010). As far as the middle and upper-middle classes dominate capitalist societies, their cultural norms (language,comportment, preferences, dispositions, etc.) are viewed as desirable by theschool system (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). On the contrary, the cultural andsocial capitals of working-class parents and their children are devalued due totheir lower social position and lack of correspondence to school expectations.Differences based on social class permeate the culture of parenting in profound ways, affecting the behavior of parents at home, in school, and in thecommunity. Lareau (2011) defines two main types of parenting as “concerted cultivation” practiced by middle-class,3 university-educated parents withprofessional jobs, and “the accomplishment of natural growth” typical ofworking-class and low-income parents. Concerted cultivation lies in organizing children’s time in a structured way, especially through organized activities(Rivera, 2011; Snellman, Silva, Frederick, & Putnam, 2015; Vincent & Maxwell, 2016), developing critical thinking and presentation skills by talking tochildren as equals, and instilling the feeling of entitlement. On the other hand,the enactment of a natural growth approach allows children to play freely ontheir own, with siblings, or neighbors. These differences are not necessarilypredetermined by choice, because middle-class parents have the capacity to“cultivate” their children due to their own higher level of education and financial resources needed to provide organized activities, whereas working-classand low-income parents suffer from a lack of time and money (Lareau, 2011).Crucially, their own early socialization and schooling prepared them for manual jobs where they have to follow the instructions of superiors and have littlefreedom to define how work should be done, which contrasts with professionaloccupations that require critical thinking and presentation skills.In school settings, middle-class parents can successfully negotiate on theirchildren’s behalf to ensure that they receive appropriate services (e.g., access toacademic tracks or gifted programs) and that disciplinary and academic problems are resolved (Horvat, Weininger, & Lareau, 2003). Successful educationalexperience, rich social networks, and financial resources for remedial and complementary activities make middle-class parents confident that their voice willbe heard. Their actions are not necessarily valuable per se but are better alignedwith the expectations of school as an institution (Lareau, 2015). On the contrary, working-class parents have very few resources that allow them to advocatefor their children. Quite often they not only lack the general understanding148
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT POLICIESof the “rules of the game” but also feel shy seeking institutional help (Reay,2004). Their social networks consist mainly of relatives and neighbors similarlylocated in the working class, who cannot provide support when school accommodation is required (Lareau, 2015). Due to such differences based on class,middle-class parental involvement is considered normative by schools (Reay,1998), whereas the ways working-class or low-income parents get involved intheir children’s education are disregarded or undervalued. The strongest pointof looking at parental involvement as capital is that instead of focusing onlyon school-centered involvement, this approach allows us to understand theunderlying social conditions that affect how different groups of parents getinvolved in their children’s education. Attention to social inequality explainswhy the parental involvement of working-class and low-income parents doesnot provide their children with as many benefits in the school system as theirmiddle-class peers receive.If the involvement as capital perspective highlights the salience of class, involvement for equity also adds race, ethnicity, and immigration status to theanalysis of parental involvement. Researchers working in this vein critiquethe involvement for achievement approach for largely ignoring the ways parents from nondominant backgrounds4 participate in their children’s education(Baquedano-Lopez, Alexander, & Hernandez, 2013). Traditional typology ofparental involvement in the Western context is based on practices of White,middle-class, native-born parents. Subsequently, different parental involvementstrategies adopted by racial/ethnic minority, working-class, and immigrantparents are perceived through a deficit approach which negatively affects theirinvolvement.The deficit approach ties into the general perception of parents as inadequate in their role of childrearers who need expert advice on parenting andstate intervention to ensure that children are taken care of and their educational success is ensured (Berry, 2013; Gillies, 2005; Lee, 2014). Unsurprisingly,parenting education programs are disproportionally aimed at nondominantparents (Fernandez & Lopez, 2017; Gillies, 2007; Rawolle et al., 2016). Inthe neoliberal times, parents are constructed as entrepreneurial subjects whoapproach their children as “projects” and can choose schools and other educational products and services for their children (Geinger, Vandenbroeck, &Roets, 2014; Reay, 1996). Such discourses further marginalize diverse parentsbecause their parenting practices are less often aligned with the vision of parents as consumers (Reay, 2004).To counteract the deficit view of diverse parents and their childrearing practices, academics who espouse the involvement for equity approach see parents asagents who can intervene on behalf of their children and resist existing barriers149
SCHOOL COMMUNITY JOURNALto involvement (Baquedano-Lopez et al., 2013). A promising way of studyinginvolvement for equity is followed by researchers interested in the concept of“funds of knowledge” which was originally developed through the anthropological study of Latino/a households in the U.S. (Rios-Aguilar, Kiyama, Gravitt,& Moll, 2011). This concept defines parental practices, ideas, and values abouteducation predominantly typical of Latino/a working-class immigrants thatresist marginalizat
voice in education, creating a more inclusive environment for parents, and rec - ognizing the differences among diverse parents in Ontario (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010). The same year, the Ontario Parent Involvement Policy was introduced as the first policy document in the province dedicated to the
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources : Picton, Ontario : New York, New York ; Picton, Ontario : Bruce Morrison Tom Stewart Betsy Trometer Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Picton, Ontario Picton, Ontario Amherst, New York . Don Zelazny Tracey Tomajer
1.5.2 Reaching families most in need of parenting and early learning support 1.5.3 What do we know about parental involvement in early learning in ECEC and school settings? PART 2: CASE STUDIES OF GOOD PRACTICE 2.1 Outcomes and learning about parental involvement in Early Learning from Bernard van Leer Foundation supported projects and initiatives
Parental involvement has a positive effect on children's achievement even when the influence of background factors such as social class and family size have been taken into account.10. Parental behaviour has a bigger effect than school quality on pupils' attainment at Key Stage 2.11 However this research also found
The Ontario Electrical Safety Authority came into being in 1999 with a mandate from the Ontario Government. The OESA make the laws in Ontario regarding electrical matters and decreed that the rules as laid out in the Canadian Electrical Code would be the law of the land in Ontario and called them the Ontario
VEX V5 Robotics Secondary/ Robotique VEX V5 - Secondaire 2022 Skills Ontario Competition Olympiades de Compétences Ontario Page 1 of / de 19 This document is to be used only in preparation for the Skills Ontario Competition. Ce document ne doit être utilisé que dans le cadre de la préparation aux Olympiades de Compétences Ontario.
local family involvement programs. 17 PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. means the participation of parents in regular, two-way, and meaningful . strong family supports; comprehensive education reform. Implement climate measurement systems . Reframing the Discussion. Embrace the Challenge:
PARENTAL SATISFACTION AND INVOLVEMENT CONCERNING . and nurses but also parents should be responsible for the evaluation of the quality of their child’s care [7]. Parents’ active involvement in the clinical decision-making process and providing feedback is important to improve quality of care [18-20]. Often, maternal experience contributes
REGISTER OF LEGISLATION ISO 14001 Doc. Ref. Version Date Template Author Page ROL-SAMPLE-14001 1.0 24/08/2004 Mark Helm 2 of 10 Sovereign Certification Limited
