Families’ participation in education: Pre-service teachers’ perspectives

Abstract

Today, the benefits of family participation in education are recognized both for children and also for families and educators. However, recent work has shown that there is not always an intentional and structured approach concerning parental involvement in pre-service teachers training. Thus, this study aimed to characterize the perceptions of students attending the Masters in Pre-School Education and in Pre-School and Primary Education about their training in this topic and their beliefs about families’ involvement in education. Participants were 379 students from 18 institutions from different regions of Portugal. The questions asked focused both their pre-service training but also the activities they think teachers can develop to promote parental involvement, as well as the difficulties and benefits resulting from their participation. The results revealed that pre-service teachers identified several activities to be promoted, especially those carried out in the school context, in detriment of the participation at home and of the communication process. The challenges and difficulties associated to participation were mostly about family constraints and less about professionals or the context constraints. The benefits identified were mainly for children. Those pre-service teachers who evaluated their training more positively not only tended to identify more activities and benefits associated with participation but also showed a more comprehensive perspective about the difficulties that may come across. These results will be discussed in view of the existing literature, both with regard to parental involvement (practices, barriers, strategies, skills) and to the need for explicit training in this area.