Parental involvement in supporting teaching and learning : a case study of three primary schools in the Pinetown District.

Abstract

The study is responding to the outcries of the Department of Education and the South African Schools Act (SASA) Act No. 84 of 1996 and National Curriculum Statement, (2002) about involving parents in teaching and learning. It has been proven that children respond better when parents take initiative in their education. In the study I am investigating the involvement of parents in the teaching and learning. The family is seen as the backbone in every child’s education, this is to say when the parents take initiative in the education of their children, it is likely that the children will perform better at school. The need to investigate the parental involvement arose from the new curriculum, seeing educators struggling to teach in National Curriculum Statement so I needed to know if parents are copying. The parental involvement I am focussing on is essentially teaching and learning that takes place at home and at school where learners require help from the parents on their school work. Parental involvement is strongly linked to socio economic status which is in it self strongly linked with learners’ progress and that is significant to parental involvement. The schools I am researching will be drawn from three different African social contexts of township, rural and urban schools that used to be known as Model-C schools. I want to see what the nature is and how parental involvement is handled in these schools. Since this is a small study, I will not generalise the findings. This study adopted an interpretivist, qualitative case study research comprising three schools. I chose interpretive research paradigm because it will allow me to interact closely with the participants to gain insights and form clear understandings (Nieuwenhuis, cited in Maree, 2007). Using the findings gathered from the study I will access parents’ perspectives regarding their involvement in supporting the learners in teaching and learning in schools. I may not disregard the child-headed families where there is no elder person to concentrate on the children’s education.