Week 26 - Reflect on inquiry

Week 26
Activity 2


Inquiry topic
To what extent does parent engagement in digital hangarau impact on student success for Year 7 and 8 students at Clendon Park School?

Parent engagement is an issue that we have at our school. We have found through research that we need to ensure that parents feel valued and respected to make strong relationships. When this happens, parents feel more comfortable to come in to school and interact with their child’s learning. We are wanting parents to come into school and participate in digital hangarau sessions, so that they have a clear understanding of what this curriculum consists of and how they can support their tamariki at home. Joyce Epstein (2001) describes this stage as decision making and collaborating with community. We believe that this stage will bring many benefits not only for students but for parents and teachers.

What:
The significant thing that has come out of our inquiry is that we initially thought our parents were intimidated to come in to school and engage with teachers or that they didn't feel valued because we didn't have strong relationships in place, but from the survey and interviewing process we have a completely different view of things. Parents truly want to come in and participate but just don't have the time. When we interview our students about whether they would want to have their parents come into class and work alongside them, the consensus was clear -NO, but they were open to the idea of sharing their learning with parents on social media

So what?
I feel that the responses that we got from our parents were honest and interesting which in itself is a success.  However, it has created another barrier to getting parents into school, as the data we received showed that parents really want to be more involved/hands on but the just don’t have the time. Our parents are working overtime to make enough to survive, others have infants to look after and no support, we also have parents who have elderly relatives to take care of. So we have had to reflect on this and change the way we are going to approach our inquiry.
We will be looking into sharing our ideas and student learning through two digital platforms - Facebook and Seesaw.

Now what?
So as I mentioned above we have had to change our mindset from getting parents in to work with their children and learn/contribute to the learning in digital hangarau to having to focus on online applications to get the message across and have it available for parents to add comments and share their ideas. I will need to make contact with my class parents and get more information from them in regards to what application would suit them best - Facebook or Seesaw - Facebook is something that most of my parents have already, but I can’t share data or private information with them unless I post in the Messenger component of it, where in Seesaw, they will have to download the App, but it has so many possibilities with it. I have sought feedback from colleagues and the responses have all been really positive and they have said it has been very successful in their schools. Parents also asked for booklets of information to be sent home so they can work with their children, so this is something that I am going to look at getting up and running within my class and if successful, I will take it to management to implement across the school.


Alice Johns We use it as 'Facebook for school' where we just post pictures of the kids and notices to parents. Parents can 'direct message' you which is handy. You can have the app on your phone so easy to post when you're away on camp, swimming, busses are running late etc. I haven't used it with the students though or as an assessment tool. Positive parent feedback as it's easy to use.
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