Increased immigration means that classrooms in Western nations are more diverse than ever. These new pupils are not isolated individuals: as all teachers know, it’s not just about the children, but their parents, too. Immigrant parents have especially high hopes for their children’s success and get involved in their education in a variety of different ways.
Traditionally, parents have been expected to help children with homework, attend school events, volunteer in the classroom and raise funds for enrichment activities. Now, many parents also send their children to numerous extracurricular activities, tutoring and camps.
However, not all parents have the opportunity to help their children succeed in school.
Some low-income and immigrant parents may have insufficient time, money or information at their hands. Immigrant parents also may face additional barriers if they are less proficient with the language or lack information about the school system in the new country.
When immigrant parents prefer to be involved at home, and are less visible at their child’s school, it’s easy to label them as “hard to reach”. But my study of Eastern European immigrant parents in Canada shows that this stereotype does not hold water in the modern context.
I found the opposite in fact - that some immigrant parents are heavily involved in their children’s education. In line with previous studies, immigrant parents in my sample feel more comfortable in the home domain. They supervised children’s homework, organised extracurriculars and held high expectations for post-secondary education. They also developed literacy in their children’s first language, supplemented the curriculum by using additional resources and paid for tutoring.
But at the same time, half of the immigrant parents that I interviewed considered volunteering, fundraising and school events - which are traditionally emphasised by educators - as less meaningful for them. What are the reasons for such differences?
Well, first of all, many parents who work full-time cannot always come to school and help in the classroom. Secondly, Eastern European immigrants tend to be influenced by their own educational experiences in their home countries. They attended schools in countries with clear boundaries between the roles of school and parents, where parents are expected to be active at home, while teachers are trusted with organising children’s learning in schools.
As a result, many parents do not think they should help schools through fundraising by “selling muffins” or other activities on the school premises. Making photocopies for teachers or funding the purchase of smart-boards or laptops is often seen by parents as not relevant to schooling as they understand it.
As one participant explained: “That’s not what makes learning more high quality and more effective, so I don’t wanna be selling muffins, I am sorry.” Interestingly, prior research shows that such activities on the school premises are not very useful for children’s learning and wellbeing, unlike things parents do at home: setting high expectations, talking about school and academic socialisation (reading to children, visiting museums, going to libraries).
I also found uneven levels of communication between immigrant parents and teachers. Parents who rarely talked to teachers and had smaller social networks didn’t have a clear understanding of the way schools function in the new jurisdiction and felt left out and unheard. Nevertheless, they bought additional textbooks and found tutors for their children.
Parents who had more frequent and satisfying communication with teachers were better informed about the school system in general and their children’s performance in particular. They managed to get more detailed feedback on children’s performance and even receive modified homework. The quality of communication was improved when parents and teachers had similar ideas about the amount of homework, school discipline, and teaching methods.
What does it all mean for schools and teachers? Teachers need to know how parents, especially immigrant parents, are involved in their children’s learning. One promising approach is home visits that showed positive results in the past. By visiting the homes of their students, teachers can understand the life circumstances of families and observe home-based activities parents take part in together with children. Home visits to multilingual families would also shed light on literacy practices in languages other than English. Asking teachers to visit students’ homes does create more work but it has been done before and could work if particular time is set aside for this activity.
Policy-makers, school leadership teams and university departments of education could join forces to provide support for teachers to feel confident working with parents in several ways. Policy-makers can demand initial teacher education programs to include content on parental involvement in programmes and SLTs could develop workshops and other related learning opportunities for teachers as part of their professional development.
Teachers would benefit immensely from an opportunity to learn how to work with immigrant parents, whose educational experiences and expectations abroad are different compared to non-immigrant parents. Parent-school partnerships can become truly democratic and effective for all, if teachers begin to see the assets that immigrant parents have and not just their deficits.
Max Antony-Newman is an educational researcher at the University of Toronto, he recently completed his PhD which focused on on immigrant parental involvement. He tweets @maxantonynewman
