mla
references from research literature articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Current literature is defined as published within the past 5 years. Research literature is defined as articles reporting data collection methods or data sources, data analysis methods, and findings)
The proposed theoretical framework for this study will focus on our Head Start classroom teachers' perceptions, observations and documentation of the patterns of parent involvement and engagement in their children's education and services provided by the Head Start Schools. In qualitative studies, Glesne (2011) suggests that this approach offers a guide that will lead the student to improve focus on the perspectives, concepts and ideas about parent engagement as seen through the eyes of the classroom teachers. A theoretical approach will be used to apply an immediate understanding of the process by which share information about their practices at home and at school with their children leading the student to discover how involved and engaged they are. The theoretical approach will also present what Head Start teachers and administrators are doing and can do to promote more involvement and engagement. The structure and foundation for the theoretical approach would be rooted in questions to be answered in the project study. The student's perspective and approach for understanding the problem of the lack of involvement and engagement in their education will drive and define the variable that the student will explore. The student will use and present a collection of interrelated concepts that will guide the research and help determine the variables that will be measured (Creswell, 2012).
In this project study, the student plans to show two variables or characteristics of the families who are somewhat involved and engaging in their child's education and the families who are clearly absent in their child's education. In other words, the theoretical framework will research the facts that the student already knows and is predicting the facts that the student does not know is the cause or contributing factors to the lack of involvement and engagement. The variables or attributes of the study will take on the roles of the independent and the dependent variables. In the presentation of the dependent variable, the student intends to explore the predictions for the outcomes showing that the lack of involvement leads to poor results and poor academics therefore a poor head start in life and further (Creswell, 2013). This study will employ an action research approach seeing that we are studying the patterns and behavior of families within an organized population as it relates to an educational institution with a view towards effecting positive changes. This student intends to work and collaborate with others as agents of change (Glesne, 2011). The student thus plans to engage program partners and practitioners in order to develop questions and methods that will provide oversight of this research process and may be asked to help interpret the findings of the study. The methodology will include a pilot study for added reliability and validity. The student intends to use qualitative interviews, observations surveys and quantifiable data (Glesne, 2011).
In order to justify the theoretical framework chosen and identified for this study, this student will interviews/observations, surveys and data collected will reveal the fact that a problem of the lack of parent involvement and engagement does exist. The data collected from all nine Head Start centers will justify the fact that the only a handful out of 698 families do indeed participate actively in their child's education, percentages that are consistent with other Head Start programming (Sakran, 2012). These are important issues because family support represents a vitally important component of Head Start's programming (Singh, 2009). The parents of children participating in Head Start programs are encouraged to take part in program planning as well as program delivery (Jasis, 2013). The experiences of the many Head Start programs to date, though, indicate that there are ongoing problems concerning the absence of one parent in many families, combined with lower literacy levels and inordinately high levels of unemployment among Head Start families that adversely affect the efficacy of the initiatives (Singh, 2009).
In the course of using observations and interviews, the questions asked in the interview using open-ended questions will reveal valuable information showing that the study is justified. Observations in the classrooms with the collection of data will also reveal valuable information that the study is indeed justified. Surveys sent out and evaluated will consist of questions that will give the parents a chance to answer and to report back on their patterns as it relates to their child's education. These results will be matched with some of the documented CLASS Assessment that the Head Start School performs three times a year to show that in some cases parent involvement makes a difference and in order cases it shows what the hypothesis for this study was intended to reveal. In order to gain a clear understanding of the problem, the student feels that the interviewing families in a comfortable setting that is non-threatening to them will give the chance to share feelings as to why they are involved or not involved in their child's education. This interview process will give the student a chance to collect data from families and to later use in the study to analyze thereby justifying the study and to deem the study worthwhile of the problem. Also knowing that qualitative studies are especially relevant with human behavior, the choice of using observations, interview, surveys, questionnaire and even focused groups will serve the direct understanding of the problem as justifiable and worthy of study as it will give a better insight of the problem and a possible development of action driven program that may solve the problem.
