Primary School Teachers’ Perception on Parental Involment: A Qualitative Case Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to highlight the opinions of teachers with regard to the approaches of parental involment in school. A case study design was used in this study conducted that is employed in studies of a qualitative nature. In the “case” under research, there was an attempt to determine the opinions of teachers regarding the opinions of parents; within this process student portfolios, homework assignments aimed at assessing student performance and reports and minutes of parent-teacher meetings were examined in order to assess how and to what degree the perceptions of parents had an effect (on the teacher-parent relationship). For purposes of determining the study group, importance was attached to the principle of volunteerism participation, and the study group consisted of 6 teachers employed at a state school located within the district of Beylikdüzü in Istanbul during the 2015-2016 academic year. A demographic information form, semi-structured interviews and minutes of teacher-parent meetings were employed as data-collection tools. The data obtained were evaluated using a data content analysis technique. It was observed that during the analysis process of the findings obtained from both the interviews and the document analysis that teachers expressed their views concerning their relationships with parents as being negative on the whole and that the attitudes of parents were not sufficiently developed with regard to the issue of conducting a conducive parent-teacher dialogue of high quality.