Title A study….ppt

Title: A study… Name Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Taipei ABSTRACT We discuss how a research-based model of the parental involvement process may be applied to a school. We focus on how one urban elementary school is using such a model and related measures to develop and test interventions designed to increase the incidence and effectiveness of parental involvement. This application serves as an example of how school districts can use theory- and research-based information to guide parental involvement policies and practice. “I think the research is absolutely vital to what we’re doing because (it tells us that)…you can correlate parent involvement with student achievement….If you don’t have the (parental involvement) piece, it has a direct impact on test scores, and test scores have an effect on everything.” –School Principal INTRODUCTION Ten years ago, Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1995, 1997) offered a theoretical model of the parental involvement process to answer two critical questions: Why do parents become involved in their children’s education? How does their involvement influence children’s educational outcomes? They identified relevant constructs and processes, focusing on those most salient from parents’ perspectives and potentially amenable to change. Next, Hoover-Dempsey, Sandler, and colleagues launched a study to develop measures of model constructs and test model-driven hypotheses (Hoover-Dempsey Sandler, 2005). Across four studies, with data from 2,150+ parents of elementary and middle school children in 25+ public schools in a socioeconomically diverse metropolitan public school system in the mid-south, they produced reliable and valid measures for all model constructs and empirically validated many model constucts and processes (Walker, Wilkins, Dallaire, Sandler, Hoover-Dempsey, 2005). The opportunity to apply the model occurred through collaboration with a public, urban elementary school which was seeking to develop