Increasing teacher-parent interactions ¹

At-A-Glance

Current behavior:

Teachers do not sufficiently engage parents, despite believing parental involvement is important.

Desired behavior:

Teachers take more actions to reach out to and engage parents.

Change approach:

Training sessions and group learning communities provided concrete ways to reach out to parents and troubleshoot common challenges, in order to raise teacher self-efficacy and perceived efficacy of parental involvement.

Impact:

Teachers significantly increased their outreach to parents and had higher beliefs about their own efficacy and the efficacy of parents.

Implications for implementing partners:

Address the emotional dimensions of behavior change when relevant; design trainings that empower teachers to develop solutions while forcing them to come up with concrete, actionable plans.

Implications for supporting partners:

Identify where there might be “low hanging fruit” to change behaviors that staff already believe in and support.

Parent involvement with school is known to benefit students, though many teachers do not feel equipped to reach out to less engaged parents. In response to this gap, two Southern schools with low-income populations tested an initiative to increase teacher-parent engagement.

The initiative included a six-part training program and group learning communities for teachers. The sessions were designed to acknowledge teachers’ expertise and use their experiences and proposals as the basis for discussions (e.g., participants came up with a list of interventions to try, instead of being given a list to follow). The program did push teachers to come up with specific, actionable steps to take based on their discussions. Finally, the sessions explicitly acknowledged the emotional toll that challenging parental interactions can have on teachers. It offered teachers opportunities to discuss those (e.g., ‘‘[Overall] I’ve had good parents; why do I still focus on those scary folks?’’) and brainstorm practical strategies for addressing these personal dynamics.

The program raised teachers’ own self-efficacy, as well as their belief about the efficacy of parents to help their children succeed, which led to changes in behavior.

Session content focused on three main areas: (1) raising teachers’ own self-efficacy, (2) raising teacher beliefs about the efficacy of parental involvement, and (3) increasing beliefs about the importance of parental involvement. Pre-and post- surveys were distributed to participants and to a control group from both schools to gauge program effects. The program raised teachers’ own self-efficacy, as well as their belief about the efficacy of parents to help their children succeed. There was no change in beliefs about the importance of parental involvement, though teachers believed this strongly from the outset so there may not have been much room for growth. Finally, participants recorded increased activities around reaching out to parents, showing that the changes in self-efficacy and beliefs about parental efficacy led to different behaviors.