Addressing Difficulties in Literacy Development

Responses at Family, School, Pupil and Teacher Levels

Gavin Reid, Janet Soler, Janice Wearmouth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136486470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book outlines and critiques international strategies and programmes designed to address difficulties in literacy development. The high-profile team of contributors consider teaching programmes which operate at family, school, pupil and teacher levels. They argue that school is not the only legitimate location for literacy education, and show how difficulties in literacy can be addressed sequentially, both in and out of the school context.

Issues addressed include:

*the dilemmas facing practitioners in choosing between multiple approaches to practice
*the factors which must be addressed in strategies which operate at the level of the family and the community
*how to ensure the school can support programmes designed to improve literacy learning
*how to put theory into practice in programmes designed for use with individual students
*the teacher as 'reflective practitioner' - developing professional practice which effectively raises literacy achievement.

This book will be of interest to postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, educational professionals and policymakers who are looking for practical strategies to address difficulties in literacy development.

This reader forms the basis of the Open University's Difficulties in Literacy Development course, and is ideal for similar courses nationally and internationally.

Part 1

Family and community

Chapter 2

Parents and teachers

Peter Mittler

The closer the parent is to the education of the child, the greater the impact on child development and educational achievement.

(Fullan, 1991: 227)

It is the parents’ unreasonable commitment to their child that makes them good parents.

(Anon., quoted by Gascoigne, 1995: vi)

Reaching all parents

Home–school links: a fresh start?

In this chapter I want to suggest that we need to rethink the whole basis of home–school relationships for all children. Devising new ways of bringing teachers and parents into a better working relationship is worthwhile for its own sake and would benefit all children, parents and teachers. It could also make an impact on children’s learning and promote social as well as school inclusion, especially for those parents who are experiencing social exclusion themselves. Children with exceptional needs and their families would automatically benefit without the need for special principles and procedures.

Despite all the fine words about working with parents, there is still a velvet curtain between home and school. Teachers and parents may be friendly, helpful and polite to one another but there is an unavoidable underlying tension that arises from the imbalance of power between them. Many parents are apprehensive and anxious about going to schools because they are still carrying the history of their own experiences of teachers and schooling. Schools have changed out of all recognition in a single generation but many parents have had little direct experience of such changes and obtain much of their information from the media and from casual encounters with neighbours. Parents of children with exceptional needs have a particularly great need for working relationships with teachers based on understanding and trust.

The whirlwind of change that has been sweeping through schools in the 1990s has been focused on raising standards. This has left little time to develop new ways of bringing local parents into partnership with schools. ‘Links with the community’ are often equated with business and industry rather than with partnership with parents. Rooms earmarked for parents’ use in the past have had to be brought into service as classrooms in response to the open enrolment legislation.

Every school has a ‘reputation’ in its neighbourhood that is based less on league tables and SAT results than on local perceptions about the quality of the relationships between staff and children and how approachable and welcoming the school is to parents and to the local community. These intangibles cannot be measured by inspectors but they lie at the heart of any attempt to develop better collaborative relationships.

Some schools have travelled further along this road than others but many parents are still unreached and at risk of being labelled as ‘unreachable’. Some parents do not necessarily want to attend school meetings or may be alienated by some of the language and documentation that they encounter. They should not be written off as ‘uninterested in their children’s education’.

It seems ironic that, at the very time when social inclusion and poverty are at the top of the government’s agenda, many parents feel excluded from decisions being made or proposed in the schools that their children are attending, as well as those being taken at local or central government level. Information about good practice or new ideas is not widely known or disseminated and home–school links are not high on the priority list at any level.

Governments of both persuasions have sent out conflicting messages to parents. On the one hand, they have promoted the rights and interests of parents through, for example, the Parents’ Charter (DfEE, 1995), which gives parents the right to information about their child’s progress and achievements and about the work of the school as a whole. All parents (except, as we shall see, parents of children with exceptional needs) have the right to express a choice of school, to change the status of a school, to appeal against the decisions of schools and LEAs, to become school governors and to ensure that governors report to parents regularly. By these means, schools and LEAs are made accountable to parents. But governments have also encouraged parents to act as teacher watchdogs and to vote with their feet if schools do not match up to their expectations. This is not a good foundation for a climate of trust and partnership.

