Parent-Teacher Collaboration Synthesis of the Literature

Involvement of parents in the education of their children both in the classroom and at home has the potential or greatly enhancing the education of a child. It is important for schools to tap into the potential of the parents to support their child's education can help in better and effective teaching. Conversely, when the parents work in close collaboration with the teachers at school and follow the suggestions and directions prescribed for the students while dealing with their education at home can also help children do better in studies (Hendricks, 2013).

Researcher Susan Graham-Clay, in her article titled "Communicating with Parents: Strategies for Teachers," claims that often teachers try to develop a partnership with the parents to create a support system for student learning (Dubis & Bernadowski, 2014). Researchers claim that one of the major factors in the development of this partnership is strong communication which is fundamental to building a relationship between the teachers and the parents and for the development of a sense of community and continuation between home and school. Teachers as well as parents, therefore, need to continue to strive to develop communication skills to expand the scope for effective communication between themselves. This would help in maximizing effective communication in these times of change (Lazar & Slostad, 1999).

Teachers, educationalists, and researchers have also identified a range of communication opportunities that are often available to teachers and to the parents and which include the use of emerging technology for the purpose of efficient communication (Dubis & Bernadowski, 2014). Apart from the traditional parent-teacher meetings, schools and teachers, these days, also utilize a number of other ways to communicate and reach out to the parents that include various forms and communication means like homework contract, letters to families, field trip permission forms, good news report, parent request form, parental contact record, parent-teacher conferences and considerations and documents that are prepared by the teachers and the parents before, during, and after such meetings ("Teacher-Parent Collaboration," 2016).

In their article titled "How to Overcome Obstacles to Parent-Teacher Partnerships," Lazar and Slostad writes that while there a number of practical suggestions that can help in the development of parent-teacher collaborations for students and their performance, there are often instances that exhibit lack of knowledge on the part of the teachers and sometimes the parents with respect to making use of the modes of communication between them. Researchers and educationalists often consider barriers to effective communication in the same breath as the potential means and solutions.

This aspect and the need and the reason or the parents and the teachers getting involved together and collaborating with each other for student's education is best summarized by Bryan G. Cook, Katharine G. Shepherd, Sara Cothren Cook and Lysandra Cook in their study "Facilitating the Effective Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices Through Teacher -- Parent Collaboration" as "because parents know the characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of their children more than anyone else, they are in a unique position to contribute to making an informed decision regarding whether the characteristics of participants in studies supporting an EBP are meaningfully similar to their child"(Cook, Shepherd, Cook, Cook, 2012).

The literature o the aspect of a partnership between teachers and parents elaborates its necessity as well as it brings out certain gaps and factors that hinder such collaboration such as the lack of communication between the two stakeholders in education. Literature also talks about the relative importance of greater collaborations between the parents and the teachers in the context of special needs students and for particularly vulnerable sections of the society. Research also identifies the factors that tend to promote parent-teacher collaboration and partnerships and those that hinder it.

Synthesis of the Literature

The partnership between home and school is not always easy to create and maintain even as it is of value to the education of students and is universally accepted. The value of parents and teachers collaborating with each other to create a partnership where the parents continue with the work that the teachers do in school while the teachers learn about the behavior and attitudes of students, their perceived strengths and weaknesses from the parents and incorporate them into classroom education is well established in the literature. Researchers attribute greater importance to parent-teacher partnerships in settings where students come from diverse backgrounds or are belong to the category of special needs.

For example, E. L. Robinson and M. J. Fine, in their article titled "Developing collaborative home-school relationships. Preventing School Failure" notes the...

Students come from various backgrounds as do teachers and hence the modern and complex culture also complicate the teacher-student and teacher- parent collaborations. E. L. Robinson and M. J. Fine, further says that teachers are really the glue that is critical for the development and maintenance of parent-teacher collaborations and partnerships even as it is most often considered to be a two-way dynamic to be successful.
Therefore to forge a partnership and build a relationship and a bond between them, both teachers and the parents need to efficiently communicate with each other. Researchers have pointed out that communication -- in a number of ways that include the use of modern communication technologies, can help parents and teachers better bridge the gap between school and home with respect to students (Hendricks, 2013). According to Susan Graham-Clay who says that economic pressures, increased expectations, and time constraints are factors that schools, teachers and parents have to negotiate and respond to in today's society. Therefore effective partnerships between parents and teachers assume even greater importance in these changing times for meeting the needs of the children that they both "share" (Griffin, 2009). Development and cultivation of the teacher-parent relationship are very important for the development of schools and effective learning for students. (Schussler, 2003).

Toeing the line of efficient communication between the parents and the teachers with respect to attaining health for the students at school as well as at home to enable enhanced learning possibilities for the students and decreased absenteeism, A.M. Patino-Fernandez, J. Hernandez, M. Villa, and A. Delamater, in their research paper titled "School-Based Health Promotion Intervention: Parent and School Staff Perspectives" published in the Journal Of School Health, identifies the factors that impact a teacher's abilities for the development of a smooth parent-teacher partnership (Patino-Fernandez, Hernandez, Villa, & Delamater, 2013). They claim that the challenge for the two major stakeholders in children education is to continue with the establishment, maintenance and development of a working relationship despite the presence of problems that tends to impact the relationship development. One of the major factors that researchers have accorded to as the hindrance to the development of a working collaboration between the educational stakeholders is the degree of match or mismatch between the teachers and the parents in terms of the values and cultures. The societal forces that are at work and impact the families and the schools and the viewpoint and understanding of the roles of both the parents and the teachers in education are other factors that influence communication and the degree of collaboration (Patino-Fernandez, Hernandez, Villa, & Delamater, 2013).

Citing the example of an urban magnet school in Africa where it was gyrating towards a racial integration and was in the process implementing a Montessori education program, Audrey C. Rule and Patricia B. Kyle, in their research article titled "Community-Building in a Diverse Setting," emphasized o the need and importance of a healthy and working relationship between teachers and parents for the development of community-building strategies. The researchers studied the transition process in the school and concluded helpful faculty connections and the promotion of "on-going and open teacher/parent communication" helped the school to work together in order to "meet the needs of each student. It is energizing to have such positive outcomes when we could have had tension and strife" (Rule & Kyle, 2008). This is another reason or evidence-based impact of a healthy and working parent-teacher collaboration.

Another paper that was prepared by the Virginia Department of Education titled "Collaborative Family-School Relationships for Children's Learning: Beliefs and Practices" and based on work by of Sandra L. Christenson, University of Minnesota, claims that the efforts of the State of Virginia to ensure that all state's children managed to achieve a high standard of learning were centered around the development of family involvement -- that include parents, primary caregivers as well other members of importance in the child's immediate family, in education strategies. The paper notes that there was significant knowledge of the positive impact of productive home-school collaborations on the enhancement of learning outcomes (Virginia Department of Education, 2002).

Conclusion

The above discussion clearly points out to the importance and criticality of the need for collaboration and partnerships between parents and teachers and even schools for the enhancement of the learning outcomes of students. The review and synthesis of literature…