Reducing barriers to family-school partnership
Diana Nenadić-Bilan, Marijana Mohorić
Engaging families in the educational system is widely recognized for the positive impact on the overall students’ academic and social outcomes, as well as on students’ behavior and motivation.
Numerous studies emphasized that everyone benefits from a partnership — students, parents, teachers, and the community. Given the importance of early parents’ engagement in the primary school, the aim of this paper is to identify some basic needs and opportunities for more active parental and teacher engagement and to point to the necessity of reducing obstacles in achieving a more active family-school partnership. Partnership, as a more complex phenomenon than merely participation or involvement, implies genuine and productive collaboration and coordination between parents and teachers, administrators, specialists, and local community representatives. Partnership is characterized by comprehensive social network of all those involved in children’s education. This article calls for the removal of barriers in the realization of partnerships between parents and teachers.
A comprehensive model of school and family partnership builds on interaction of different spheres of influence, especially family and school, in which parents become the active constructors of the school curriculum.
Keywords
Genitori, insegnanti, genitorialità, supporto sociale, partnership.