At the same time, parents are frequently blamed both by politicians and teachers’ organisations for failing to ensure that children do their homework and do not roam the streets. Home–school agreements are being introduced to formalise relationships and ministers threaten children’s curfews and fining parents whose children truant. Most recently, the DfEE guidelines on EAZs (DfEE, 1999) have highlighted the importance of support for families but the examples of desirable activities that they list seem to be concerned with compensating parents’ weaknesses in language and literacy, rather then helping parents and schools to work together as partners, each with distinctive contributions to make.

Lack of professional preparation

How many teachers can remember any attention being given to working with parents in their initial training? How many have had opportunities to attend training days or courses on the needs of parents and families and how they might work together? How many have had the opportunity to listen to parents speaking about their needs and perceptions?

Most teachers insist that there was no reference to parents and families in their initial training and that there have been few opportunities to attend courses or training days since then. It is depressing, therefore, to find that the most recent TTA national standards for qualified teacher status also have almost nothing to say on parents (TTA, 1998). Only in the additional standards for teachers working in nursery and reception classes do we find a reference to ‘having a knowledge of effective ways of working with parents and other carers’ and a further standard on ‘managing the work of parents and other adults in the classroom’. Parents are not mentioned in the main standards for primary or secondary teachers and receive only a passing reference in standards for head teachers. They fare a little better in the SENCO and national SEN specialist standards.

It is not just a matter of training in the conventional sense, but of teachers having opportunities to heighten their self-awareness and to think about their attitudes to families, how they perceive them and relate to them and to consider whether there may be alternative approaches for them as individuals and for the schools and services in which they work. The use of role play and simulation, with or without videorecording, has been used in race awareness sessions and can provide insight into one’s own styles of interaction with parents, but some may find such approaches too intrusive or too disturbing.

Home–school policies

Every school needs its own home–school policy to go beyond fine words and include concrete proposals for achieving better working relationships with its parents and with the local community. Despite much rhetoric about the importance of working with parents, there is no legal requirement for schools or LEAs to have a detailed written policy on working with parents and therefore no guidelines about the headings under which such a policy might be developed. However, the OFSTED frameworks for inspection say that inspectors must evaluate and report on:

the effectiveness of the school’s partnership with parents, highlighting strengths and weaknesses, in terms of:

• the information provided about the school and about pupils’ work and progress through annual and other reports and parents’ meetings;

• parents’ involvement with the school and with their children’s work at home;

• the contribution which the school’s link with the community makes to pupils’ attainment and personal development.

(OFSTED, 1995: 96)

There is a statutory requirement to obtain the views of parents on a school being inspected by means of a meeting between the registered inspector and parents and also through a questionnaire sent to all parents. Parents’ views are sought under eight headings: pupils’ attainment and progress; attitudes and values that the school promotes; information that the school provides to parents, including reports; help and guidance available to pupils; homework; behaviour and attendance; the part played by parents in the life of the school; and the school’s response to their suggestions and complaints.

The evaluation schedules for the new inspection framework (OFSTED, 2000) include a section on ‘How well does the school work in partnership with parents?’ in which inspectors must report on:

• parents’ views of the school;

• the effectiveness of the school’s links with parents; and

• the impact of the parents’ involvement with the work of the school.

A study of OFSTED reports by Blamires et al. (1997) indicates that schools that receive praise from OFSTED for their partnership with parents are characterised by:

• parents receiving a rapid response to requests;

• regular newsletters with a diary of forthcoming events;

• a member of staff or a working party being given responsibility for home–school liaison;

• information on children’s progress being clearly presented to parents with opportunities for follow-up discussion;

• good use of home–school contact methods such as diaries and logs; and

• development of parental involvement in teaching their child through lending libraries for books/games or toys.

