Family Involvement in Preschool

 

What Research Tells Us

There is currently universal consensus that family engagement promotes successful school experiences and positive learning outcomes. Evidence shows that there is a strong positive link between family involvement and student learning and achievement. Not only does it foster the cognitive development in children, but it also positively impacts the emotional growth and social behavior. It has been also been well-documented that family involvement contributes to higher academic achievement, stronger motivation towards school, and a greater value for education that engenders higher education. Over the last forty years, parental engagement has been receiving increasing attention worldwide, and a growing emphasis on the spread of parental involvement practices started to prevail. Hence, bridging the gap that frequently occurs between home and school has been gaining a growing attention. It allows for building successful partnerships between educators and families as they become more dynamically involved, especially early on.

Despite of the above, some parents are still reluctant to actively engage in their children’s learning at the preschool level. Instead of embarking upon involvement from the early beginning, families tend to delay engagement until their children are older and need a more tangible academic support unless developmental problems that require them to immediately intervene surface before that. Unfortunately, there remains a considerable lack of understanding of key issues pertaining to family involvement as well as oblivion of the impact parents are able to make on their children’s learning at a very early stage. This limited understanding often leads families to become confused about the effective parental roles they actually need to play with their pre-schoolers.