Families as facilitators of student engagement: Toward a home-school partnership model

Abstract

Homes make key contributions to children's achievement. Parents are salient facilitators of engagement, and schools, through their active collaboration with families, can help caregivers create home environments that promote academic success. Engagement, from a Self-determination Theory (SDT) framework, is the outward manifestation of motivation and occurs most readily in contexts that satisfy children's needs for relatedness, autonomy, and competence. We review the substantial literature pointing to three corresponding parent variables, involvement, autonomy support, and structure that contribute to motivation and thereby engagement. We then consider the role of schools in promoting facilitative parenting. Research identifies barriers to involving families as well as sociodemographic and school structural variables that predict parent participation in children's learning. Emerging work also highlights the efficacy of system-wide interventions to develop school-family partnerships wherein educators and parents work together toward enhancing student success. Suggestions for future directions include developing interventions that target parent autonomy support and structure and conducting research that embraces the bidirectional and transactional nature of home and school influences on student engagement.