Family And Schooling Research Paper

Up to relatively recently, the family took major responsibility for the care, education, and training of children. In it, children acquired skills to deal with day-to-day tasks, including those of work. During the Industrial Revolution, as work moved into factories and became more specialized and skilled, and knowledge accumulated, homes could no longer provide children with the required knowledge and skills, and the need for an institution dedicated to formal learning arose. Increases in migration, industrialization, and urbanization served to underline the need, and so nations came to accept education and training in school as their responsibilities.

Children still spend most of their waking time outside school, however, and it would be surprising if the continuous influence of the family, both before children enter school and when they are attending school, did not play a major role in their learning. Although one would expect families and schools to play complementary and mutually reinforcing roles in children’s education, they may not always do so because of differences in their goals, structure, demands, activities, values, and the competencies they foster. When these differences are large, children may experience a serious dysfunction in socialization when they go to school, which will affect their ability to adapt and to learn. To deal with this problem, concerted efforts have been made in several countries in recent years to increase parents’ involvement in the formal education of their children.

This research paper provides a summary of the findings of research that indicate that children’s home circumstances are related to school learning. Proposed explanations of the findings are presented. Finally, programs to increase parental involvement in the education of children living in families and communities characterized by high rates of educational failure are considered.

1. The Findings Of Research On Family Characteristics And Children’s School Learning

Research on the family factors that influence children’s development, much of it in the context of policies of providing equality of educational opportunity, has been carried out since 1900 in several disciplines: education, psychology, sociology, economics, and behavior genetics. There has been little integration of the work across disciplines.

Findings of the empirical studies can be summarized in eight general conclusions (Kellaghan et al. 1993, White 1982): (a) level of socioeconomic status (or social class) is positively but not very strongly related to children’s performance on measures of scholastic ability and achievement. Children from high socioeconomic status homes tend to perform better than children from low socioeconomic status homes; (b) differences in cognitive skills between children from varying socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds are in evidence before children go to school; (c) the gap between children from different backgrounds widens as children progress through school; (d) the length of time a student spends in the education system is a function of the socioeconomic status of the student’s family. This is so even for students of the same level of general scholastic ability; (e) in countries in which secondary schools are differentiated, major selection in terms of socioeconomic background occurs at the point of transfer from primary to secondary school. Students from high socioeconomic backgrounds tend to transfer to an academic type of secondary school which will lead to third-level education, while children from low socioeconomic backgrounds tend to go to technical, vocational, or ‘short-cycle’ schools; (f) variables which describe the ethos and teaching style of families predict students’ academic achievement better than do measures of the socioeconomic status of families. Thus, what parents do is more important than their status; (g) children’s learning benefits from parental involvement. Such involvement is more likely to occur if parents construe their role as involving activities related to children’s education, and if they believe that involvement will have a positive influence on their children and will be welcomed by schools (Epstein 1991, Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler 1995); (h) many studies reflect a low negative correlation between family size and educational abilities, achievements, and attainment. Increased spacing between children tends to reduce the decrement associated with increase in family size, while the effects of size are more marked in homes in which the father has a low occupational level.

Methodologies have been employed which reject the ‘objective’ quantitative approach of empirical studies, adopting the view that since acts imply purposeful constructions by actors, they can only be understood from the actor’s point of view. In this context, ethnographic and case study procedures have been used to explore individuals’ ‘interpretations’ of home- school relationships (see Marjoribanks 1991). The approach is supported by the findings of psychological research that perceptions of family supports are better predictors of personal adjustment than are actual supportive behaviors provided by network members (Pierce et al. 1996).

Research on the effects of variation in family structure and function on children’s school learning does not provide clear-cut findings, which is not surprising, given the complexity and variety of the conditions being investigated. It is, for example, difficult to design studies that will isolate the effects of family circumstances (e.g., divorce, maternal employment, blended families, lone parenting) from the effects of many conditions frequently associated with these circumstances. One consistent finding, however, is that lone parenting is often associated with school problems for children when the parent (usually a mother) is young, financially poor, and poorly educated (Kellaghan et al. 1993).

Changes in family structure, which are associated with a decrease in the monitoring and supporting of children’s behavior by parents and other adults, and in which the cultivation of one’s own well-being replaces interest in others, are perceived by some commentators to have a negative impact on children’s educational development (see Coleman 1987). The changes are represented as reflecting an erosion of ‘social capital’ (see Sect. 2).

2. Explaining The Family’s Influence On Children’s Development

Using a concept analogous to financial capital, the term ‘cultural capital’ has been used to conceptualize some of the influences of families, and the communities in which they are embedded, on children’s academic development. It exists in three forms: in cognitive and noncognitive competencies derived from past experiences (particularly familial ones) which actively organize future experience; in an ‘objectified’ state in cultural goods (pictures, books, instruments); and in an institutionalized state (educational qualifications). Language forms an important part of cultural capital since, in addition to being a means of communication, it provides, together with a richer or poorer vocabulary, a system of categories, which enables one to decipher and manipulate complex logical and aesthetic structures (Bourdieu 1986).

Separate strands of research in education (Kellaghan et al. 1993) and in psychology (Moos and Moos 1994) have identified a number of behaviors and conditions in the family that contribute to cultural capital: (a) modeling (in use of complex language; in planning and/organization to ensure that time and space are well structured and used; intellectual cultural orientation in activities; moral-religious emphasis); (b) providing motivation and reinforcement (encouraging and rewarding school-related activities and independence in decision-making); (c) holding high academic aspirations and expectations; (d) providing direct instruction (guiding and supporting academic work; helping with homework); and (e) ensuring that the activities engaged in are developmentally appropriate.

