Like many changes that take place within education the teacher is generally told by their management that xxx will happen and are encouraged to make the best of it. For example French has just been introduced into the Primary curriculum and is expected to be compulsory by the year 2010 however our Head Teacher said that he wasn’t asked if anyone in school could actually speak French for us to be able to implement it. Therefore all staff has to be prepared to take on the task of teaching French.
Change occurs naturally and most people accept or just go along with changes particularly if it doesn’t affect them directly. If something you are interested in or when the change affects you directly then that a different matter there are a lot of people that oppose change and are quite happy to keep things the same. The reason is usually lack of information and fear of the unknown.
Change may come about either because it is imposed on us (by natural events or deliberate form) or because we voluntarily participate in or even initiate change when we find dissatisfaction, inconsistency, or intolerability in our current situation. In either case, the meaning of change will rarely be clear at the outset…
Micheal G Fullan 2000
There are continual changes within education some seen as good and some not so depending on personal points of view like the introduction of French we all agree that because children learn new things easier when young therefore they will pick up French better than when they are adults so it makes sense to include it in the curriculum. However some Teachers may not feel comfortable teaching French. Most school policies are introduced with good intentions because there may be flaw found in some part of education by the media for example x amount of students were leaving school unable to read therefore a new literacy policy was implemented.
As is pointed out John Ahier et al… it is the commitments of individual teachers that make things happen… the government have the capacity to control and discipline the workforce specifically and directly.
The government is under constant pressure to make everything perfect within society therefore because those who work in education are expected to make a difference to society as a whole changes are always expected. However for the individual teacher who is put under constant pressure to changes in education it can have a massive effect with many feeling confused which then cause’s anxiety. This would make the change less successful because they wouldn’t be confident in the proposal.
2 Methodology
The methodology used in this report was in the form of a questionnaire for both Teachers (apendix 1) and Teaching Assistants (apendix 2) with both open and closed questions. This gives me quantitative results. I chose questionnaires as this is a quick method of collecting data. However questionnaires can sometimes restrict respondants to the questions they contain:
Respondants aren’t able to provide sufficient information because the fixed respoces only permit restricted answer options…
Paul Stephens et al (pg 90)
Therefore after I got the questionnaire back I found that I needed more information so I went back to them and asked questions on less formal basis. Open questions are dificult to interpret particularly as this is such a personal point of view I needed information that gives me reasons as to why they gave the answers they did. This gives me qualitative results. There are only seven Teachers and six Teaching Assistants in my school so I gave them all a questionnaire. I did not take into account gender, age or how long they had been in this type of work.
I have recorded the responses in a column bar chart (appendix 3 & 4).
2.1 Teaching Assistants
As an extenshion of this study I felt it important to find out the views of the Teaching Assistants in our school. Their role is at a point of major change and they have a lot more responsiblity in the education of our children. Although Teaching Assistants don’t invite parents into class or have a say as who and who cannot be present in class they do need to be taken into concideration. Many Assistants know their community very well, some may have been parent helpers before being given the Teaching Assitant position.
3 Findings
I have found from the information taken from the questionnaires that the teachers in our school felt parents should take an active role in their child’s education and 85% of them felt it was beneficial to the class for parents to listen to children read on a regular basis because it was a time consuming task to fit in. Only 30% of teachers felt so self conscious when teaching and sometimes feel vulnerable particularly if a parent is present that it affected their lesson. When I asked them about this they said they still found it difficult having any adult in class with them. As I know these teachers I can put this down to personality both these teachers are very self conscious and sometimes show low self esteem.
3.1 Teaching Assistants Questionnaire
The results from the questionnaire given to the Teaching Assistants in my school shows that all of them are happy with parents being in class and are quite willing to support them when needed. Many of them live in our school catchment area so know the children and parents outside of school. The report by Peter Farrell et al points out that he found that some schools found:
Teaching Assistants who live in the local community were well known to the parents and resulted in them having a different kind of relationship with parents from the teachers therefore some parents felt comfortable in asking the Teaching Assistant questions rather than the teacher.
Peter Farrell et al
4 Analyses and Discussion
The findings from both the questionnaire and my asking questions shows that the teachers in my particular school are mostly happy to involve parents on a regular basis they do believe that in the long run children of parents who take an active interest in their education will do better and learn more. They felt that even if these parents didn’t necessarily come into school to listen to other children read etc that these children would do well anyway because these are the parents who already help their child with homework and listen to them read on a regular basis anyway.
