Dismay and Disappointment: Parental Involvement of Latino Immigrant Parents

Parental involvement in schools has become more popular over the past decade due to Goals 2000 and research suggesting that student academic success increases when parents are included in the education of their children. Although researchers have examined the issue of parents and schools, limited research on parental involvement has been conducted within immigrant communities. Latino immigrant parents within a predominantly Latino community in California were interviewed. Although the community has strong Latino roots, these immigrant parents believed the schools do not listen or care to listen to their needs as parents. The parents in this study desired to be a part of their children's education, but forces within their children's school prevented them from doing so. The parents wished that teachers would be available to speak about grades, be able to find interpreters during open house and at other times throughout the school day, and communicate with the parents when their child is in need of assistance. Due to the apparent walls that had been established within the school's structure, the parents in this study felt abandoned and helpless while trying to gain information regarding their children's education. Parents in this study were so passionate about their stories that they pleaded with the researcher to let their story be heard in the researchers' teacher education courses so future teachers would know how immigrant parents felt.     

用工学并行模式指导职业技能课程的教学优化——以《数字音频技术》课程为例

工学并行人才培养模式是高等职业院校带动专业建设并引领课程改革的重要内容之一,也是当前实现人才培养目标的重要教育模式之一。运用\"工学并行\"的培养模式指导职业技能课程的教学优化,可以有效地促进学生职业能力的培养,将专业知识的学习和实际工作岗位中的实训紧密的结合起来,对推动高职院校的课程改革起到较好的推动作用。     

Making learning support contextually responsive

Abstract

Research indicates that the success of inclusive education lies within the provision of adequate support for learners who experience barriers to learning in mainstream schools as well as in the changing roles of teachers and support services staff. The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) implemented a learning support model, designed to systemically deal with barriers to learning in some primary schools in the province. An evaluation of the WCED model established that this learning support model is not completely contextually responsive to the South African context with specific reference to resources, both human and physical. Although the WCED endeavours to distribute resources more even-handedly across schools in the Western Cape Province, there is still a general lack of resources and institutional capacity which hampers the successful implementation of inclusive education. This situation creates specific barriers that are responsible for the gap between current educational policies and the implementation thereof in schools.     

‘How are we going to do it?’ An exploration of the barriers to access to higher education amongst young people from disadvantaged communities

The number of young people progressing to higher education (HE) in Ireland has grown significantly over the last three decades but inequality of access and participation remain a major policy challenge. This article sets out to explore the factors which impact on levels of participation in HE by young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, based on interviews and focus groups with 70 secondary school students and 25 parents in three case-study locations. In line with previous research, we found that financial considerations continue to have an important influence on decisions about whether to go on to higher education. The findings in relation to young people’s aspirations and orientations to HE present a more complex picture. While the majority of students aspired to go on to HE, this was countered by a lack of confidence in relation to certain aspects of college life, both social and academic.     

Context of academic achievement: lessons from Hong Kong

Vygotsky speculated that parents play an important role in the intellectual development of their children, and that this role includes the transfer of expectations related to their children's academic achievement. Consequently, different parents can produce different contexts of academic achievement for their children. The participants were 215 Primary 5 and 6 students from four primary schools in Hong Kong, and their parents. Students were administered a test of working memory and their academic achievement was indicated by their school‐assessed mathematics and language achievement scores. Parents reported their expectations of their children's academic achievement, the extent of their home and school involvement, and their educational and income levels. Correlational and sequential regression analyses showed that different schools yielded different contexts of academic achievement. The results support the hypothesis that parents, and especially parental expectations, play an important role in children's academic achievement, and that within Hong Kong different schools can be characterised by different contexts of achievement.     

Blocking Them in to Free Them to Act: Using Writing Frames to Shape Boys' Responses to Literature in the Secondary School

This article focuses on the use of writing frames in a secondary school in order to raise the achievement of boys in GCSE English Literature. It discusses the inadequacies of some earlier frames before outlining a new departmental approach. Examples of boys' work are analysed to show what a difference the frame made. Some consideration of other factors in raising achievement and of the impact on both female and gifted students is also given.     

Parental level of education: associations with psychological well‐being,academic achievement and reasons for pursuing higher education in adolescence

The purpose of the current study is to determine the interconnection between parental level of education, psychological well‐being, academic achievement and reasons for pursuing higher education in adolescents. Participants included 439 college freshmen from a mid‐size state university in the northeastern USA. A survey, including indices of parental level of education, life‐satisfaction, academic achievement and reasons for pursuing higher education, was administered in class. Overall results indicated a positive correlation between parental level of education and adolescents’ reasons for pursuing higher education for societal expectations. Furthermore, paternal education independently predicted societal expectations as a reason for college attendance.     

Parental Involvement and Students' Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis

The idea that parental involvement has positive influence on students' academic achievement is so intuitively appealing that society in general, and educators in particular, have considered parental involvement an important ingredient for the remedy for many problems in education. The vast proportion of the literature in this area, however, is qualitative and nonempirical. Among the empirical studies that have investigated the issue quantitatively, there appear to be considerable inconsistencies. A meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the quantitative literature about the relationship between parental involvement and students' academic achievement. The findings reveal a small to moderate, and practically meaningful, relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement. Through moderator analysis, it was revealed that parental aspiration/expectation for children's education achievement has the strongest relationship, whereas parental home supervision has the weakest relationship, with students' academic achievement. In addition, the relationship is stronger when academic achievement is represented by a global indicator (e.g., GPA) than by a subject-specific indicator (e.g., math grade). Limitations of the study are noted, and suggestions are made for future studies.     

Working‐class boys,educational success and the misrecognition of working‐class culture

This article contributes to the theory of institutional habitus by exploring the differing ways in which the institutional habitus of two schools in Belfast, Northern Ireland mediates the local habitus of working‐class boys. All of the boys in this qualitative case study live in the same disadvantaged working‐class community but attend two different schools, depending on whether they succeeded or failed in an examination at the age of 11 years. It is argued that these schools have different mediating effects on the boys’ common habitus. While most studies of working‐class boys focus on underachievement, and most studies of working‐class success focus on females, this article draws together the strands of success, failure, working‐class boys and locality, and examines the ways in which identity is constructed and reconstructed in response to schooling. Questions are raised about the interpretation and/or misrecognition of working‐class culture in schools and within the wider discourses of society.     

江苏省家长教育卷入调查研究

本研究采用心理量表的研究方法,对Walker,J．M．T．等人父母卷入的量表进行编译,在江苏省3市4所小学进行测量,以探讨江苏省父母教育卷入的程度因素之间的影响。结论：（1）江苏省家长的教育卷入水平总体偏高。（2）母亲比父亲在认知上拥有更多的效能感。（3）父母卷入程度与子女成绩显著相关,卷入越高,子女成绩越好。（4）家庭收入显著影响父母的角色建构与知觉。（5）江苏家长较高的认知卷入水平与实际上的卷入水平并不匹配。     

我国本科层次高职教育人才培养模式探索的回顾与展望

我国高职院校试点本科层次职业教育已有10多年历史,获得了许多宝贵的经验。回顾历史,其工学结合人才培养模式正处于艰难的转化阶段。展望未来,应用学科课程与项目课程将代替综合课程,专业教师真正熟悉企业生产,校企合作将有新突破,学校重视非专业能力素质培养,某些专业将采用"2+3"工学结合人才培养模式。