A number of points have been made about cultural capital: (a) its value will vary with the ‘markets’ in which it can be used advantageously; (b) capital required for success in school is defined by the dominant social groups in society; (c) ability or talent is the product of an investment of time and cultural capital; and (d) the notion of cultural capital helps explain the unequal scholastic achievement of children originating from different social classes. If you bring the right kind of capital to school, you will do well. If you do not, you are likely to find yourself at an academic, social, and ideological disadvantage in most schools (Bourdieu 1986).

In separate, but mutually supporting research in psychology and sociology, interpersonal relationships have been identified as another area in which the family’s influence on children’s development can be discerned. In psychology, the focus is on cognitive aspects of support (that incorporate expectations about how others will respond when assistance is needed) and on actual supportive behavior (Pierce et al. 1996). Sociologists, on the other hand, speak of ‘social capital,’ which is perceived to inhere in the structure of relations between and among individuals and/organizations. Three forms have been identified: shared obligations and expectations; useful information that is passed between members of a social network; and a value or norm consensus between adults, coupled with a willingness to monitor behavior and enforce norms that control and shape children’s activities. These conditions are seen as contributing to the development in children of basic attachments, attitudes, willingness to make certain efforts, and concepts of self, all of which work to children’s advantage when they go to school. A variety of individuals and/organizations can help children with these developmental tasks: siblings, grandparents and other members of the extended family, neighbors, churches, and various social and cultural groups (Coleman 1987, Garbarino et al. 1997).

These explanations of the factors in social and familial contexts that affect school learning do not help us understand how it is that children from the same family can differ considerably in their success at school. The answer would seem to lie in the fact that, although certain aspects of children’s genetic endowment and environment (inside and outside the home) are shared by children in a family, other aspects are unique to each child. It may be that non-shared influences (e.g., the specific treatment of a child by parents and siblings) contribute more to variation in children’s characteristics than family variables that are common to all children (e.g., socioeconomic status, general parenting style) (Rowe 1994). The complexity of the interaction between genetic and environmental factors becomes obvious if it is the case that compared to their less ‘able’ counterparts, genetically more ‘able’ parents create more stimulating environments, and genetically more ‘able’ children take a more active role in shaping their environment.

3. Home–School Partnerships

Recent efforts to improve home–school relationships may be attributed to concern about achievement levels in schools, sometimes arising out of the results of comparative international studies of achievement; the limited success, despite considerable investment, of efforts, such as ‘Headstart’ in the USA and similar programs elsewhere, to raise significantly the educational achievements of children living in areas described as economically and socially disadvantaged; and realization of the contribution that factors outside the school in homes and communities, particularly in the early years, make to the development of competence in children, a realization that was inspired by evidence relating to the importance of early childhood experiences, and of the effects of home background on achievement.

In the USA, there is a long tradition of involving parents and communities in children’s formal education in, for example, parent–teacher associations. In Europe, the situation is more complex because of differences between countries in legal arrangements and ideology. However, in many countries, recent efforts, in some cases supported by legislation, go well beyond traditional parent–teacher associations in the role they propose for parents, involving them in curriculum decision-making, and in teaching and learning activities in the classroom (e.g., as classroom assistants) or in the home (e.g., in developing children’s skills in problem solving and language, and in supervision of homework). Many of the efforts are directed towards families in ‘disadvantaged’ areas, where children face economic, educational, and social problems, and are considered to be at risk of educational failure, school dropout, and intergenerational poverty. As is the case with family-support initiatives in general, programs are designed to improve the developmental capacity and educational options available to families. They are based on a variety of models and approaches, have few theoretical frameworks, and vary in the extent to which empirical evidence is available on their effectiveness.

Most programs can be described as instrumentaltechnical, in that they are designed to provide parents with a range of skills that are considered relevant to their children’s education. Alternative approaches are based on an interpretative paradigm, which, recognizing the uniqueness of parents’ experience, attempt to facilitate them in interpreting and understanding that experience. Yet other approaches go a step further, again helping parents interpret their situation, but to do so critically in the context of presumed determining social structures and ideologies (e.g., Morgaine 1992).

One of the mechanisms used in the USA (Becker et al. 1997) and in the UK (Bastiani and Wyse 1999) to involve parents requires them to sign home-school contracts. Such agreements describe, among other things, the reciprocal responsibilities of schools, parents, and students in relation to student learning and school discipline.

A number of problems associated with efforts to promote partnerships have been identified: (a) despite rhetoric regarding choice, partnership, and parents’ role as ‘primary educators,’ many efforts mirror the traditional home-school power relationships that they were designed to alter; (b) in many cases, schools limit the involvement of parents, denying them any real input into the construction of ‘shared understandings’; (c) many approaches are based on an implicit view of parents as being inadequate in parenting skills, or as being ‘hard to reach’; (d) many parents are untouched by the partnership, and remain distanced and alienated; (e) when involvement is based on contracts which require agreement before a student will be admitted to a school, only families with a certain level of commitment may enrol their children; (f) the extent of parental influence depends on parents’ social, cultural, and material resources; (g) finally, strategies generally fail to reach fathers (Vincent and Tomlinson 1997).

While evaluations of individual initiatives to improve family involvement have reported a variety of effects on parents and children, it is difficult to generalize about the effectiveness of home–school partnerships because of variation in the goals of programs, in the situations in which programs are delivered, in the delivery of services, and in the recipients of services.

4. Conclusion

Research has gone a considerable way in identifying family characteristics that are associated with children’s successful school learning. We may expect future research to be more interdisciplinary, to focus more on individuals’ perceptions of family–school relations, to attend to the role of individuals’ unique nonshared attributes and experiences, and to support the development of parent involvement programs that are based on the concept of equality of the partners.

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