Schools also have a number of statutory requirements to report pupils’ achievements to parents. The school SEN policy statements required by the Code of Practice must also include information about ‘arrangements for partnership with parents’ (DfE, 1994: 8–9).

Over and above the legal requirements, it is difficult to find factual information on how mission statements and policies that look good on paper translate into practice. For example, what specific examples follow the ‘blue sky’ statements: ‘all parents are welcome in this school at any time; we value parents as partners in their children’s learning and development’? How do schools reach ‘hard to reach’ families who do not attend meetings or answer notes? How often do teachers and parents meet to share information and experiences? Is it possible for teachers to offer to visit parents in their own homes? How do parents and children react to such visits and do they have useful outcomes?

About ten years ago, the NFER carried out a national study of parental involvement in schools (Jowett and Baginsky, 1991). Information was collected from 70–80 per cent of all LEAs in England and Wales, and from interviews with many parents and teachers. Although some excellent initiatives were found in some schools and LEAs, they were still few and far between across the whole country. It was clear that parents from all backgrounds were keen to be more involved by schools but that teachers tended to underestimate parental interest, particularly from parents in economically deprived areas.

Schools that want to review their home–school policies will find a great deal of valuable information and support in a series of publications arising from a major national project on home–school links, directed by John Bastiani. This project, which began at Nottingham University and was later brought under the auspices of the Royal Society of Arts, has resulted in a large number of practical publications and newsletters and has been an invaluable resource to schools that have wanted to use it. For example, the project has produced an audit questionnaire to enable parents and schools to identify strengths and needs and to improve the quality of communication between parents and teachers (Bastiani and Beresford, 1995). A recent publication reviews the contribution of parents in the context of school effectiveness (Wolfendale and Bastiani, 2000); others include a guide to home–school agreement (Bastiani and Wyse, 1999) and reports of links with parents in multicultural settings (Bastiani, 1997). An interesting comparative study of home–school links in nine countries, including England and Wales, has been published by the OECD (1997).

The publication Early Learning Goals (QCA and DfEE, 1999) includes some useful indicators for ‘parents as partners’, most of which seem relevant to the whole age range.

Parents are children’s first and most enduring educators. When parents and practitioners work together in early years settings, the results have a positive impact on the child’s development and learning. Therefore, each setting should seek to develop an effective partnership with parents.

A successful partnership needs a two way flow of information, knowledge and expertise. There are many ways of achieving partnership with parents but the following are common features of effective practice:

• practitioners show respect and understanding for the role of the parent in their child’s education;

• the past and future part played by parents in the education of their children is recognised and explicitly encouraged;

• arrangements for settling in are flexible enough to give time for children to become secure and for practitioners and parents to discuss each child’s circumstances, interests, competencies and needs;

• all parents are made to feel welcome, valued and necessary, through a range of different opportunities for collaboration between children, parents and practitioners;

• the knowledge and expertise of parents and other family adults are used to support the learning opportunities provided by the setting;

• practitioners use a variety of ways to keep parents fully informed about the curriculum, such as brochures, displays and videos which are available in the home languages of the parents and through informal discussion;

• parents and practitioners talk about and record information about the child’s progress and achievements, for example through meetings or making a book about the child;

• relevant learning activities and play activities, such as sharing and reading books, are continued at home. Similarly, experiences at home are used to develop learning in the setting, for example, visits and celebrations.

(QCA and DfEE, 1999)

Reaching the unreached

It is sometimes said that attempts to bring parents and teachers together using principles and practices such as those quoted above will not work for the poorest families, those who have literacy difficulties themselves or those whose first language is not English. Interviews with teachers taking part in the NFER study reflected pessimism and despair about the impossibility of reaching parents who never respond to notes or letters inviting them to attend parents’ meetings. ‘Good idea but it wouldn’t work here’ was a frequent response.

This pessimism is not borne out by the available research. The NFER survey (Jowett and Baginsky, 1991) and Topping’s review (1986) showed that parents living in areas of poverty and disadvantage were just as interested in helping their children to learn as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 Family and community
• PART 2 School and classroom
• PART 3 Individual pupil
• Index