100% of our Teachers thought it would be beneficial for the poorer achiever to have more support from home and were willing to help parents any way they could, but very often these were the parents that avoided any contact with school even to the extent of not attending parents evening. This problem needs to be addressed in every school, a report printed in the Telegraph newspaper in December 2007 by the Education Editor Graeme Parton: The government proposes that schools should send parents regular emails and phone calls updating them on pupils’ attendance, behaviour and academic record.
However teachers may feel this is too much as Fullan points out in his book ‘Change Forces Probing the Depths of Educational Reform’
Already too much is asked of them. Teachers’ jobs are much more complex than ever before. They must respond to the needs of a diverse and changing student population, a rapidly changing technology in the work place and demands of excellence from all segments of society.
Micheal Fullan (Pg 5)
If a parent who had any particular expertise came into school and offered to take a class to teach it our head would be very happy and welcome this. When I asked him if he genuinely thought this would be a good idea he said he felt it was the way to progress and is very keen to give the children other experiences. However the teachers may have a different view on this as they are under increasing pressure to fit in everything in the school curriculum.
When I asked the teachers about the Governments policy of opening the school more hours all the teachers said they were quite happy about this as long as they were not expected to help more than they wanted to. The after school activities at present are run by teachers on a term basis only and also because they are interested in the topic being done. 60% of the teachers want or need to leave school at a reasonable time because of family commitments. They feel they put in enough time and energy into their already very busy schedule.
From this study I have found that it is not really down to the teachers themselves as to whether parents are welcomed into the classroom it is down to the school as a whole under the direction of the Head Teacher and the school Governors. It is down to them to help make provisions for the Governments wraparound schooling policy. They have to be the first to accept these changes and make adjustments for it to be successful. This is just one of the difficulties highlighted by Fullan when trying to implement change:
The difficulty is that educational change is not a single entity even if we keep the analysis at the simple level of an innovation in the classroom.
Micheal G Fullan 2000
As highlighted before our school invites parents to special assemblies, have more parents evenings and our Governors are now in the process of getting a PTA (Parent Teacher Association) group up and running. When the NFER (National Foundation for Educational Research) carried out their annual report in 2007 they found that most Head Teachers felt that the most significant improvement in helping parents to become involved more in their child’s education was through the use of their school website, most schools in our pyramid have taken this on board. When I briefly looked at how other schools involve parents I found six out of the seven schools had a lot of information in their school website as does ours. However emphasis was made on the fact that the size and location of the school have a massive impact in what strategy the schools uses to involve parents.
The only strategy that showed a marked increase in comparison with the previous years survey was the use of the school website which increased by 6 percentage points to 79%.
NFER 2007 Survey
We have found in our school that the amount of help offered from parents each year group is different like the children the cohort varies and seems to have a pattern. Every so many years we have a class of poorly behaved children; this can also be seen with parents. If a class has a parent who comes into school to listen to children read very often that class will have offers of help from parents regularly.
To further this study it would be ideal to ask parents how they feel about going into schools. To be able to find out if the myths of parents feeling intimidated going into their childs school to be true. In 2006 Every Child Matters website pointed out that some parents had such a bad experience of school as a child that it still effected them later in life.
Many parents still have negative memeories of their school days and can feel intimidated by the thought of going back into class.
Every Child Matters 3rd Oct 2006
Is there a pecentage of childrens parents still who feel like this or are these changes in schools helping the majority of parents overcome their fear?
It would also be helpful to get samples from different areas of the country. Do schools in the north have better relationships with parents?
5 Recommendations
If this study were to be repeated I think it would defiantly benefit from the views of the parents although initially my report was to find out how teachers felt about parents being in class. Maybe if we knew what parents from our school feel about coming into school teachers may then take on a different point of view.
2635 Words
LLLC 1200 Change in Teaching and Learning settings.
Report
Are Teachers really happy with parents being present in class whilst teaching?
Biblography
Ahier et al (edited 2000) Diversity and Change Education, Policy and Selection London Routledge Falmer
Farell P Dr et al. (1999) The Management, Role and Training of Learning Support Assistants. Research Report RR161 Nottingham: DfEE Publications
Fullan M (1998) Change Forces Probing the Depths of Educational Reform London:The Falmer Press
Fullan M (2000) The New Meaning of Educational Change: Handout
Stephens P et al (1998) Think Sociology. Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes (publishers) Ltd
Every Child Matters, Family Learning Week
Downloaded 19/12/07
Social research methods
Downloaded 4/1/2008
Telegraph co. uk Should schools target stay away parents?
Downloaded 5/1/07
